My Grandfather was an Urban Gardener

[img_assist|nid=24540|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=75|height=100]Harvest Sermon for Arthur Rollinson. - by David Bowring

Harvest festivals are found around the world. Some, like the German Oktoberfest are pretty secular. Others, like the one describer in the Book of Deuteronomy, are deeply religious. Deuteronomy 26 begins with these words.

1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time.

These words have taken on new meaning for me in the past few years, and I have come to see how they illuminate the life of my maternal grandfather. Granddad Rollinson was an urban gardener. He had a market garden within the bounds of what is now the City of Toronto. Arthur Rollinson was born to tenant farmers in NorthEast England, near Hull. Tenant farming was not quite as bad as being a slave in Egypt, but there was a very definite class system and the Rollinsons stood no chance getting ahead. No chance, unless they gave up the poor but secure position on the Landlord’s farm and travelled one of the far away lands of British Empire. One day, George Rollinson and his son Arthur stood by the side of the road, and tool off their hats to show respect for their squire who was riding by. After their lord and master had gone, George said to his son: “I am never going to do that again.”  The George Rollinson, his wife Emilie and their children packed their belongings and purchased the special fares the railways were offering to those who wished to move to one of prairie provinces of the Dominion of Canada.
    As the train passed from Halifax in Nova Scotia, through the French speaking areas of Quebec and  New Brunswick into the rich countryside of southern Ontario where they spoke the King’s English, my Great Grandfather noticed the quality of the soil and the prosperous farmsteads. The Rollinsons were persuaded to get off the train at Oshawa east of Toronto.. This was Oshawa before General Motors came to town and the immigrant family found employment on the local farms. Grandad worked for the Downs family and worshipped at the Oshawa Congregationalist church. Granddad rose to the rank of boy soloist.
    Eventually the family migrated to that part of Toronto known as Fairbanks and bought a house and a truck, and rented some land. The other brothers went out west but Arthur Rollinson stayed on the family homestead on Winona Drive. He drove a truck hauling such items as the bricks used in the construction of Hart House at the University of Toronto. He also hauled the vegetables that he and his father grew on the little plot of land in Fairbanks. When the great depression came, they lost the house and the market gardening business. But Granddad landed on his feet. The bank that repossessed his house allowed him live it until he retired and moved out of Toronto. Granddad also landed a job as a fire-fighter with the York Township Department which gave his family a dependable income, and the respect due to a servant of the community, not to mention a trim dark blue uniform. While granddad made his living as a fireman, his great love was the plants that he grew in a greenhouse attached to the back of the house on Winona Drive, and the flower gardens in front of the fire hall on Vaughan Road.
    When Granddad was no longer able to fight fires he and grandmother Rollinson moved to Waubaushene, a village 75 miles north, which is about as far north as you can go and still find soil that will grow good crops.  They bought a quarter acre part of which had once been a wetland and had the most incredibly rich soil. Granddad built one and eventually two greenhouses where he spent 10 of the most enjoyable years of his life. Most of the backyard was occupied by row and rows of glorious gladiolas.
    I mentioned that granddad had sung in the Congregationalist church in Oshawa. He had a falling out with the evangelical Christianity that he had grown up believing and practicing; The issue at dispute was Granddad’s desire to share a case of beer with his family and friends over a weekend. In later years I was to discover that Granddad’s faith was much deeper than it appeared to be on Sunday morning, but I remember him at this time as a “protestant” and much the same way that he was “British.” That meant of course that he had no use for Roman Catholics, and even less use for French Canadians.
    
 Back to Waubaushene. This sleepy little village in vacationland was over half French and Irish and had an impressive Church that belonged to the French speaking branch of the Jesuit order. For a while after my grandparents moved to Waubaushene, I heard a lot of anti-French and anti-catholic stories. Then the stories stopped. I was floored to hear my orange-tainted granddad saying what a good man Monsignor Castex was!  It was the time of the second Vatican Council and ecumenical relations were on the upswing, but I never thought I would hear my grandfather praise a French speaking Jesuit! Eventually, he let me in on the secret of his sudden change of attitude. It seems that one day Monsignor Castex and one of his parishioners had turned up at the door in search of gladiolas. They had a pleasant chat and the monsignor bought some flowers. I’m not sure if Granddad brought out the beer or not.
1 When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2 you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the LORD your God is giving you. and … You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time.
            I could go on at length analysing the religious controversies, the ethnic politics, the class conflict, etc. that go into Arthur Rollinson’s story. But just notice how mysteriously God was working in his life. Leading him from bondage to the class system in England, and taking him to places where he could meet the Creator in vegetables, rich soil and gladiolas, andd to do so as a free man. Finally, how God brought overcame the bitter conflict between protestants and Catholics, English and Francophone by a meeting between a French Jesuit Monsignor and an ageing English Canadian gardener. I am continually amazed by the parallels between the life of my maternal grandfather and the ritual story in Deuteronomy 26.
 3 You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, "Today I declare to the LORD your God that I have come into the land that the LORD swore to our ancestors to give us." 4 When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, 5 you shall make this response before the LORD your God: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, 7 we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9 and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me." You shall set it down before the LORD your God and bow down before the LORD your God. 11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.

Thanks be to God!