Ernest William Giffin (1887 - 1971)

Born 28 Sep 1887 in Jasper, Grenville, Ontario, Canada

Ancestors

Descendants

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Biography

Profile Note: I am directly related to this person and am seeking other relatives to assist in updating this family - Christine.^[1]

Ernest started his life-time work on the C.P.R. in 1908. In Sept. 1911 he received a progress report for the three years he had worked. He passed all tests with percentages in the mid-eighties and nineties. He was 24 years old and married one year to a Scottish Lassie who loved the bag-pipes and to travel.

Ernest was self-educated and started to work in Perth early in life. He wanted all of his children to have a good education and always encouraged them to read good books. He tried to interest them in music and art and to develop any talents they might have. When the younger children were small he took cottages on Otter Lake. They all became swimmers.

Ernie and Mary were terrific workers. He always had a garden and the family reaped the benefit in fresh vegetables and berries in the summer and in the winter a wide variety of preserved jams and pickles etc.

Mary was a great worker in the Anglican Church in Smiths Falls and continued to do so into her eighties.

Helen Duthie who looked after Ernie and Mary in their later years recalls the pleasure of a trip to the ice-cream parlor as a child with her mother and when her Dad brought home a solid brass doll’s bed. Win remembers the canopied swing with an enclosed sand box for the little ones, and “it wasn’t even Christmas!!

Ernie was an Engineer for 48 years. For many of those years he drove the passenger trains from Smiths Falls to Montreal. He was one of the Engineers who drove King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s train, the Royal Scot, on their 1939 visit.

Ernie and Mary were compassionate and helped others. They had wonderful qualities. Their children remember them with love.^[2]

Ernest married Mary Helen Hunter.

Together they had the following children:

1. Whitfield George
2. John Ernest
3. Alice
4. Kenneth L.
5. Lloyd Alexander
6. Helen Margaret
7. Wilma Mary
8. Elizabeth
9. Marion
10. Norma Joan
11. Ann

Census Records

1891, Smiths Falls, Ontario

1901, Perth, Ontario

1911, Smiths Falls

1921, Smiths Falls^[3]

Sources

1. ↑ William Giffin & Thomasine Eyre
2. ↑ Giffin, Eveline Bertha. The Descendants of William Giffin & Thomasine Eyre, Bell's Crossing, Leeds County, Ontario, Canada: 1990.
3. ↑ http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?app=Census1921&op=pdf&id=e002938957