Douglas, Lois Alyce Russell

Lois Alyce Russell Douglas, last of the Edward's girls: a century (almost) well lived.

The twentieth century has ended. But those who made it what it was- those who spanned its early days, it's middle age and it's closing days- are still passing, on, through and by.

What follows is my memory of my mother and her family, all true, some would say, but, if not, all Irish, hence true, still.

Our mother was one of those: born in 1920, on May 9, she has just said goodbye to our life and faithfully moved on to another.  Chesterton said, " eternity is the eve of something"- my mother has moved to that something.

As she was the youngest of 11 children, we  see the last of one family whose lives simply define what it was to be a Canadian, particularly a Canadian woman during that century. The Edwards and, particularly, the Edwards' girls are gone, but oh the havoc they wrecked, the fun they had and the doors they opened.

To begin, at the close of the 19th century, Adam Thomas Edwards, an Ulster Orangeman, from Ottawa somehow met Mary-Ellen Quinn, a good Catholic girl from Eganville, and the world changed, for them and for the better. Seeking peace, they escaped to North Bay and there found their life and raised their brood: Margaret (1896), Irene (1898), Nell (1900), Clifford (1902), Hazel (1904), Leona (1906), Doily (1908),  Gwendolin (1911), Mabel (1912), Audrey (1915) and Lois (1920), close to the creek and hard up against the railway tracks, tracks my grandfather helped lay, and tracks I played on as a child.

But 609 second avenue east was not just a home to my mom and her siblings, it was our home too, but it was also the centre of that ever changing neighbourhood- by the fifties, it's Frenchness, then Irishness  had given way to Italianess. It was a Canadian home, one my Gramma used in 1917 as a 'good enough' hospital -as there were no others- to treat influenza patients. And, as the lore goes, one who's wood stove was so good that she could incubated premature babies, one of whom has now passed the 100 year mark.

Margaret married a Scottish butcher with a keen nose for business; one who sold out in 28 and bought in 31, and who  went to God swearing the first Lord Thomson of Fleet still owed him money for the first newspaper the good lord bought. Margret's daughter became one of Canada's first female vice presidents of a major business. The granddaughter Candice has been both a nurse and a stock market player.

Irene married another successful Scot, whose son, Gary, once road a bike from Toronto to North Bay, just for fun, but also on a bet. Clifford, the one boy, was early lost in a railway accident, exercising his shanty rights to pound the rails, but before he left, he, too, left two more girls to conquer the world.
 Hazel loved an American who sailed the Chesapeake, and what could be wrong with that.

Leona left for Buffalo to nurse paediatric cancer patients, at a time when few were saved. Her heart was hardened by the burden, but lightened by the love of another, Irene. My mother brought her home to die when dementia, not cancer brought her down.

And Aunt Gwen and Uncle Al, both vets who lived well during the WW2,  and both savvy insurance brokers,so savvy they shipped out to California and specialized in earthquake coverage. Oh what Gwen taught me of life and death, and love, in 1967, in LA . In the summer of Love she told me what to see and do, and later  insisted that tell her all about it- oh how I wished I had more to tell. All,  as she lay dying,then, painfully, from bone cancer. And oh what my mother saw when a few years later she drove her dying brother in law home, from California to North Bay in the Rambler Ambassador that was to become my Estelle when I went to university.

Nellie, the families politician, elected many times as one of Canada's first alder-women- what a mouth full - and deputy mayor of our town, who plotted her campaigns in our living room, while scrounging and strong arming businesses to give her work boots and other supplies to get her 'on welfare' clients back to work. And introduced me to Diefenbaker and whose faithful Brydon, or Bud, an artist who lost his arm while railroading to feed the family in the depression, never told on me when I went underage to his local. Their daughter, Betty, now the matriarch, gave us four more, the 4 Manning girls,

Dolly married Uncle Tom, as close to a gramps as I ever got, an accountant and soldier who never lost at bridge and got outed as a counter in Vegas, who had real pickerel shore lunches, for dinner, cooked on the rocks behind their house and who gave me my first power boat- a 12 foot tinny with a 10hp. And Dolly, was brilliant, working as a T&NO operator who plugged you in and to whom you said , Grover 0334, just to get the phones connected. With COPD and forced to a hospital bed for years,she taught many a nurse just how to nurse, from the heart. And Paddy and Bonnie their grandchildren well know her role in that.

Mabel, black label, of course,  owned a sporting goods store in Cornwall, and taught me to drive, and, after her husband was permanently hospitalized following an accident, took me hunting partridge in her Lloyd's caddy - I loaded shot guns from the back seat and opened beer-and she set my passions aflame by sending me to a Kawartha dancehall where a 14 year old boy saw just how 18 year old girls could move. Despite the need to breathe from a hole in her throat, she bought 'Indian cigarettes' off a street peddler while well into her eighties.And oh what apple pies she could make. Her son Peter still makes his home in Cornwall.

