During her training at the Slade, Enid had produced a considerable number of commissioned works, mostly murals and paintings. These included a small mural in the Monico restaurant in Piccadilly Circus, London, several large murals in the London County Council Tulse Hill Elementary School, the General Public Waiting Room of Fenchurch Street Station in the City of London, and an 8 x 24 foot mural of sensuous exotic tropical plants in a workers’ canteen at a freight and goods depot in East London. The largest was a 20 x 20 foot ceiling mural painted in sections and assembled in the main women’s’ waiting room at Kings Cross Station, London. Carrying out these large murals for such public sites at the beginning of her career as a painter, gave her considerable confidence in carrying out large works in later life. None of her later, large paintings were as big as these murals, or subject to so much general public scrutiny as were these early murals in London.
 
Due to the extreme housing shortage in London at that time, during the first 4 years of their marriage, Enid and Rod lived in three rooms in Enid’s parents’ house at 110 Palewell Park. This was a stressful arrangement for all concerned, and they decided that they needed to emigrate to have a better life, and more chance of advancement. They decided on Canada as their best alternative, and made plans to move after Enid completed her training in July 1955. At that point she was already pregnant with Karen, their first child, with the delivery date to be late January 1956. Karen was born on the 30th of January 1956, which was cutting the timing a little tight, as Rod left for Canada a little over three weeks later!

Rod was hired as an architect and as a permanent civil servant with the Public Works Department of the Canadian Government in Ottawa. The fact that the Government of Canada had employed him as a permanent civil servant was of great comfort to Enid’s parents, especially her mother, who firmly believed that Enid was emigrating because of her husband’s crazy notion that he could not succeed to his full potential as an architect in Britain. Shortly after Rod arrived, he wrote to tell her that he had rented a one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a house in central Ottawa and had got all the basic furniture needed to start their home. During the time he was waiting for Enid and Karen to reach Canada, he made a crib for Karen to use. It was overly complex (a common feature of many of Rod’s projects!) but lasted long enough for Nicola to also use it. Enid brought a very good baby carriage with her from England, the body of which was removable and could be used as a carrycot or infant’s bed. This is where Karen slept until she was a bit larger and had a cot, which Enid and Rod could then afford. The baby carriage could also fold down at its end to become a very comfortable stroller. The baby carriage was used by all four of Enid’s children, lasting nearly 12 years of very hard use, sometimes carrying two children.

On the evening of 14 May 1956, the day that Enid landed in Montreal it was dark and it was snowing! In England she had seen spring flowers for the previous three months. She was driven from Montreal to Ottawa by a relative of an employee at the British Railways office where Rod had worked in London. Although the “tarpaper” residential shacks in the outskirts of Ottawa initially shocked Enid, she felt they were much better off in Ottawa than they had been in London as they now had their own apartment, which had a small garden. By the time Enid reached Ottawa Rod had already resigned his job with the Public Works Department and was settled into a new job with a small private architectural practice for more income. For both Enid and Rod, compared to Britain, Canada was a very egalitarian country without most of the hierarchical class system they had left.

Enid brought all of her painting equipment with her, and started to work as a painter immediately. At that time she worked mostly in oil paint together with pen and ink, lead and conte pencil drawings. Early in the summer of 1956, Enid and Rod met Richard and Marion Platek in the Byward Market in “lower Town”. Enid and Marion had both been at the Slade School of Art in London, at the same time, however neither knew the other had moved to Canada. Marion and Richard became their closest friends in Ottawa, meeting every week to discuss every kind of subject, and drank tea, as they could not afford anything stronger.

Enid realized fairly early on that selling art in Ottawa was going to be very difficult, as there appeared to be no tradition among ordinary people to buy original fine art. She worked at the National Gallery of Canada as a docent, conducting tours of people around the collections and telling them about the paintings and other works of art. She was eminently qualified to do this, however the cost of the baby-sitter needed to look after Karen during the day took almost all her wages. From that time until the late 1980’s Enid worked at home as a homemaker and fulltime painter and print maker. She decided that it would be better for her and for Karen to work at home, which she did from that point on, except for brief periods of temporary employment as an art teacher in the Toronto Public School System, until her children were much older.