I was born Lorna Litchfield Petty on March 31, 1919 to Thomas William Petty and Francis Finlay (nee Dick) at a Kensington London England nursing home. My first home was at 52A Abingdon Road in Kensington where Dad had a dental practice. I attended kindergarten at St. Mary Abbott’s Church school on High Street in Kensington. Dad contracted tuberculous from a patient and died shortly before my 7th birthday.

After my Dad died I went to live with my grandmother, Charlotte Litchfield, at a cottage in Bledlow Ridge, Buckinghamshire and attended the village school. My uncle Oliver was with the Canadian North West Mounted Police and after my grandfather died (shortly after my father’s death), he bought a house at 3 Crossway, Ealing in London. I lived there with my grandmother and aunts Dora and Hilda. At 4 years old I attended North Ealing Elementary School in Pitshanger Lane. At eleven years old I went to North Ealing School for Girls in South Ealing.

In 1935 uncle Oliver retired and returned to England. I was 16 and had started work at the Ministry of Health and Pensions in London, getting there by bike or bus. Part of my pay cheque went to my grandmother, as they needed the money. When the war started, the government worried about the country’s health and pension records, so myself and the other civil servants were evacuated to Blackpool, Lancashire in 1940. We were billeted to boarding houses. Blackpool was a seaside resort so there was plenty of accommodation. Two large seaside hotels were taken over and turned into offices for the Ministry.

Us London girls often went home by train for a weekend. This trip was very arduous and quite scary at times as there seemed always to be air raids on the line. We had to change trains at CREWE normally, and this was always in total darkness, with an air raid siren wailing. Sometimes it took hours to get to London and find a tube (underground train) to get to the suburbs. When there was an air raid in Ealing we tried to sleep under the large dining room table. There was very little enemy activity in Blackpool, only one stray bomber that I remember.

After two years I became restless and applied to join the Women’s Forces. The Civil Service was allowed to do this and have their pay made up. The difference between army pay and civilian pay was quite substantial. I joined the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) which was the army part of the Women’s Services, serving from September 1942 to August 1945. I trained in various centres and finally qualified as a wireless operator Special ‘Y’ class which was attached to the Royal Corps of Signals. We worked in groups, mostly in outlying areas, taking code messages (Morse Code) from the German radio stations which we had to pick up from the air using huge radio sets. We did not transmit, just wrote down what we could catch and hope the Signals Special Branch at Station X managed to decipher some of it. I often wondered if I heard and shared something important. I had a chance to go to North Africa, and some of my group did, but I guess I was scared because I didn’t go. We ‘Y’ Signals women were sworn to secrecy and told not to speak of our activities to anyone. I trained at Bletchley Park then was stationed at listening stations in Keddlestone Hall in Derbyshire and Forest Moor in Yorkshire. We were escorted to the wireless stations in convoys, a barren area surrounded by high wire fences. During our 12 hours shifts we took down messages which were whisked away to Station X, later revealed as Bletchley Park. 

In 1939, when the RCMP No. 1 Provost Company came to England, one of them knew my uncle Oliver and looked him up. Though I was in Blackpool, aunt Hilda wrote and told me about the handsome mountie she met. His name was Frank Brien. 

In 1942 I met Frank. This was before I joined the army and he went to Sicily and Italy. In September 1944, Frank returned to London to take an Officer’s Course and was stationed in Aldershot. We dated and got married on March 17, 1945 in London. Frank returned to Canada in November 1945 and I went back to Ealing to await my turn to follow him. By September, 1945 I realized I was pregnant and discovered I had to get to Canada before March or I would have to wait until June 1946. Those were the rules! I made lots of visits to government offices and finally produced a promise that I could go by air to Canada, provided half the fare was paid privately and I could travel at two days notice. After having been to Prestwick airport in Scotland twice with my mother, I finally boarded a Lancastrian (a converted Lancaster Bomber) which held about eight people and was very uncomfortable.

The weather was bad. From Scotland we flew to the Azores (mid Atlantic). There they gave us food and bananas which we had not seen in England in six years! Needless to say the food did not sit well on anyone’s stomach, especially after a stop in Gander, Newfoundland and a meal of fish at the air force station. We were told we were going to stay for several hours in Newfoundland but the skies cleared and after two hours the pilot said he could fly.

Finally, after fifteen hours in the air, we arrived over Montreal. The lit-up outdoor skating rinks looked like a fairy land. We had not seen outdoor lights for six whole years! We missed boarding the TransCanada train so the Red Cross found us (me and two other pregnant women) beds for the night, though I can’t remember where we slept. At 8 am the next morning I was on a train to Montreal, then to Vancouver. Having sent cables to Frank in Regina he was able to get on the train in Regina and join his very pregnant wife for the rest of the journey. Frank’s father met us at the CPR station in Vancouver. Somehow I got through that exhausting and rather terrifying period.

