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Christmas memory: Recalling the year we lost everything

It was 1963, just a few weeks before Christmas. It promised to be a lean one for the Faulkner family.
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Jim Faulkner is seen here on the site of his family's former home, which burned down in 1963, just weeks before Christmas. He said he wants to thank the community for its generosity after that long-ago disaster. Photo by Heidi Ulrichsen.

It was 1963, just a few weeks before Christmas. It promised to be a lean one for the Faulkner family.

Clovis Faulkner, who had until recently run his own farm and slaughterhouse, had fallen on hard times, and lost both his business and the new home he'd built for his family.

His nine children, pregnant wife, Patricia, and father James were forced to move back into an old, dilapidated farmhouse owned by the family. It was located in the city's then-remote South End, on the shores of Richard Lake.

And then disaster struck.

Just after the children had gone to school, the farmhouse caught fire. Patricia, her youngest son and 74-year-old James escaped the blaze, while Clovis and his oldest son were at church, where they'd gone for morning mass.

When firefighters arrived, no water came out of the hoses, and the home burned to the ground.

Just 14 at the time, Louise Faulkner-Desbiens said that day is clear in her memory.

“I looked out the windows, and I could see a lot of smoke really, really high up in the air,” she said.

“I didn't think it was anything to do with us. It didn't even cross my mind. Then the principal of the school, Mr. McCarthy, come up to me, and asked me to go into the office, saying that I had a phone call.

“It was my mother. She was crying on the phone. She told me that the house was completely burned down.”

After school, the siblings gathered at St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church, and were sent home in pairs with various friends and community members.

There they remained for two weeks, until Phil Turgeon, a fellow St. Matthew's parishioner, offered up a house free of charge to the Faulkner family until they could back on their feet.

After moving in just before Christmas, charities such as the Salvation Army, but even concerned community members, showed up in droves with donations of clothes, food and toys for the family.

Faulkner-Desbiens' brother, Jim Faulkner, said one particular memory still brings a tear to his eye — the mysterious woman who showed up in a cab, left a nondescript envelope and vanished again, never to be seen again.

She took a cab all the way from Sudbury to Dill Lake Road, and handed his parents an envelope, telling them not to open it until she left. Inside was $500.

“After she left, my mom and dad opened it, and they started to cry,” said Faulkner, who was 11 years old that year.


Although the family had lost virtually everything, Faulkner said it's one of the happiest Christmases he can remember.

“The generosity of Sudbury was unbelievable,” he said, adding that he contacted NorthernLife.ca so he could thank the people who helped his family more than 50 years ago.

Faulkner-Desbiens said she remembers the joy those gifts brought. “I remember how I felt as a person who had nothing but the clothes on my back,” she said. “These boxes and boxes would arrive from all over the place. People were so giving.”

Faulkner said his family has never forgotten these kindnesses, and have tried to pay it forward.

“It's all about giving — giving from your heart and your soul,” he said.

“I feel whatever you can give, it always gives back in return. Basically we were raised from a good Catholic upbringing — church every Sunday. We know about charity. We know how to give it and how to take it.”


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Heidi Ulrichsen

About the Author: Heidi Ulrichsen

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