Where There's a Will

It is now over 50 years since Mavis and Jeff’s year in Canada in the late 1950s, and Where There’s a Will is an entertainingly written, often light-hearted account of that young couple’s Canadian experiences.

Arriving in Toronto from London late in November, with little money and in freezing temperatures, their initial impression was not good. And it did not improve when Jeff lost his job and they discovered Mavis was expecting their first baby in a country with no health care.

A joking reference to a better life in Vancouver led the young couple, she six and a half months pregnant, on a journey travelling alone across 3,000 miles by car, through bush, forests, prairies and mountains to British Columbia. Much of the journey was on gravel roads in uninhabited countryside, encountering snow, hail, dust and rain storms – and, of course, the inevitable car trouble!

Eventually they arrived safely in Vancouver and fell in love with the place instantly. They found employment but no suitable accommodation, and their baby son was born while they lived in an attic in a house due for demolition!

The book ends on a happy note a year after their arrival in Canada.