Percy Wright married rather late in life and strangers often mistook his youngest daughter for his grandchild. Percy took that as a compliment. At 65, he was eligible for both the old age pension and the baby bonus.
“The summer of 1936 gave me the first glimpse of the girl I was destined to marry … Ruth Purkis of Toronto … was the driver of one of the Anglican Sunday School by Post vans touring through western Saskatchewan making contacts with youngsters who were in need of religious instruction.
"The two young women stopped in Wilkie over a weekend to see my father … It was my mother who took a particular fancy to Ruth, and I am sure that the thought crossed her mind that here would be the ideal wife for me … she took the trouble to get Ruth’s Toronto address and write it down, and to give it to me just before I left for Toronto in the fall.
"Ruth and I told each other how unhappy we were, and out of the mutual disclosure came the idea that we could make each other happy … I was utterly lonely [but] when I became convinced that I could perhaps bring happiness as well as gain it, my hesitation … was overcome. Also, it was wartime, and if Hitler won out there would be no room for such as I. Therefore, I reasoned, if Ruth and I had only a few years left in which to make a happily married life, it was foolish not to marry as quickly as possible.
"Ruth has told me since how primitive she found our conditions, and how, when she thought it necessary to go out after dark, every little sound would make her think of bears or wolves. I never dreamed of such a thing, and that she overcame her fears and did not back out at the last moment is evidence of a quality she has always had, sheer grit.
"My money was exhausted with buying the materials for the new house, and when Ruth arrived I had nothing left – only 24 cases of honey packed the year before. [Using the honey to pay for the “honeymoon”, they married on August 5, 1940] at which date I was 42, and Ruth, 15 years younger, was 27. She seemed much younger though. She was a mere wisp of a girl then, with a waist so small that she seemed to be willow-like.”
Between 1944 and 1954. “we stayed on the nursery in summer, raised our own garden, including potatoes, not only enough to do us for the summer and fall, but also a surplus to take with to Saskatoon or Sutherland [where Percy was employed by the university during the winter]. We had our own cow, who gave us a large part of our nutriment, and a calf which we raised for meat. We had all the rhubarb, all the crabapples, all the plums, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, we could use or preserve. Then, of course, we had unlimited honey, and honey, while sugar was rationed during the war, provided most of our sweets. When we came to the city for the winter our shipment of goods included as much food we had raised for ourselves as it did household supplies.
In 1956, he received a call from Eric Knowles offering him a job as an editorial writer for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.
"I stayed with reporting for quite some time, and enjoyed it immensely, which was natural, since my beat was the university campus, where a number of the professors were the identical ones I had known when I was a student, and I quickly became acquainted with more."
Ruth and Percy had four children: Ruthie, Merry, David and Alison. Predeceased by his wife in 1981, Percy continued to garden in Sutherland and on various borrowed plots. In 1985, he sent the following note to the WCSH Grapevine: “I am now 87 years old, and my son David says I am “frail,” his adjective. I agree that I now fail to do some of the weeding that should be done.” He died April 5, 1989 at the age of 90 after a long illness.
Although Percy is today most known for his roses, his interest in plants developed at an early age and was wide-ranging.
Sara Williams is the author and co-author of many books including 'Creating the Prairie Xeriscape', 'Gardening Naturally' with Hugh Skinner and, with Bob Bors, 'Growing Fruit in Northern Gardens.'
This column is provided courtesy of the Saskatchewan Perennial Society (SPS; [email protected]). Check our website (www.saskperennial.ca) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/saskperennial) for a list of upcoming gardening events.
