First Stirrings….

The amazing age of communication in which we now live had its first stirrings in the 1870’s when Alexander Graham bell invented the telephone.  Although the telephone is what the world remembers this gentleman for, his passion was actually something different.

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland and, because his two brothers had passed on from tuberculosis and he was sickly himself, his parents moved to Canada.  Here Alexander prospered and enjoyed good health.  Bell’s grandfather and his father were in the field of elocution.  Bell was an average student, at best, but had a sense of wonder about the world and everything in it.   Gradually, there developed in him a desire to improve things.

Bell’s father was offered a job in Boston teaching the deaf.  Because of another commitment, he was unable to take that job but offered his son in his stead.  Alexander took this job and there,  he found his real passion – helping deaf people to speak.

Apart from his job at the school, Bell was hired by Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a Boston man of some note, to teach his daughter, Mabel, to speak.  As a result of scarlet fever, Mabel, at the age of five, had become deaf.  Her parents were distraught and searched the country, and indeed the world, for someone to heal their daughter.  Bell was not able to heal her but was able to help her to learn how to talk.  It was whilst teaching her that he fell in love with her, and although ten years her senior, asked for her hand in marriage.  Initially, Mabel was not sure that she loved him but, “did not dislike him” to quote her words exactly!

After a short while, Mabel did accept Bell’s proposal of marriage and was very supportive of his work on inventing the telephone.  She did  everything she could to help him……and….wonderfully, it all paid off.  He did invent the telephone which brought them financial  security.  He could now go on to tinker with all sorts of things which he loved to do and not have the task of making a living.

They were married in 1877 and had a wonderful, fruitful, supportive union.  Alexander’s wedding present to Mabel was 90% of the stock in his telephone company.

Wanting to find a place to “get away to”, the Bells went up to Nova Scotia, specially Cape Breton Island, and found their heaven there in a little village called Baddeck.  A wonderful quick read is the book pictured above, “The Bell Family in Baddeck” (Buy the used edition!).  They built a very large house which they called “Beinn Bhreagh” (beautiful mountain in Gaelic) and spent a lot of time up there.  It was here that Bell spent a lot of time pursuing the possibility of manned flight.  He had always been fascinated by birds flying and could not see why man could not do the same.  With the financial backing of his wife, he and four other business partners, spent several years trying to develop a flying machine, which culminated with the first Canadian manned flight in 1909.  This flight, amazingly,  took off and landed over the frozen Baddeck Bay near his family home.  Although the first flight by the Wright Brothers occurred in 1903, this was the first Canadian manned flight on record.  One of his partners, Glenn H. Curtiss, went on to be one of the principals in Curtiss Wright Corporation, one of the leading aircraft manufacturing companies in the United States.

My interest in this was piqued when my husband Dennis and I spent a couple of days on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton.  We ended our journey at Baddeck, where there is a fabulous museum which brings Alexander Graham Bell’s life to light, as well as those of his wife and two daughters.  It was so very dear to my heart that his passion was not the telephone but with his desire to help the deaf.

I had a deaf aunt and a deaf uncle, both of whom I adored.  They were also pioneers, in a sense.  Married in Eastern Canada, they ventured out to California in the 1950’s, knowing no one but feeling led because of the dry weather.   Theirs was a love affair as I believe the Bells, too, ended up enjoying.

Our family, therefore, has Mr. Bell to thank not only for the telephone, but also for his work with the deaf.  How grateful we are that he brought more love, more joy and certainly more abundance to our lives!