After about a week we returned to Regina. Housing was very scarce and we had to stay in hotel rooms. Frank was not allowed to stay overnight as he was back on an RCMP training course and had to officially stay in barracks. I walked during the day looking for accommodation and finally found the downstairs of a house on Athol Street. It belonged to a Mrs. Carter who became a very good friend and when the baby was almost due, the RCMP allowed us to live together! Mary Frances (changed her name to Juhli Bromley Farrell 30 years later) was born on June 11, 1946.

I had no idea how to handle her, or any baby for that matter, but fortunately Frank did. In the fall of 1946, Frank went to Ottawa to complete his training and found a space in a friend’s house for us to stay. We were back in Regina by Christmas when Frank got his first posting to North Battleford.

We spent two years in North Battleford. Patrick was born on April 7, 1948 and Ann was born on April 14, 1949. We lived in a small wartime house, then moved to a larger one, but we were scarily settled in when Frank was posted to Hafford, approximately forty miles from North Battleford. Hafford was an interesting and rather difficult experience for me as it was almost entirely a Ukrainian population.

Our postings were of fairly short duration. Linda was born on July 30, 1952 in Maidstone. Shortly after her birth we moved to Moosomin and then to Prince Albert where we spent five and half happy years and bought our first house across from the elementary school. Next was Yorkton (1962 – 1964), then finally to Vancouver.

Frank retired in 1965 after spending his final year with the RCMP in Vancouver. He worked with the BC Vegetable Marketing Board (chasing potato bootleggers) for a couple of years and then worked for 15 years as the Security Manager for the Council of Forest Industries in the log theft division. We both kept busy with Royal Canadian Legion activities and the RCMP Veterans Association. Frank was President for the Vancouver division for several years and I was President of the Ladies Auxiliary for the RCMP Veterans for two years. We both held terms of President of Branch 142 Royal Canadian Legion, myself being the branch's first woman president. I also worked on the alter guild of St. Philips Church for nearly ten years and for one year (1967-1968) with the RCMP Security and Intelligence Branch, then situated at Brock House in Jericho Beach. This was shift work and not very popular with the family so I did not rejoin after the year was up.

I am writing this in 1993 and we have been in the same house at 3838 West 15th Avenue for twenty-nine years. We have seen a lot of changes in the neighbourhood. However, Jericho beach remains the same and we have enjoyed that.

My first trip back home was after my godmother, Jessie Murray (a friend of my mother’s) died and left me a little money, about 1962, I think. I went by myself and was very happy to get back HOME to Canada. One other trip alone was when Uncle Oliver died. He was killed crossing a road close to his house. Frank and I went on 3 or 4 other visits, one of them with Lew Price when he was quite ill. Last visit was at the time of the ATS 50th Anniversary in 1988. The only close relative left at this time (1993) is Mary Jones (nee Petty) daughter of Horace Petty (my Dad’s brother) who lives in Swansea, South Wales.

I have been blessed with a wonderful husband and family. My children have delighted me and have borne their various traumas well – some very hard to bear. I pray they all find happiness again in their lives.

March 17, 1995 – our 50th wedding anniversary! We went to Las Vegas. The family came over to celebrate before we left.

March 22, 1998 – my dear Frank died of a massive heart attack. I called the ambulance at 8 am. He never regained consciousness. All the family was present. The service was held at St. Philip’s Church in Vancouver on March 31st (my 79th birthday). The ashes were placed in St. Philip’s Memorial garden on April 19th.

I don’t know how I can live without him!!!

Lorna L. Brien

....

But live without Dad, Mom did, for another eighteen years. She earned the Palm Leaf, Meritorious Service and Life Membership Awards and continued to help out at the Legion on the Finance Committee and as Acting Past President, as well as assisting with the Saturday Meat Draws. She appeared in the Vancouver Sun on October 18, 2005 displaying the Royal Canadian 25-cent coin marking the Year of the Veteran. In May 2010 she received a personalized letter from Prime Minister David Cameron, thanking her for her wartime service in the government codes and cypher school.

Mom developed a close friendship with John Marley and for over fifteen years, he called her every night to make sure she was okay. Our family is very grateful for the genuine friendship he gave to our mother.

In the end, Mom’s loneliness deepened and as her body grew weaker so did her resolve. In early May, 2016, Mom refused the antibiotics needed to keep her alive. As she told us, she’d lived a good life but wanted to see Dad again.

Love always Mom,

Your children Juhli, Pat, Ann and Linda

"Perhaps they are not stars in the sky but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy."