Aunt Bebe

By Richard Bain
Toronto. April 21, 2009.

Aunt Bebe died ten days ago. She was 102. I remember her with the greatest of affection. The last time we had a conversation was at the Shiva for my Aunt Emma, Emma Levine, in June of 2002. Bebe was the most beautiful woman there that evening, and I told her so. We left the Shiva together; Harriet and I and Bebe and Pat, who had brought her. As we parted company in front of the apartment building, I said to her, “I love you Aunt Bebe”, and she said, “I love you too”.

My first memory of Bebe Ciglen is at Meaford in about 1948. I was six years of age. The Ciglen Clan would gather in Meaford every Spring for the Passover Sedar, at the home of my Great Grandparents, Jacob and Minnie Ciglen. My grandmother, Annie Bain, was the eldest of their seven children.

My Grampa Jake emigrated from Russia to Canada just before 1900, leaving his (pregnant?) wife and children behind. He settled in Drayton, Ontario. In June of 1902, he was joined there by his wife Minnie and their three children. I have a copy (from the Ellis Island Foundation) of the Manifest of the ship they traveled on, from Rotterdam to New York. The date of its arrival in New York was June 23, 1902 . Their names and particulars as written on the Manifest are: Mine Ciglin (sic), age 30, with $41 and able to read and write, traveling to join her husband , J. Ciglin, in Drayton Ont., and accompanied by her children Cheine (my grandmother Annie), age eight and unable to read or write (that has to be wrong), Penvel (Philip, he who mysteriously disappeared), age three, and Gittel (my Aunt Gert), age two; last residence, Smilewitz . Minnie and Jake’s other children, all born in Canada, in Drayton, were Emma (year of birth unknown to me), Samuel, born in 1905, and Rae and Dave, who were twins. My Grandma and Grandpa Bain were married in Drayton. In 1912, the year my father was born, Jake and Minnie moved with their children (other than my Grandma Bain) to Meaford.

When I was a young lad of about five or six, I would lie snuggled in the crook of my Grandma Bain’s right arm on the couch in their wee den at 140 Chaplin Crescent, and she would tell me about the trip from Russia to Canada: how they had carried Gert, and had to muffle her so she wouldn’t cry, as they were lead by a paid guide through the hills to slip across the Russian border, how she and my Great Grandmother had taken turns carrying the Samovar that had been in their house (rooms?) in Russia (I remember it standing in the vestibule of my Uncle Sam and Aunt Bebe’s house at 101 Bayview Ridge; my Aunt Bebe had it until she died), and how my Grandma had been led from the bowels of the ship to the first class dining room to sing for the first class passengers there, dressed in their formal evening attire. Grandma Bain also told me that when she was ten, she entered an Ontario-wide elocution contest, and that her teacher had tried to dissuade her from reciting the work she’d chosen to recite- The Face on the Barroom Floor- and how she’d won the contest. I had my doubts about that until many years later when at dinner at my house she repeated the story and recited the poem. That had to be about 1973, so she was then almost 80. My Lord, her recitation was excellent! Such animation! ‘Twas was the best I’d ever heard. Over the years, I have learned many things about my family. I realized long ago, as an adult, that despite my mother’s suggestions to the contrary ( that being but a part of my mother’s castigations of Grandma Bain), every word Annie Bain spoke, at least to me, was the truth.

My Aunt Rae married Oscar Newman, my Uncle Oscar, in about 1932, the third year of the Great Depression. Philip Ciglen was last seen on the day of that wedding. He was then living in Perry Sound, apart from his wife, Belle, and their two sons, Mort and Gary. He had gone there to establish a business. Philip had seen action in Palestine, with the Palestine Brigade, during World War I, and contracted Malaria. He’d recuperated at a Rothschild Estate in England, where he’d met a daughter of the then Lord Rothschild. Grandma Bain told me that. She said they thought that perhaps he’d had amnesia because of the malaria, and that in searching for him they’d written to the Rothschild daughter asking if she’d heard from him; and that she’d responded by post, saying that she hadn’t. My grandmother didn’t explain how Philip could have had amnesia while at the same time remembering the Rothschild filette; until just now, it didn’t occur to me to ask that question.

