The tale that was passed down to us was that as a teenager, Grampa stowed away on a British freighter and made his way to Canada. This is sorta-kinda true except perhaps the part about stowing away and the freighter. The closest truth to stowing was that Grampa left without telling his family and maybe without telling the Russian government.
My own memories of Grampa are very sparse. He smoked a pipe and he said god-damn a lot in his broken English. Everything was god-damn-this and god-damn-that, but he said it like it was just a part of the sentence. “I went to the god-damn store and bought some god-damn butter… I milked the god-damn cow and had some god-damn supper…”
Mom remembered having a dog when she was a child and they weren’t allowed to feed the dog at the table, but Grampa would sneak food off his plate to a waiting mouth under his dinner plate saying, “Take that, god-damn-ya!”
Johannes Õunpuu was born in Mustjala County, on Saaremaa Island, Estonia, an isolated island facing the Baltic Sea. The day he was born in 1896 was November 12. At that time Estonia was using the Julian calendar, but in February 1918, the country adopted the Gregorian calendar and 13 days were added to all prior birthdates to make up for an 11-minute per year drift. Therefore, in official Estonian records , Grampa’s birthdate is November 25. However, Grampa consistently reported his birthday to be November 13 on all his army documents.
In 1896, the country was still a territory of Imperial Russia. Czar Nicholas II had just become the emperor after the death of his father Alexander III in May of that year. There was a lot of tension between the wealthy German minority and nobility who “hindered the russification of the country and Estonia continued to serve as an outpost of Western culture.” This is a quote from a booklet sent to me by Kaido, my Estonian cousin. I was surprised to learn that Estonians are not ethnically or linguistically related to Russians, Germans, Latvians or Lithuanians, all of whom are Slavic, Germanic and Baltic origin. Estonians are closely related to Nordic peoples, especially the Finns and descendants of Vikings.
Mom told us to never say Grampa was from Russia or was Russian. That was a big NO-NO!
In 2025, I relented to a friend’s “no regrets” insistence and decided to subscribe to Apple TV. The first show I watched was The Reluctant Traveler with our own funny Canadian Eugene Levy. In Episode One, he was in Finland, the origins of the Estonian people.
Eugene’s summary is that Finns are the happiest people in the world. And the top three things that are important to them are family, animals and simple.
Most recently, in April 2025, I watched Sisu, a fantastical and over the top film on Netflix about a Finnish man who, against all odds and logic, survives being hunted by the Germans after the end of the war. (Yes, I watch too much TV.) While there’s no direct translation of the Finn word sisu, its meaning is a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination in the face of overwhelming odds. In the end, I could sense and see my grandfather in this almost Marvel-type character.
One of the most intriguing things about 23andMe was their DNA matching option to Historical DNA from archeological digs around the world. So when ancient Viking DNA matched my DNA, I didn’t even have to question that it came from my paternal side. Vikings' personality traits, according to Google, are courageous, independent, adventurous, honourable, disciplined and industrious. A letter from Grampa’s brother, Eduard, in Estonia mentions a fence that Grampa built to surround the family property before he left at age 16.
Knowing some history of Estonia and my grandfather’s backstory was extremely important in forming the full picture of my grandfather, why he thought the way he did, what motivated him and in the end, what pushed him into suspicion and silence.
Grampa was a typical Estonian in being well educated in a country where elementary school was free and compulsory. While Russia’s illiteracy rate was 70.4 percent, Estonia’s was 3.8 percent. During the 1940s and 1950s, Grampa wrote many letters to Eduard, his brother, which I had translated into English. My translator, Ellen, was impressed with Grampa’s writing and said she could tell he was well educated. He also had beautiful penmanship. My mother thought the letters would likely have been written in secret, as Mary forbade Grampa from speaking or communicating in Estonian.
At the time Grampa left his homeland, Estonia and half of Latvia were sometimes called Lifland or Luuimaa in Estonian. In one of Grampa’s military documents, he claims his birthplace as Arensberg, Lifland, which was previously Kuressaare until the Russian occupation.
Estonian peasants got their surnames between 1822-1835. In fact, the 1826 Estonian census is the first one where peasants are listed with surnames. They were previously known by the farms they lived on. Also because Estonian documents were often written by Germans or Russians, the surname Õunpuu was misspelled as Ounpu or Aunpuu or Aunpu because in the Russian or German language, there’s no letter for Õ.
It seemed next to impossible to not only locate the Estonian documents I needed, but then I couldn’t read them. They were written in Estonian or German. Luckily, I connected with a relative, Maale Jaagola, in Estonia who went to the archives at the University of Taartu, retrieved documents, translated them and mailed them to me. Maale only asked that I reimburse him for his costs.
Grampa was the oldest of nine children of Mihkel Õunpuu and Leen Toompuu. Two of the children died as babies which was sadly common at the time. What is a little different is that the next child to be born after the death of the baby, was given the same “christian” name as the one who died. So Grampa had two brothers named August and two brothers named Eduard.
When Grampa left Estonia at the age of 16, he left behind two sisters, Aliise age 2, Juuli age 8, and two brothers Juulius age 9 and Kaarl age 12. He had witnessed the birth and death of another baby sibling August in 1903. My grandfather had pictures of Juuli, Juulius and Kaarl with their birth and death years on them. All in all, Leen Toompuu had lived through the deaths of four children, before dying in 1932.
On Saaremaa Island where Grampa was born, surnames assigned or chosen were based on many different elements including nature and thus my ancestors chose Õunpuu meaning "apple tree"; a compound of õun (apple) and puu (tree). Ellen told me over tea one day that my great-grandmother’s surname, Toompuu, is based on a blooming tree in Estonia similar to Canada’s dogwood tree.
