A letter hidden behind a closet wall in a London, Ont., home for decades has made its way back to the family of the teenager who wrote it in 1929.
Christina Archer found the envelope in 2001 while cleaning out a bedroom in her former home. Inside was a handwritten letter in cursive.
“We were like ‘Holy cow, it’s from 1929!’ It looked like somebody might have placed it there as a time capsule,” Archer told CBC News.
The letter was dated Aug. 13, 1929, and written by Charles Slater while he was serving on the Great Lakes freighter S.S. Lemoyne out of Fort William, Ont., now Thunder Bay. He wrote to his father about the challenges facing Canada’s grain industry at the start of what would later become the Great Depression.
The letter also mentioned forest fires and recommended a book to his father, All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque.
The envelope was addressed to Samuel Henry Slater at 818 Princess Ave. in London’s Woodfield neighbourhood, the same home where Archer and her family later lived.
Archer said she tried for years to find Slater or his relatives through phone books and land registry documents, but had no luck. After moving to another city, she kept the letter.
In May this year, she tried again and posted in a Facebook group for people who grew up in London. Local genealogist Marisa Cooper responded and offered to help.
Within 48 hours, Cooper connected Archer with Londoner Aaron Powers, the grandson of Slater’s half-sister Audrey. Archer met Powers and his partner, Laurie, and gave them the letter.
“It’s strange because a week ago, I didn’t know I had this big a family,” said Powers. “All my life, I thought my family was very small.”
Cooper, a genetic and forensic genealogist at Our Story Canada, said she traced Slater through census data, city directories and public records. She found he was born in London in 1914.
She said his mother died in 1920 when he was six years old, and his father later remarried. The family then moved to his stepmother’s house at 818 Princess Ave.
When Slater wrote the letter in 1929, he was 15 and working on a freighter during the Great Canadian Grain Blockade, which stalled wheat exports that the Canadian economy heavily relied on at the time.
“When Charles wrote his letter in 1929, noting there was ‘no grain to bring back,’ he was witnessing the first domino to fall in the Great Depression,” said Cooper. “His letter reflects what was going on in a historical context at that time.”
According to the 1931 census, Slater later moved back to London and worked odd jobs, including at Kelvinator. His first wife died in 1947 and he remarried in 1950. He died in 1984 at age 70.
After building his family tree, Cooper found that Slater’s only child from his first marriage died as an infant and that he had no children with his second wife. She then traced his siblings.
“She learned Charles had three full siblings, a half sibling and four step siblings,” said Cooper.
That half sibling was Powers’s grandmother Audrey, who later settled in Dorchester and lived there until her death in the early 2000s. Cooper said Slater’s father is also buried in Dorchester.
Powers said finding the letter has made him want to learn more about his extended family. He now has Audrey’s old family photo albums, which include images and mentions of Charles.
“It’s just amazing that at 15, somebody is working on a steamship. It’s the beginning of the war. It was really interesting and felt like it was a man talking in this letter, not a kid,” said Powers.
“He talked about layoffs, he talked about gas prices. I think this whole situation is just fascinating,” added Laurie.
“It’s an heirloom and it was very exciting to finally hand over the letter to the rightful owners of who should have had it all these years,” said Archer. “I now call these people my friends, and I’m honoured to have done this in memory of Charles. I almost feel like I know him now too.”
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