You are reading this because of Adolf Hitler. Not directly, of course. The mustachioed one isn't back to haunt us again (I wonder if Adolf would have participated in Movember?). No, you're reading this because Hitler's actions led to the Second World War, or WW II as the cool kids say.
Doris Erfle, my mother, was born in 1922. She was a farm girl, although the farms changed with regularity. Various locations in Saskatchewan then in California then back to Saskatchewan. She lived through the 30s, and if you think times are bad of late, you have no idea how bad it can really get.
Then in 1939, Adolf invaded Poland and WW II kicked off (America, as per usual, was late to the party; strange that such a militaristic nation would shy away from a fight, but there it is). Doris signed up. I'm not sure exactly when. You had to be 18 to enlist, though I think my dad got in near the end in 1945 but might have had to lie about his age; he was born in 1928.
Regardless, Doris did some of her training in Kingston, and then served in Montreal, so she didn't go overseas. She wouldn't go abroad until 1973 with her friend Kay Cottington; dad and I stayed home.
Then the war ended. First in Europe, then in Asia. Doris told the story that when peace was declared in Europe, women she worked with in Montreal cried, because they didn't want the war to end. They feared the end of the war would mean a return to the hard times they'd lived through in the 30s, and no one wanted to go through that again.
The Canadian Government sponsored veterans to go to university, if they wished. That's how Doris was able to attend the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, where she saw Billie Holiday perform then shock the audience by turning around after the performance and revealing that her dress was backless.
Doris graduated from UBC in 1950 and then went to the University of Toronto to do a library science degree. Doris wanted a career and career options for women were limited. She'd taught Normal School (yes, they called it Normal School) for a year in Saskatchewan when she was young. it was a situation where someone - usually just an older kid as Doris was then - would be the teacher in a one room school house.
She hated that teaching experience, though perhaps it was the situation she was in rather than the actual teaching that was so bad. Regardless, that career option was off the list. What was left? A nurse? A secretary? I don't think she had any inclination to the medical field and I'm certain Doris wouldn't have wanted to be some guy's - and you know the boss would have been some guy - secretary.
So Doris chose another, less common, path and became a librarian.
After getting her BLS - yes, the library science degree was only a bachelors in 1951, not a masters as it is now - Doris again moved around a bunch. She was in Winnipeg working with Elizabeth Defoe, who was such an important library figure on the Fort Garry campus that they later named the main library after her, and back in Vancouver and in Moose Jaw (no, I'm not making that place up), where she was the children's librarian and her niece Donna Lee would come and visit her.
Then in the late 1950s, the University of Manitoba created a Dental School and with it a dental library. They needed someone to be their librarian, and Doris was chosen, ending her vagabond life as she stayed there until retiring 1988.
In 1962, E. Thackeray Pritchard showed up, an Ottawa guy who came from the University of Alberta via a fellowship at Harvard (there's much more to Thack's story than that, but this is about Doris). They were married in 1964. Thack was late to the service, which should have been Doris's first clue that their marriage wasn't going to go smoothly.
Then two years later, I appeared. Quelle surprise, vraiment.
But if WW II hadn't happened, then Doris would not have gone to university and gotten that BLS. Without the BLS, she doesn't show up in Winnipeg, meet Thack, and have me. (yes, there should be another step between meeting Thack and having me, but one never likes to think of one's parents in that kind of way, does one?)
Hence, thank you Adolf Hitler for being such a bastard that whole nations wanted you and your German compatriots dead so much so that they were willing to start a whole war to get that done.
Of course, Hitler was a bastard, and maybe the biggest bastard the world's ever seen. Hard to know of sure, of course, as I'm working with incomplete information on all the other bastards in history. But I'm willing to say he's in the top three for the 20th century; Pol Pot and Stalin weren't nice guys either.
It's easy to imagine that the world would have been better if the mustachioed one would never have existed. Or died early and not implemented the horrific ideas he came up with later. I have to say that I would have willingly foregone my life in exchange for stopping all that.
But, of course, that's the not the sort of choice one gets to make. Steven King's latest tome is about a fellow going back in time to prevent JKF's assassination on the assumption that will make the world a better place. But would it? If JFK didn't die in Dallas that day in November, would it have prevented the Viet Nam war? Saved Martin Luther King? Prevented Watergate? Stopped the NBA lockout?
Or would other bad events simply have occurred instead? You see everything occurs in a context, and that context matters (don't tell any research psychologists that), so changing one thing can change a whole lot of things that we weren't anticipating, because well, we just aren't that smart. We don't know how things are connected. Not completely anyway.
And actions always have consequences. Sometimes the consequences are positive, and sometimes they are negative. But most often they are not seen or understood.
Refreshingly,
Evan
XXXX 52 Times is a periodical by Evan Pritchard (c) 2011 XXXX
Evan Pritchard still ain't named any child Adolf.
