Hannah Murray:   It's just coming up to half past 4 and joining us on the line now is Charles Ambrose. He's an art historian and curator. His book, “The Grandfather Paradox”, blends fact and fiction in an attempt to trace the lost and forgotten past life, set in Colchester, Essex, as well as the Canadian Prairies, the book is about his grandfather. Wounded during World War I and after briefly serving as a policeman in Ireland, Jack Ambrose left his wife and baby son for Canada in 1922, returning empty handed four years later. There were lots of unanswered questions, which Charles tried to answer in the book. Welcome to the show, Charles. 

Charles Ambrose: Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Thank you for joining us. So tell me how much you knew about your grandfather and his story and his background before you started writing the book. 

Very little. I knew he'd gone to Canada , and that he'd stayed there for about four years, and I knew that he returned. I didn't know why he'd come back, but I also didn't know what he was intending to do or what happened while he was there. I only had a thread and one or two photographs. I knew that he'd arrived on the prairies in late September 1922, and I knew that he spent some time later working on the railway, and ended up working in a logging camp in Northern Ontario, but all the rest was a complete blank. 

HM: Gosh, so, I mean, one can assume that he went there for work, to earn some money, do you think? 

Well, that's exactly right. Once I started to do some research, I found the immigration paper that he signed when he landed in Quebec in 1922, and that he intended to move to Canada and that he was planning to be a farmer.

Okay, so where did you go from there, about kind of reconstructing the story? You actually visited that area in Canada yourself, didn't you?

That's right. Well, there was a series of coincidences, one of which was that the place that he went to, that he had as his destination on the immigration sheet, was a little town about 25 miles from the Montana border on the prairies of Canada. And I just thought: “Why did he go there”? It was such a small place. There was also the name of someone he was planning to meet there, and so I was able to track down the great-grandson of the person that he was supposed to meet. I also discovered that this town had been the home of a famous American writer called Wallace Stegner who'd written about the town and the vicinity. So I had something to go on. It turned out that Stegner had grown up there and that the family home was still there and had become the base of an artist's residency project. I applied to go there and was fortunate to be able to spend a month in the little town that my grandfather headed for.

Gosh, and what was it like?

The town is still very small with one main street with a few shops and buildings. But there are houses there now too and and there are paved roads, and there is a wonderful community, but certainly when Jack went there, it was just a small outpost. 

So, did it give you any more of an idea as to why he went there? 

Well, yes, I was able to discover that there was an opportunity to be offered some free land. You could claim a parcel of land of 160 acres. The stipulation was that if you stake the claim, you had to clear the land, plant and grow crops and build some sort of a place to live within the first two years and harvest your first crops and successfully sell them. My grandfather obviously didn't get around to doing that. When I went there and talked to people who had succeeded, it was clearly very challenging, and their ancestors had struggled for many years, because it was very difficult. The land was completely unploughed at the time that it was settled. Some people considered it to be a kind of desert, only suitable for grazing. It turned out not to be, of course, and they have now established these magnificent farms, but in those early days, it was very tough. I figured that My grandfather spent some time there and tried to make a go of it. In my book, I assume that he realised quite quickly that he didn't have enough skill or knowledge and needed to spend some time working on somebody else's farm. When the crops failed at the end of his first season there, he decided that he would go off and work on the railway as others had done, and then come back in the second season and have another go. So that's the way I basically took the story. But I had to make a lot of assumptions, and I had to invent characters and situations, and I really enjoyed that. In the end, it's just a speculative story, based only on the sort of marker points that I've got. 

And did you know much about his time in the war? 

Only that he was wounded out twice, and that he survived of course. That he had a shrapnel wound on his forehead, and he had suffered some kind of shell shock. He had another wound in his side, but he survived and that he worked for a while as a policeman in Ireland during a period of truce between the Irish government and the British government which was disputed by the IRA, so it was quite a difficult time. I think he saw some pretty nasty stuff on both sides. He was only in that regiment for a few months before it was disbanded, and he found himself unemployed, and with a new wife and baby. I think that was really the point where he began to realise that he had to do something, and he had to start again or try to start again. 

