A wistful road trip with Dad

CHANA THAU

From the time I was a little girl of about four, until I was about 10, my father, Rubin Thau, worked as a traveling salesman for the eponymous Montreal company Thau’s Lamp Mfg. Co., with the motto, “We light the way to happy homes.” Like many Jewish peddlers before him, he would be out on the road from Monday morning to Friday evening, arriving home for Shabbat dinner with his family.

I recall him telling us stories of his travels to towns with exotic and magical-sounding names like Melita, Morden, Winkler, Plum Coulee, Pilot Mound, Killarney, Boissevain, Estevan. When he traveled to northern Manitoba, to Dauphin, Flin Flon and the Pas, he returned with tales of Bill Caribou to entertain us. I will never forget Chanukah 1956, when he overturned his car on the icy roads, the brand-new, two-tone Pontiac Strato Chief of which he was so proud, totaling the car and sustaining several broken ribs. The phone call from the hospital in Altona informed our mother that he would not make it home for the holiday. My aunt and uncle went to pick him up a few days later, and the mummy-like figure swathed in white bandages gave the three of us quite a fright, so much so that my brother, who was two then, still remembers it.

So here I was, 50 years later, on the date of what would have been his 101st birthday (he died at age 96), passing the highway signs for many of the same towns Dad used to mention. Since much of my travel was on smaller provincial highways, I experienced the same two-lane, less-than-perfect roads, the inevitable slowing down as the highway passed through the main street of town after town, then resuming speed and hoping not to get caught behind some big rig or, worse yet, farm machine.

I felt myself thinking a lot about Dad. How had this diminutive European immigrant felt when he first started traveling these roads, unfamiliar with the language and the territory, after having survived the Second World War and losing his family and all that was familiar? Did he marvel at his fortune to have survived and at the freedom he now enjoyed to work, travel, prosper and raise a family? Did he feel the same spiritual awe and gratitude that I did at the wide, open expanses of prairie meeting sky, the fabulous sunsets untainted by buildings or pollution, the beauty of the wheat, flax and soybeans growing so abundantly, and the smiley yellow heads of sunflowers? Did his heart lift each time he beheld these wonders of nature, or did he get inured to it after a while? After all, when you are driving for a living, and to a deadline, those straight roads can lull and hypnotize you. Lucky for me, the few unexpected curves, rises and dips, twists and turns of the roads helped keep me alert and on track.

Dad eventually set up his own wholesale business, importing lamps from Japan and selling them to retailers. He would store them in our garage. His staff consisted of my brother and later my husband – his warehousemen – my mother, myself and later my younger sister – his secretaries. Dad traveled very little after that but he proudly maintained his membership in the Northwest Commercial Travelers Association until well into his 80s.

The purpose of my road trip was to interview the three remaining Jews in the towns of Hirsch and Estevan, Sask., as part of an oral history project for the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada. I could not help wishing that Dad were along to keep me company. After all, he knew these roads and towns like the back of his hand. He would have known all the Jewish storekeepers and businesses, their antecedents and business practices, as well as all the other Jewish travelers. Dad would probably have corrected my routes and criticized my driving, but I would have given anything to be able to see these routes through his eyes, with his stories to accompany them, and with him to answer my questions.

Chana Thau is a freelance writer living in Winnipeg. Next week, look for Thau’s follow-up article on her work with the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

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