THE CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES  2005
A Review by Stan Waight

The December meeting took the long-accustomed form of a social evening.   There was a good turnout, and we were arranged around tables of four, a convenient number to make up a quiz team.   And this year we had not one, not two, but three quizzes!   The questions were many and varied, and the story in which blanks had to be completed by the insertion of a car marque or model was particularly testing and amusing.
The food was also varied and plentiful, and the Committee had provided wine and soft drinks to accompany it.   For me it was the beginning of the calorie-rich festive season, but I'm sure we can all be excused a bit of a blow-out at this time of the year.
In between the food and the quizzes (not to mention the raffle, in which the prizes never seemed to end) John Avery used the most up-to-date technology to put on a picture parade of West End.   This was made up of photos taken from our archive, and included rare, if not unique, shots of people and places in the parish in the long-ago.
The evening was going so well that it was in grave danger of overrunning our allotted time in the Parish Centre.   It was one of the best I have enjoyed for many a long year, and that seemed to be the general opinion of all the members attending.
Our thanks must go to all the Committee for arranging such a splendid party, but there should be a special 'Thank You' to Nigel for acting as Master of Ceremonies for the rest of the evening after Chairman Neville had kicked off with his welcome to one and all.

THE IVES FAMILY & THE WEST END CONNECTION

Kindly donated recently to the museum was a transcript of memories of his earlier life written by John Ives. It makes fascinating reading and I have extracted some of the information below. The Ives family appears to have originated from Camberley in Surrey with many members of the family involved with the church. Shortly after 1900 John's grandfather and his two sons decided to emigrate to Canada. They settled near the border with Alberta and Saskatchewan at the time of the building of the trans-Canada railway. His father returned to England briefly to get married and his new wife joined him with her young daughter in 1916. On January 4th 1919 John was born in Edmonton, Alberta. His father died when the influenza epidemic swept the world just three weeks after he was born, and he along with his mother, sister and grandfather then set up home. They lived at a place called Streamstown near Lloydminster and life was hard with extreme winters.His grandfather sold their property in Streamstown and shortly after John returned to England. His grandfather had a brother named Alfred, who was the businessman of the family. He had a building estate agency in Camberley, another in Bournemouth and the Telegraph Wood Estate in West End, Southampton. He had been advised by his doctor to take life easier and hence made a world trip 
Continued on page 10 and see  bottom of page 3 for pictures