| Alice worked a little further south on Yonge Street and walked past the market every day to catch the streetcar for home. After she had
ignored his winks and whistles for what he must have thought long enough, he finally got her attention by throwing an onion at her. After that rather unorthodox meeting, loved blossomed and soon they were making plans to marry. There was, however, one slight problem - Miss Maltman was not a Roman Catholic. Richard decided that he was not going to let this get in the way of their happiness so he converted to the Anglican faith and joined the choir at St. Simon's the Apostle Anglican Church at 525 Bloor Street East. Richard's father George was not at all happy with this situation. It was bad enough that his son was planning to marry a protestant girl, but his conversion to Anglican was the last straw. After a heated argument via post, Richard was ordered to give up this foolishness and return home, or consider himself no longer a member of the family. Richard was just as stubborn a man as his father and was not going to have his father or anyone else decide his future for him. After all, he was a grown man, a man of the world, The Human Top! On Wednesday, 26 April 1916 at 8:00am, Richard Joseph Swarbrick married Alice Mary Maltman at the Catholic Apostolic Church on the corner of Gould and Victoria Streets in Toronto. From that day on he had no further contact with any member of his family in Scotland. An interesting story but for one slight problem - after three trips to Great Britain and almost 16 years, I've discovered that much of it isn't true. |