Gosh, it must have been fascinating and also frustrating writing this and not being able to fill in the gaps, but then having the joy of filling them however you liked. 

Yes, it was. It ended up being quite a pleasure to write. I didn't know my grandfather, I had only met him once when I was 14 and he was 70, so I had no idea what he was like as a young man. He went out to Canada when he was 26 and came back when he was 30. I did a lot of thinking about what he might have been like, and what his experiences would have led him to do and the kind of character he would have developed as a result of those experiences. It was a way of reconnecting with someone that I never really knew. 

And were there any other family members of yours that you could speak to to get more information or to get approval for the book? Did you get any comments from your family? 

Well, there are two cousins, one of whom was brought up for a brief time by my grandparents, but she didn't remember very much. I was able to get permission to use a couple of the photographs that I used in the book, because they belonged to one of my cousins. Otherwise, no one knew anything, everyone had gone; my father has died recently, and I only knew the few things he had told me about grandfather working on the railroad, and that was all I had.  It meant that I was free to invent without offending anybody; I guess that's the good side of it. 

Mm. And have you ever written anything like this before? Is this your first book? 

This is my first novel. I've published some nonfiction, which is why I decided to use a pen name. Charles Ambrose is not my real name; it's the name of the character in the book who traces his grandfather. 

Ah, okay. Clever. And have you enjoyed the writing processes? It made you want to do more, do you think? 

Oh, yes, I’ve really enjoyed it. I didn't really know whether I would be able to do it, and was quite worried about writing dialogue, and also, of course, it's set in the 1920s, and I haven't got any experience of how people spoke to each other then, or even how they spoke- the kind of language they used. I  reflected on that and used some period films as a way of thinking about it as well. But yes, I've enjoyed the process very much, and I am now working on a second novel, which is completely different. 

Oh, great. And did you enjoy the research side of things, looking into the 1920s? 

I enjoyed every aspect of it, and certainly discovering things about the prairies, about the history of Canada. I met some wonderful people and made some special friends too! Then Canada was a Dominion- part of the empire. It was a frontier. There were all sorts of things that I discovered and learned about. I'd been brought up in Canada and lived there from age four to age twenty two. But I was living on the other side of the country, in Montreal and had no real knowledge of the prairies, though I did have some understanding of Canada and its relationship to the UK. 

So was that just a coincidence that you were brought up in Canada?

Yes, it was another one of those very interesting things for me. My father had decided to emigrate when I was four, and of course, grandfather said, "Don't go, son, there's nothing there”.

So, where exactly are the prairies, then? 

You have to travel west towards the Rocky Mountains, and the prairies are the area before you get to the foothills of the Rockies: We're talking about Saskatchewan- the particular province that I was concerned with. There’s Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan: the Prairie provinces. 

Wow, and it's a big area. It's a massive country, Canada, isn't it? 

We're talking about a huge area- the prairies, and the farms are gigantic.  Some of those pioneers staked one claim, and then later took on another claim, and then bought somebody else's, until they basically spread out. And so you're talking now of thousands of acres; it's like an ocean of grass- a vast area. I was interested in comparing my grandfather's trip across the Atlantic and his trip across Canada to arrive at another kind of ocean. 

Yeah, and it would have taken him a lot longer than it would have taken you to do it. 

You're right. The contrast between the way that I travelled and the way he travelled is something that comes out in the book, because, of course, there were no roads to speak of when he was there. It would have taken him an ocean voyage of 10 days, and then the train journey from Quebec City, through Montreal, via Toronto and up into northern Ontario and so on onto the prairies. It would have taken several days for him to do that overland. They were only just starting to get cars then, and lots of people were still using horses. In fact, some of those early farmers were pulling their carts by hand. They would haul their produce across the land to get to the towns where they could sell it. 

Gosh. And is there much of that tradition still there, or is it completely different now? 

It's completely mechanised, and completely different. But I think they respect the past and their ancestors and the effort they made and the toil that they endured to get where they've got. There is a sense of pride, I think, in what people had managed to achieve back then, but it is a very different place now, and the hardships of those days, though not forgotten completely, are no longer something that anyone has to put up with. 

