TheClutchey - Otto Liesmer Family

In due course the Liesmers left Edmonton and lived , I believe, for a short time in Detroit. I went with them as did my titular (existing in name only - ed) sister Margaret. She, ten years my senior, had also been adopted.

My first consecutive memories are of Toronto, first on St. James Street, later to North Sherbourne then further in Rosedale to 21 Astley Avenue. Father died in that house June 21 1947. Margaret was married by that time to John Boland who moved into the Astley residence. Margaret and John remained with Gertrude after Otto died. Later Gertrude sold the house and after several moves finally lived at 358 Annette street, where she died November 7th 1957 and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, Toronto. Born April 5th 1875, she was 82 years old when she died.

Margaret and Jack sold then and bought a house on Van Deusen St., where they lived until Margaret died November 5, 1976. She is buried in Assumption cemetery. I lost touch with Jack, but believe he remarried. Margaret and Jack had adopted a girl, Betty now Mrs Kashuba who lives in Brampton.

Gertrude Clutchey's Early Life

I know little about the backgound of my adoptive mother, Gertrude Cloutier (sic), I understand she was one of fourteen children, and that they were farmers outside of Brechin. Gertrude apparently had a disastrous marriage in her early years and returned home. Her father died rather young, from asthma, I was told. ( ed note: Joseph was 55 years old when he died and while he may have had asthma he died from a heart attack). Going West was the craze then so it would seem that most of the family high tailed it for that El Dorado leaving a brother Frank and a sister Rose to run the farm along with Gertrude and their mother ( Mary Jane Gerow). Gertrude soon moved to Toronto where she got a job as a cashier in a restaurant. Meanwhile John Otto had come from his farm setting near Neustadt and went to work as a policeman. He got a room in the same place in which Gertrude was living, They met and eventually married.

Gertrude and John Otto were of different religious faiths, a fact that often caused problems for them and their family over the years

Aunt Rose, Gertrude's sister, used to visit us occasionally. During the time I knew her, she was operating a nursing home or some such in Shelburne, Ontario. I do not remember her married name ( Ed note: Mrs. Jim Woods ), only that her husand was a carpenter. Somewhere in all that mixup was a young woman whom I never met. She was married in Toronto to a chap named (Charlie?) Kinsella. ( Ed note: This would have been Gertrude the third child of Rose and Jim Woods). The memory sticks because she contracted meningitis and died leaving four small children. Then there was Stan Cloutier, he used the 'englished spelling' Clutchey, he was the son of Peter Clutchey brother to my mother Gertrude.

When I was perhaps five years old Gertrude schlepped (Ed note: A Yiddish word meaning 'dragged along with') me along with her to Edmonton. They had sold their Edmonton house on 111th Street on a hire-purchase deal when they left Edmonton and the deal soured with the result that Gertrude had to go out to Edmonton to straighten things out. We were there for some months. Upon returning to Toronto, at the age of five years, I went to kindergarden at the public school which was only a block away, but it appears one reneging deserved another so both Margaret and I were raised Catholics. After that I went to Our Lady Of Lourdes parochial school, a couple of blocks away.

Ursuline nuns! Wow! If the populace had the wit to toss out the whole damn Ministry of Education nitwits and their bureaucracy and put nuns back into the schools then we would all get somewhere. ( Ed note: It is a good thing that the populace did not do so or this editor would never have had a job )

In 1937, Fr. J. E. Ronan began his choir school at St. Michael's Cathedral in Toronto. He canvassed the parochial schools for lively lads and I was amongst the first group of eleven chosen. It was a private day school with litugical music at its center. I was involved in the activities until I was 17 at which time I applied to the Jesuits. They sent me to Loyola college to finish high school and when I was 18 I entered the society in Guelph on July 31. I left there almost a year to the day. The next three years were spent studying music in Montreal during which time I was also conductor for the choral group of the St. Genesius Players Guild. Then I went to Port Arthur, now Thunder Bay as organist and choirmaster at the Jesuit church, St. Andrews.

It was there that I met and married a school-teacher, Rosemary Gilbride. Our first three children, Mary Kathleen ( b. Nov 14 1949 - d. April 30 1990) Margaret (b. July 8 1951) and Terence Hubert ( b. July 1956 - died Jan 6 1987) were born. We were there for about ten years - the last four or five passed in a blur for me ending up with a collapse which sent me to a hospital. When the smoke cleared after about a year I went to work with Ontario Hydro doing clerical work in their construction camps. The second last job we were on kept us in Timmins for three years. Our fourth child, Kelly Ann was born there (March 7, 1962). Meanwhile Hydro had run out of rivers to dam and the division ws mothballed. I ended up working for a machinery rental outfit, Ray Gordon, in North Bay.

All through our married life Rosemary had been subject to what remains a mysterious illness that no one has ever diagnosed, but it involved being hospitalized for months at a time. The girls and I calculated one time, that Rosemary was hospitalized about 40 per cent of our 20-year marriage. By the summer of 1957 the whole thing collapsed. I was broke and physically ill and she was going through one of her ill periods and had returned to Port Arthur. That Fall Mary Kay went off to Trent University, Elisabeth with the help of a social agency was able to complete her final year at High School and the two young ones were taken in by a United Church minister, Charles Rennie. Holy Mother church was enormously helpful during this long and trying period.. The parish priest went to the minister's home and lectured him on his duty to send the children to a Catholic school. I was grateful my friend Charles had a sense of humour.

For the next five years I worked at a variety of jobs in Hamilton later returning to Toronto as Office Manager for Foster Advertising. Later, and until I retired in 1985, I worked for the Ministry of Finance.

Rosemay had a special gift for teaching and, as well, she published songs for small children. She became music supervisor for all the separate schools in North Bay. Unfortunately our marriage did not survive and we were divorced. ( Rome also annulled the marriage) This allowed me to remarry and I did so on October 27 1978 to Pauline Francescon in the United Church.. Sadly Rosemary died as a result of a fall on ice. Her death occurred November 5 or 6 1984.