"I've never heard of it," I said.
"Let me warn you in advance — it's got a German U-boat in it."
"I've seen a lot of war pictures, Cornelia."
"I just don't want you to be put off this one and want to walk out. I go to enough movies alone. So I don't want to start out not alone and then suddenly it's the opposite, you know?"
"I wouldn't think of doing that."
49th Parallel was playing at the Casino Theatre, seven blocks from Halloran's, and had showings seven days a week starting at 1 P.M., including one at midnight. We arrived a few minutes early for the 7:15, and when I paid for the tickets, Cornelia said, "Why, thank you, Wyatt. I'd bat my eyes at you if I was thirty years younger." At the concession stand we each purchased a box of buttered popcorn, and Cornelia a box of bonbons, too. The usher escorted us until Cornelia said, "I'll sit right here, on the aisle." I sat next to her. The theater was quite crowded.
There was a Movietone newsreel to start things. This was followed by two Looney Tunes cartoons. One was a Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd called What's Opera, Doc? in which Elmer sings in Wagnerian tones, "Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!"
Then 49th Parallel came on screen. Look, it wasn't a great movie by any means, though it had a lot of witty repartee and such, and parts were truly laughable, like how the crew of the German U-boat— U-37— all spoke British English. I suppose they couldn't get authentic German actors for those roles, and why offer good money to the devil? But they might at least have required that the actors they did hire try their best to sound German. Maybe they thought even fake German accents were too painful to bear in 1941. Who knows?
Basically, what happens is, U-37 has wandered up the St. Lawrence River, gets thrown so far off course that it's finally stranded in Hudson's Bay — icebergs all around — where it's sighted, strafed and bombarded by Canadian planes, and finally sunk. Some of the crew is killed, but the captain and others manage to escape and hide out in isolated villages, on the lam, and from there the story contains all sorts of adventures. In the end, good triumphs over evil.
Like I said, I wasn't much taken by 49th Parallel. I do remember the first ten or so minutes quite vividly, however. U-37 torpedoes a passenger ship in the St. Lawrence. It takes survivors on deck, the Nazi captain questions a few, and then they are set free, sent off in life rafts. U-37 slices down into the water and disappears, and soon a rescue plane is seen approaching. Happy result — for those Canadians, anyway. Right then and there I realized that this incident depicted on screen would have had to take place before 1940, or maybe in 1940, because not long after that, U-boats didn't pick up survivors. I'd learned that from a newspaper article on the wall of my uncle's shed.
In the audience during 49th Parallel there'd been the occasional hissing and booing. And I heard Cornelia laugh and weep and say "Bastards" a few times. On the walk back to her hotel, I discovered she'd already put things into balance. "Well, I won't see that one again," she said. "But I got something from it."
It was only a movie story, so not entirely dedicated to the claims of fact, Marlais — I know that. And there was one particular line of dialogue that was definitely false to history, and to prove it you just have to look at a framed photograph behind the bar at Rigolo's Pub right here in Halifax.
See, when 49th Parallel begins, the camera zooms in on a map of Canada, and then the St. Lawrence River looms large, and then we see U-37 cut the surface, sinister as all hell. While it cruises along, the captain tries to work up historical gloating and excitement — of a Nazi sort — in his crew. "You'll be the first of the German forces to set foot on Canadian soil. The first of thousands."
Yet if you study the black-and-white photograph in Rigolo's, you'll see three men in their early twenties standing at the bar having a grand old time, all happy-go-lucky and clinking mugs. They have fishermen's caps on. They are wearing thick fishermen's sweaters and looking directly into the camera. What's more, someone — the photographer, maybe, or the pub owner — has circled the face of the man in the absolute bull's-eye center of the photograph, his big round face, dimples, strong chin and eyes heavy-lidded from drink.
A line runs in ink from the circle down to the lower right hand corner of the photograph, where these words are written: Nazi U-boat navigator Wernor Timm, U-69, the Laughing Cow, October 12, 1939. You'll remember, Marlais, the Laughing Cow had sunk the ferry Caribou, on which Constance had been a passenger.
I learned from the newspapers that before the successful crackdown on U-boats — before thick-link fences were submerged in the harbor — the German crews used to anchor offshore (some people said near Peggy's Cove) and make their way into Halifax. They went to pubs, movies and restaurants, telling everyone they were Swedes off a Swedish freighter, or Norwegians, or some such lie.
As it happened, this Wernor Timm had stepped out some nights with a Haligonian named Wilma Raymond. People had seen them together, but nobody would ever have known Timm's true identity except for the fact that on their last night together, Timm got drunk and told Wilma everything. He even proposed marriage! She refused him, and as she later said, "He stumbled out of my apartment and just disappeared into the streets."
Wilma Raymond was the niece of the bartender at Rigolo's Pub. She was horrified to discover the photograph her uncle had put up behind the bar. There was Wernor Timm, big as life! She was so ashamed of having consorted with a German U-boat officer it took her another few days to work up the courage to tell her uncle what she knew. Of course by that time the Laughing Cow was long gone.
Once he knew the facts, Wilma's uncle wrote Timm's name and rank on the photograph. Soon word got out that a U-boat navigator had come and gone undetected, and this sent a current of anxiety through the city. The photograph was reproduced on the front page of the Mail. Pub owners now asked for identification before serving customers, except for those they were already familiar with. The newspaper said that Wilma Raymond left Halifax "to visit relatives in Saskatchewan." I bet she did.
Well, if only the poster slogan "Loose lips sink ships" would have worked in reverse, and the Laughing Cow had been ambushed at Peggy's Cove because of what Wernor Timm had revealed to Wilma Raymond, it would not have been in commission three years later, to sink the Caribou, and my aunt Constance might still be alive. Those were my thoughts after reading the whole account.
Anyway, there it was, a photograph proving the German military was on Canadian soil in 1939. I was in Rigolo's Pub just last week and saw the photograph again. It's by now an historical document of sorts, you might say.
But you have to look closely, quite closely, to notice who's standing at the far right end of the bar — Hans Mohring. Hans is deep in conversation with a man and a woman, probably students. It would've been his first semester at Dalhousie. Hans is holding a cigarette, and the woman has a cigarette dangling from her mouth.
After the movie, Cornelia and I sat in the small cafe-restaurant in the Dresden Arms Hotel and had tea, and she ate her last three bonbons from the cinema. "I've brought recent photographs Tilda sent of Marlais," she said. She pushed a manila envelope across the table. I slid the photographs out and there you were, Marlais! All of age seven, sitting at an outdoor table with five other children. There was a birthday cake on the table, and the birthday girl was blowing out the candles. You sat at the right side of the table, all dressed up, with your hair frizzed out like your mother's and a big smile and soulful expression on your face, like you were having a deep thought. The party looked like loads of fun.