Imagine by Joey Stewart
Who Am I?
Who are you? Who am I? How did I become who I am? What influenced me? Who influenced me? A friend asked me recently. That sent me down a rabbit hole I had been thinking about. My last names have been Loring, Johnson, Schofield, Leier, Stewart, and Kingwell!
I’ve had six last names in my life! How could that have happened? How much of my story do I know?
My mother, May Schofield, was 19, sweet, innocent, not worldly in any sense and yet had an adventurous streak and was living a simple prairie life in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, when a tall, debonaire, worldly man swept her off her feet, Michael Loring – his name sounded like a movie star. He was 31 and new in town. He was a pilot with the Royal Air Force from Britain. He was sent to teach prairie boys to fly on July 25, 1941. He treated her like something special. This was new. It tasted of honey. She was walking on air.
Her parents scowled – too worldly, their senses tingled – what was it? They couldn’t put their finger on it; but they didn’t like him for their innocent young daughter.
It proceeded from distant admiration to cautious flirting and then to raging lust. Ahh… in Alberta they could marry at 19 instead of the 21 years old in Saskatchewan without parental consent. They did it. July 17, 1942, in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Her parents were not amused!
Relief! Michael was transferred to Calgary, Alberta, to teach Albertan lads to fly. She was joyous, a chance to explore the world. They were a happy young family. She was soon pregnant and I was born May 18, 1943 – Jo-Ann Loring, named after grandfather Joseph and grandmother Mary Ann.
When I was 42 days old, my mother learned that Michael Loring was not who he said he was; he was Stanley Johnson of the Quebec political family. He had a wife and three children in Ottawa. He was not British; he was Canadian.
He was sentenced to the standard punishment for bigamy; three months in jail in Regina, Saskatchewan. My mother went to Regina to wait out his time. She couldn’t go home to Swift Current; she was disgraced and the custom at the time was to ‘stand by your man’.
My mother got a job in Regina at a retail store, I went to a daycare where the woman who ran it was a friend of Tommy Douglas’ wife, Irma. Irma learned my mother’s story and the Douglas’ offered to adopt me. Imagine! Shirley Douglas married Donald Sutherland; Donald Sutherland, a famous Canadian movie star, could have been my brother-in-law!
My mother was too embarrassed to give me up for adoption. At the end of the three months, she and Michael/Stanley moved up north where he had a flying job. But in no time, he was womanizing with whomever was handy. That was it! My mother couldn’t stand his behaviour. Mom and I returned to Swift Current to my grandparents to deal with the “I told you so’sâ€.
The Real Story Gushed Out!
In 1939, his wealthy family had a private plane. He loved to fly. It was a way to escape everything. One day, he and a friend were playing in the clouds. Oh, no! There was a thundering descent and the plane crashed. The friend died and Stanley Johnson was convicted of criminal negligence causing death.
The penalty at the time was, if convicted you would serve your time in jail or because war was looming, you could buy your way into the army, his father paid for him to join the army. He quickly discovered that army life was not for him.
There were no computers in those days to keep track of people; he walked away from the army; went to Montreal and boarded a ship to Southampton, UK, when he arrived, he went directly to London to enlist in the Royal Air Force. He wanted to fly!
Michael Loring was a famous, handsome actor of the day in England and Stanley liked the name. He started to use Loring’s name. The RAF needed Canadian boys to fly across the English Channel to bomb the Germans. The Channel had the same flat horizon as Saskatchewan. The RAF sent him to Swift Current to teach Canadian boys to fly and the love story with my mother began.
At the time, married women were not allowed to initiate a divorce. When Johnson’s first wife wanted a divorce, my mother rode the train to Ottawa to testify in court that she, too, had been married to Johnson so both of them could divorce him – what guts!
So, Loring (birth certificate), Johnson (bio father’s real name), Schofield (my mother’s maiden name), Leier (my stepfather’s name), then I married a Stewart and then I married a Kingwell.
When families separate during times of war or other circumstances; new families form. This is a very common story – so common that there are millions of us in the world who have fathers we do not know! So, I’m an amalgam of DNA and experience. I’m ok!
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