No, no, absolutely. And I suppose you don't have any idea what, uh, his wife- the child would have been too young, I suppose, but what his wife thought when he came back again or her thoughts on him leaving in the first place. 

This is the other thing that I had to speculate on. There's a  notion from family stories that she said, "Oh, I'll follow you once you get things sorted out." But I wonder if she said: "Look, you've got this wanderlust. You go and do it and come back if you need to, or we'll come if it works out." I just don't know. 

And of course, there are no letters. If there had been letters, they have been thrown away or lost, or whatever. I've got two postcards, and they're from jack to his wife Louisa, and they just say things like: "Arrived and I will go tomorrow to such and such a place," or “No letter to answer-hope you are well”. But that's it. So, I have no idea. Of course, his first son, who was born just before Jack left, was nearly five by the time he came home. I have no idea how that gap impacted on their relationship, and certainly I have no idea how easy it would have been for the two adults to get back together after four years apart- but they did, and then they had a second son- my dad. 

Oh, so she obviously welcomed him home then! 

Well, I looked at dates, and I figured there was a bit of a gap. But it's interesting, because, of course, the title of the book, “The Grandfather Paradox” is partly about the fact that Charles, the writer, realises that he's got to get his grandfather home again, otherwise he wouldn't exist, and Charles doesn't know why or how his grandfather gets home. I could find no record or trace of Jack coming back, but I know that he did of course.

Hmm. Do you do you find it frustrating? You know, there's a fascinating thing about family history and it's that old classic: “Oh, we should ask people more questions while they're alive, because once they've gone we can't ask them any more questions. Do you feel that? I mean, you only met him once, so it's not like you could have spent more time with him, but do you do you feel that frustration. Do you wish you knew more? 

It’s more a sense of regret. What I realise now is that the 14 year old me who met him when he was 70 had no time for him, and he had no time for me. I regret that very much, not saying to him: "Gosh, grandad, what was it like? What did you do? How did it go?" Of course at the time I wasn't interested. I was this kid who was just preoccupied with himself. So, rather than frustration, it's regret. 

Oh, I'm sorry, you feel regret. It's an annoying feeling to have. It's a shame. 

Well, of course, it has eventually led to me writing this book.... reflecting on who he was and what he might have done and what it might have been like. And in that sense, I've got close to him. Whether I got close to the real person or some kind of fantasy figure, I don't know. I've tried to make it realistic. But, it's a double-edged sword. As I say, there's regret, but there's also this sort of pleasure that I've had in thinking about him and trying to make sense of his story, and trying to understand a little bit more about what it was like for him. 

Yeah, that's nice. I mean, I think it's very common what you say, and how you felt when you were young. I think a lot of people will have gone through exactly the same experiences of meeting either their grandparents or just older relatives and, you know, not really been that bothered or interested. And, I mean, a lot of kids aren't interested in history, you know, so even if the parents were saying, "You should ask your grandad about this, still, a lot of kids would go, "Oh, whatever, Mum. 

You're quite right. But of course, one doesn't stay a young person- one develops into an older person. When I started writing this at 70, I was the age that my grandfather was when I met him, and I had an interest in that relationship: the 70 year old me encountering the 70 year old man that he was, So there are all kinds of resonances, and I think you're right, that people don't necessarily, at the time, seize the moment or grasp the situation. But later on, I think they reflect back, and I think this is a common experience. And it's partly for that reason that I thought it would be worth writing. The story not just about this one person or about me and my relationship to my grandfather. It's about many people's experiences and their sense of identity, and their sense of history and their sense of family. 

I think it's a lovely thing to do and I hope you're proud of the book.

I would say there are bits of it that I'm proud of. It's a sustained project; we're talking about 80,000 words or something. There's a lot of stuff in there, and there are bits of it that I think could be better, and then there are other bits where I think, "Oh, wow, did I do that?" 

Well, if people want to get a copy of the book, it's called “The Grandfather Paradox” and it's available on our website, Talk Radio Europe (TRE), and it's by Charles Ambrose, who we've been chatting with today. Thanks so much for joining us. 

You're very welcome, thank you.

Talk Radio Europe. Spain.