Philip’s steps on the day of his disappearance were retraced by the police. He’d gone to the bank and withdrawn $100 or so, a lot of money then. He’d purchased a train ticket to Toronto, where the wedding was to be held. He’d had a haircut at the barbershop, and told the folks there that he was travelling to his kid sister’s wedding . The police believed he’d gone back to his house, to wait until it was time to go to the train station. They noted a depression in the covered bed and a book turned over, opened, on the night table. From that, they postulated that Philip had been lying on the bed, reading, when there had been something, perhaps a knock on the door, which resulted in his placing the book face down on the night table, intending to come back to it, and arising from the bed. I know not whether his luggage, which at that point must have been packed, was found in the house; presumably, it was not. I was told by Gary Ciglen that the house was on the edge of town and that a railroad track ran right behind the property. He said that dense bush, wilderness, started about 200 yards from the house, and that if a body was ditched there it might never be discovered. During the Great Depression, there were hoboes who moved from place to place looking for work, by hopping on freight cars. Those were desperate times.

Philip never arrived at the wedding. No one saw him board the train. He was never seen again. My Grandma Bain never gave up hope that he was alive. She looked for Philip for years. When in another city on business or vacation, she’d study the faces on the street, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, and sometimes think that she had. She’d glimpse a face in a newsreel, think it was he, and write the film studio. Looking out the window from a car, she’d think she’d spotted him and excitedly order the driver to stop or to circle the block. Gary Ciglen was two when his father disappeared and has no memories of him. He, his mom (Belle) and his older brother Mort lived with Jake and Minnie when he was a boy. Gary remembers Jake as he would a father, rather than as a grandfather.



Some of my warmest memories as a young child are of the Sedars in Meaford; the lights of the candles at the Sedar table, the smells of the foods mingled with whiffs of cigarette smoke, the cacophony of voices and laughter, the prayers, and the security of knowing that all of those people, they numbered at least47 on that particular Spring evening in 1948, were family, every one of them.

It wasn’t until 1957, when I was 15, that I began to know Aunt Bebe well. At that time, my family was living on Owen Boulevard, in York Mills, and Aunt Bebe, Uncle Sam and Phyllis were living at 101 Bayview Ridge, a four minute drive away. I’d accompany my father on visits to their house. My sister Karen is about the same age as Phyllis, and they’d become friends. I’d encounter Bebe at the York Mills Shopping Centre, or speak with her in her kitchen while my father and my Uncle Sam were talking in his den at 101 Bayview Ridge. Aunt Bebe never talked down to me. She always treated me as an adult. It will probably come as no surprise to you to be told that Aunt Bebe was a bit of a gossip. Not a malicious gossip, mind you, but one who liked to, well, gossip. And who doesn’t? It was thusly that I forged a relationship with my Aunt Bebe, my wonderful, sweet Aunt Bebe, she who treated with me as an adult, and with whom we shared…gossip. But there was more. It was from Aunt Bebe that I learned much Ciglen family history, and of Grandma Minnie’s extensive family in Baltimore. She knew of her husband’s family as well as he did, of that I have no doubt.

My Uncle Sam’s ordeal began in about 1956. It lasted throughout the 1960’s. It was of great consternation to the Bains. My Grandma Bain revered her brother Sam, as did my father. I remember once, in the time of that ordeal, sitting with Uncle Sam and Aunt Bebe in the den at 101 Bayview Ridge. He spoke of Bebe’s and his very early years together. Uncle Sam recalled that when they were courting, sometimes they would walk rather than ride the trolley, so he could buy her an ice cream cone. He smiled at Bebe with tenderness in his eyes and said softly, “I don’t think we’ll be as poor as that again”.

My Aunt Bebe always said that she was a kept woman and proud of it. She had a wonderful life. Yes, there were travails, what life can be free of any? But she was adored, loved by all, surrounded with love, blessed with vitality for most of her extensive years, and cared for by those who loved her. None of us could ask for anything more.

Richard Bain