Mail Order Bride - Come To My Side

I married Edith Wishart in Dauphin, Manitoba July 18, 1933 in the midst of the great depression. We farmed at Makinak, Manitoba. We had a happy marriage, and raised one son and two daughters. Just when our family was all married, my wife took sick and died in June 1971. I was left alone on the farm; I was 64 and alone so I had to make a new start. No one could help me, I had to help myself. I felt there was another good woman out there somewhere, who would like a good husband. It was up to me to find her! We had taken the Western Producer for many years so I put and advertisement in the personal column and soon had twenty single women corresponding with me from the four western provinces and Ontario. Some sent pictures of themselves. I sent each one a picture of myself and corresponded with every one for a few months until some quit and some wanted to marry me right away.


But one woman's letters and picture appealed to me. She had been a widow for twenty years and like me had one son and two daughters, all married. She lived in Lethbridge, Alberta. She is of Swedish decent and I am of Irish and Scottish descent. She is eleven months younger than I am. I had a married sister living in Coaldale six miles east of Lethbridge so I went to visit my sister at Christmas 1971 and from there; I visited my correspondent, Eva Siewert (nee Westergreen.) Eva Westergreen was a widow of Reinhold Siewert. I was very impressed with Eva at first sight and I could tell she was pleasantly surprised when she saw me. Strange as it may seem she was born at Whitewater, Manitoba in April 1909 and migrated with her parents to Alberta in June that year, I arrived with my parents from Scotland in June 1909 to Elgin, a few miles from where the Westergreens had just left, although we did not know it.

Two months after we first met, I gave Eva and engagement rings and set the date for our wedding July 15, 1972. I sold my farm near Makinak and moved to Lethbridge. Eva had sold her farm at Wrentham, Alberta two years before we met. She had been renting it to neighbours until then, and was employed as a cook in the fancy Park Plaza Motor Hotel in Lethbridge. My three brothers and sister, who had not been together for many years, came to our wedding in Lethbridge all my children and Eva's attended. Both our families are very happy with our marriage. Eva's daughter, Ione, sent out the following wedding invitations:

Have you heard the glad tiding?

Eva Siewert has come out of hiding.

The reason is her pride and joy

Handsome smiling Tom Hoy

We could not be happier. We honeymooned in Hawaii and have toured most of Canada and the United States. We visit my family in Manitoba every year and they visit us. We attended the wedding of my only granddaughter, Sheila Kardoes to Randy MacDonald in Dauphin in July 1983. My old friends did not recognize me, they said "you look a lot younger" and I feel younger. Love makes the world go round -- God is Love!

Tom Hoy

More Later....

G

N.B. This is the last of my Tom Hoy posts, unless other stories or poems come my way.  My step-grandfather wrote in a journal every night; when he died, his family took them.