Uncertain Outcomes

Sign at the Titanic Belfast exhibit

Ever wish for a crystal ball when outcomes are uncertain? Given what is happening in the world today, it would be nice to see how things turn out, but, then again, maybe it is better not to know. It is often hard to remember that it was the same way in the past.

I am currently reading Anthony McCarten's Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink and it is very clear that the outcome of who would take leadership in Britain and what response there would be to the Nazi actions in Europe was not a foregone conclusion in 1940. This political uncertainty cast a slightly different light on the mind set of the men and women who volunteered for the armed services in Britain and the Commonwealth. Perhaps the feeling wasn't the "we're all in this together" mentality that we have been sold with the benefit of hindsight, but rather a personal choice made in light of family tradition, the need for a regular income or the thirst for adventure. It would be interesting to read the news that was filtered down to the populous during that time. What messages was my father receiving that led him to enlist in the summer of 1939?

Uncertain outcomes didn't only happen in wartime. Many other changes that our families went through came about because of decisions they made, probably hoping for the best or, at least, for an improvement in their lot. How else can we explain the droves of immigrants who came to the new world? In some cases, there were relatives and acquaintances who had already made the move and had improved their circumstances who urged those back home to join them. The odds were better for those who followed but did they know for sure that their ship would not founder? Even migrations that didn't involve a sea voyage couldn't guarantee a better outcome. How many men and women were lured to London by the hope of a job only to find a life of poverty shortened by living in the big smoke?

I am, of course, thinking of some of my own ancestors who ended up on the lower rungs of London society. But there were other examples of questionable decisions which altered lives. This was evidenced by the history of two of the Strickland sisters who came to Canada in the 1830s with their gentlemen husbands as recounted in Charlotte Grey's Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill. The two couples were not the kind of rough tough settlers needed to tame the Canadian wilderness in the early days but, if they hadn't come, the classics of Canadian literature which the sisters  penned would not have been written and the historical record would be the poorer for that. Perhaps the majority of life changing decisions have both good and bad consequences but whatever those consequences, the people making decisions would have had only a very limited understanding of what might happen. We need to remember that.