In a letter from Kaido Õunpuu, Grampa’s nephew in Estonia, dated June 1, 1988, he says “He (Grampa) lived a short time in Tallinn and then escaped on board a ship to England.”
Documents actually show that in 1913, before the Russian revolution, Johannes Õunpuu, age 16, was possibly recruited by Alexsander Matt, a fellow Estonian born in Arensburg, who at the age of 19 had already made several ocean crossings, always with a different group. On June 13, the S.S. Columbia made its way from Finland to Glasgow, carrying Estonians, Finns and Russians whose destination was “CPR, Chapleau, Ontario”, Canada. On June 16 the ship arrived at Ellis Island, New York. The ship’s manifest states he is able to read and write English, while this may have been true, he couldn’t speak English. He had $25 and his destination was a “friend”, Johannes Lonn, in Chapleau.
I have no proof that Grampa ever made it to Chapleau, as my enquiries to CP Rail were dead ends. They claim they never kept any of those records. Canadian Pacific Railway were huge supporters of the war effort and encouraged their workers to sign up, offering six-month wages to full time workers and their jobs back upon their return from the war. All this brings me to the conclusion that he never made it there, otherwise, why would he not go back to CPR. By the time Grampa enlisted, he would have had three years with the railroad, qualifying him for the incentive.
Sometime before 1916, Grampa changed his name from Johannes Õunpuu to John Edward Gaalson, which morphed over the years to Gaallson, then Gallson. There is no Estonian word “Gaalson” and even though the suffix “son” was observed in Estonia as being “son of”, the word “gaal” means nothing. Also, in the Estonian birth registry, there’s no indication that Grampa had a second name, and if he did, it wouldn’t have been Edward. John’s youngest brother was Eduard, which leads me to conclude that Grampa’s second name was a fabrication as well. According to the Vital Statistics from Tallinn, none of the Õunpuu family had second names.
Image Gallery
Postings about John Gallson
- Gallsons in Endicott, New YorkUPDATED March 27, 2024: Email response regarding an query I made for information from the E-J Tanner and Shoemake Archive: Thank you for contacting the Syracuse University Libraries. I’m copying our Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) on this message, as this department maintains the papers of members of the Johnson family. The SCRC appreciates your… Read more: Gallsons in Endicott, New York
- John Alone With 3 ToddlersSEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM. Mom remembers being split up in homes. I tried to find documentation from the Children's Aid Society in North Bay, but I could find nothing. At some point, Grampa managed to get the children back together again by hiring a young, pregnant, unwed mother - Mary Margaret Morrison. Mary was… Read more: John Alone With 3 Toddlers
- Gallson: Phillip JohnThe following is extracted from my book STIGMA (V3), so some of the content may feel out of content. Phillip John Gallson was born in Zolpho Spring, Florida on March 18, 1926. Part of Uncle Phill’s story is pivotal to GG’s story even though he was only three and a half years old when he… Read more: Gallson: Phillip John
- John Gallson – Life TimelineBelow is a Timeline of John Gallson's life as my sister, Donna and I have been able to put together using military and life documents. There are many interesting things in this table, some surprizing and some trivial. For me, the most significant year is 1930. Gramma Gallson was committed to a mental asylum in… Read more: John Gallson – Life Timeline
- Johannes Õunpuu leaves EstoniaThe story we were told about Grampa Gallson leaving Estonia was that he stowed away on a ship headed for England and lied about his age. The more likely story is that he lied about his age so that he could join a group of Estonians headed to Canada to work for the CPR. Below… Read more: Johannes Õunpuu leaves Estonia
- John Gaallson – World War IClick here for images of Grampa Gallson's WWI documents. In 1916, Grampa made his way to Webbwood, Ontario where he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Army on March 10. On August 8, he began to send $15 per month back to his father, Mihkel, in Estonia. He reported his trade as “Lumberjack”, not CPR worker. … Read more: John Gaallson – World War I
- Õunpuu: MihkelJohannes' (John Gallson) Father The following is from Malle Jaagoa - May 13, 2002. Its the register of births and christenings of year 1865. It is from the church. The first 2 columns translated = day and hour of the birth For Mihkel Õunpuu translation = 25 Sept afternoon The third column translated = day… Read more: Õunpuu: Mihkel
- John’s Estonian FamilyThese are records from the archives in Tallinn that Kaido Õunpuu got for me in 1988. Kaido is Eduard's son. I put on the pictures of Karl and Aliise. You can view all the children in the Photo Gallery.
- John Gallson – ObituaryAll records indicate that "Margaret" was Mary Morrison, born Mary Margaret Morrison. John was actually only predeceased by his 1st wife, Florence. The predeceased son referred to here was Donny Morrison, who came to live with John as a young boy with his mother, Mary Morrison. Donny and Jackie (John) were blood brothers, (sons of… Read more: John Gallson – Obituary
- John Joins the US ArmyAfter Grampa returned from WWI, December 1918, and was discharged from the Canadian Army January 1919, travelled across the border on June 10, 1919 at Buffalo, and moved to Wheeling, West Virginia. (1320 Water Street). On December 16, 1920, Grampa filed a Declaration of Intention for Naturalization, then two days later, on December 18, 1920,… Read more: John Joins the US Army
- John’s Post-Army Life in USAWhen Grampa file his Declaration of Intention for Naturalization (No. 1914) to the US government, he had 7 years from December 16, 1920 to complete the application. The application shows a lot of information. It states he crossed the border from Canada to the US on June 10, 1919. I search on Ancestry.ca through all… Read more: John’s Post-Army Life in USA
- John in MattawaBelow is a map sketched by Hilda Howard, Mom's half-sister, when I visited her in Toronto the in late 1990's maybe. So while she was trying to remember the layout of the Mattawa farm, she also was remembering things about Grampa.