Audrey, my third mother, who after leaving an abusive husband in 1953 and who didn't divorce until the law caught up with her in 1976,  moved in with my Gramma, my father, my sister Susan and my mother Lois- my poor father was luckier than his poor son for as a travelling salesman he could escape the many Edwards girls, including the ones we did not live with , who often just showed up for breakfast, lunch or dinner or more.

Audrey who, when I was but 12, bought me a white dinner jacket and took me to Bermuda to drink green crime d'menthe. And, with Mabel,took sister Sue to NYC to see the great white way and, of course, the Copacabana. And Audrey who served in our navy as a nurse, drank vodka with rescued Russians, and had the captain of a Nfld. destroyer drop depth charges to liven up the party, and then trained in surgery at Cook County and ER at Hammersmith. And Audrey who told me to 'never forget my rubber boots'.

 And, finally, Lois, my mom - my sister Susan's mom and mother-in-law to Sue's Ron and my Dorothy, the life force of our life and our fathers lover- I have his Air Force flight vest, on which he artfully drew ( but for that Hitler, an architect to be) my mother's form - ah, yuck. She, the youngest, who cared for all who went before, nursing all, to the end: yes, all.

A  court stenographer, what a lawyer she could have been-and would have been, but for Hitler, again.,. But Hitler had to deal with my mother, and lost,  whose honeymoon was delayed when both my mother and father shipped out, on separate ships, she as a WREN, he as an RCAF officer.  Some weeks after that, after her training in how to drive a transport truck to Scotland at night, without lights, in army boots, they got a few weeks in Scotland, alone, together, before he bombed the Gerries and she supplied the Royal Navy.

After THE WAR, despite many  pregnancies and the concerns of sisters starting to die, Margaret being the first, there were things to do, even in North Bay.  So why not curl and try to win for  Northern Ontario. But, despite these many concerns, why not run the PTA and join the hospital board, and, while doing that, why not become chair and drive the unification of the Civic and St Joe's. And oh the many stories of fun there are, my sister has the very long list- skinny dipping anyone?

I, though, am just her son, and really cannot say that much about why so many loved  her for so long and for so much. But, there are many friends, gone, and many still around. The former are too numerous to note, but  the latter, Billie, Howie, Celia, Thea ... There are much younger ones who also count her friendship: Paddy, Mae,  Lee Anne and Tom, Sue and Tom, ...And how many care givers could I name if I had not forgot, More recently, Carol and Cathy.

To me and to  Susan, she was, simply, but oh so strongly, Mom- an ever present, unchanging and absolutely demanding force. She, too, was surrogate mother to others, Nancy, Candice, Paddy and others, and god knows who else needed a warm lecture.

I mean by this, not that she wanted us to do what she said-though that might have been simpler-, but she demanded that we do what was right and, since she usually was right, and I mean that, she demanded I defend why I was right and she was not.

I was well  into my middle age before I saw the importance of this when in a corporate environment I saw a man who assessed everything on the basis of what was good for him- something quite different than what was the right thing to do.

That, itself, is the lesson of all: search for the truth, then do what is right. And. now, into my sixties it's hard to pretend I'm middle aged, and yet I'm still my mothers son, if not quite her baby.

When my father died I told all how he really, really was my hero, and he was- he silently taught me bravery, strength and duty. But Mom, oh mom, how she loudly taught me love- not through hugs and kisses, though there were many of those, but through the finest professorial example- she showed us.

She showed us how in how she loved her mother by keeping her in our home till God with a stroke said time. She showed us how by nursing really all of her siblings and their spouses with  daily trips to the hospital or their home, or simply bringing them into our home for comfort at the end. She showed us how by loving my father with all those faults a man can have, yet loving him until his final breath- one she felt as she held his hand.

She showed us how by teaching even those who came to nurse her in the final weeks that they could well do better for themselves if only they got their focus on that which counted most, which was of course their children and their family. And that, of course, is where I must end.

Like Mary Ellen Quinn. her mother and Mary,  mother of all, Lois, mother of Sue  and I, knew exactly, without confusion, that the purpose of life was to teach your children well- not indulge them- but spoil them with the warmth of love so they would learn that while love is a gift from the giver it obligates the one who is loved to love, to pass it on, from Lois and Jon, to Jon-Jo, Dorothy, Sue and Ron , to Alexandra, Jana and Mackenzie, the latter three, her favourite three, and, of course to all who have felt her touch.

So, if touched by my mom, please pass that loving wisdom on- intelligently, forcefully and lovingly, as she taught us all- find the truth and tell it, everyday, to someone who needs to hear it. Thanks Mom; stay in touch.

As my mother attended her own funeral a few weeks ago (her words), and in accord with her wishes, there will be no funeral, but a family internment in a few weeks.

Many thinks to all the staff and volunteers from CCAC, PHARA, PHARMA and NNPC. And a very special thanks to our very special pharmacist. Donations as you choose, or to the Canadian Cancer Society or the near North Palliative Care Centre would be fitting, and can be made through the ever helpful staff of McGuinty Funeral Home.