Lessons in life can come from unexpected quarters and people you wouldn’t suspect.

I learned honesty not from the bible as my mother wished but from a humble woman named Rose Llewellyn.

Rose Llewellyn was from Antigonish, Nova Scotia. In 2002 after she died, I discovered that her sister was married to one of my cousins.

Rose was married to Dick Llewellyn, a radio engineer on the the Baffin, a research ship with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. 

They lived in Edmond’s Grounds in Armdale, Nova Scotia. Edmond’s Grounds was a family estate across from the Horseshoe Island beach, at the foot of Quinpool Road.

It’s called Spinnaker’s today and all the old houses are gone. The anchor from the Mont Blanc flew 3 miles in the air and landed there during the Halifax Explosion. We used the anchor as first base playing scrub baseball.

Scrub baseball 1st base or Mont Blanc anchor blown to Edmunds Grounds Armdale NS by the Halifax Explosion

I knew Dick first because he was teaching me radio electronics when he was ashore.

Joe Lewin, one of my best childhood friends, came from Antigonish to live with them when his mother got sick. We chummed around for many years until Joe moved back to Antigonish.

We didn’t go the the same school because Joe, Rose, Dick, and all my cousins on my Dad’s side were Roman Catholic. He went the the Catholic school.

My mom was a Jehovah’s Witness so we went to public school. Despite my mother’s warnings about Catholics, Joe and I hung out fishing, swimming, boating, playing cowboys and Indians and all those things boys do.

I spent a lot of time sitting at Rose Llewellyn’s kitchen table, eating cookies and listening to Rose talk about life. Even when Joe was back with his mom, I would visit Rose. She was my second mum. When Dick came home from sea, he would be a second dad to me teaching me all about resistors, capacitors and DC electronics. He helped me build my first radio from a kit.

One day during school lunch Rose asked me to go to the IPC Store and pick up a few things for her. I liked the job because she would tip me 5 or 10 cents, even if the walk was hard for a kid wearing a leg brace.

So off I went through our secret path in the pine woods, across the school yard and to the IPC store where the Purcell’s Cove Road meets the Herring Cove Road on Armdale. When I got back, Rose counted my change as she always did.

“You have ten cents too much,” she said.

We counted it again and sure enough the girl at the store had given me back too much money.

“We can keep it,” I said.

“No, you better take it back,” she insisted.

“They will never know,” I protested.

And then came Rose’s last word on the subject “Do you want ten cents to stand between you and heaven.”

Now JW’s believe you didn’t go to heaven. My mother had also taught me that Catholics and the Pope were the next thing to the devil as in liars, thieves, fornicators and drunks.

Here I was Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes, holier than thou, the JW boy being taught a lesson in honesty from a Catholic. This was a moral and religious quandary that shook me to my boots.

Gulping down my pride, I turned on my heels and trudged back through the woods, across the school yard where the kids were lining up for class, past the principal who gave me a dirty look and into the IPC store.

The girl didn’t thank me or reward me and the Heaven didn’t open up to angels singing on high about my honesty. I went to class late and got a detention.

I just knew that Rose Llewellyn was the most religious and honest woman I’d ever met and she was a Roman Catholic.

Rose taught me two lessons I’ve never forgotten.

One – right wing Protestants or any religion for that matter don’t have the franchise on morality and honesty.

Two – don’t let a dime get between you and heaven.