Saluting the hands that rocked my cradle

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International Women’s Day – - Sunday 8 March

Reaching down to touch our roots in Scotland

Ask a successful businesswoman, mother, grandmother, or daughter, who influenced her most. Chances are she will name another strong, dedicated, courageous woman.

As the product of a long-line of strong-willed women I admire, I think of my Scottish grandmother. Mother of 11, business owner (a thriving Glasgow fish and chip shop, a “sweetie” shop high on a brae above the Saltcoats seaside, Holly House Temperance Hotel), dedicated wife and churchwoman.

If she feared the Great Depression (my grandfather was among the jobless Clydeside shipyard men of the day) she confessed it only to the Almighty.
While dispirited, unemployed labourers congregated on bleak, wind-swept street corners, she opened her hotel kitchen to serve Welsh Rarebit and tea to over 100 hungry children every Sunday.

No welfare. No government grants

To this day, no one knows how she did it.

“My Father has a great storehouse,” she’d reply cryptically when questioned.
After her death, at the age of 95, letters telling tales of those days arrived on Glasgow editorial desks from around the world…from those now-grown children. They had not forgotten.

Did I mention she also learned to type at the age of 85? Her columns were published in Glasgow dailies.

My mother earned my respect as a strict disciplinarian, a successful writer on three continents, a post-war Ontario pioneer, grandmother, and all-round survivor fortified with a dry sense of humour.

Armed with little more than hammer and saw (and a portable Underwood perched on an orange crate), she tamed virgin Clarkson (now Mississauga) farmland, built a house, and kept body and soul (hers and mine) together.

Optimistically we’d immigrated to Canada from Britain after the second World War.

Accommodation in Toronto was scarce. Purchasing an acre of land from farmer Richard Speck seemed a good move until father, a marine engineer, was obliged to return to the high seas.

Frustrated with job hunting in Toronto, he reached his limited when a well-heeled gent sporting a Havana, and thick European, accent informed him during an interview: “You’re just the man for the job. It’s just too damn bad you’re British.” Imperial Oil felt differently. Our ancient mariner waved us goodbye and returned when the Ford plant was built in Oakville a couple of years later.

Lower Middle Road (now the 401, I think) beside which our tent, and eventually our home, was perched, was once referred to as the last Indian trail in Ontario. Mother was heard to remark that she suspected we were the last Indians.

When a Toronto Star Letter to the Editor appeared sneering that post-war Britishers ‘couldn’t take it’ and were high-tailing it back to Britain, mother instantly retaliated.
Her article announcing that this immigrant, and her 6-year-old daughter, sure could take it, earned her a double-page spread in the Star (with pictures), and a much appreciated cheque for $100.

That dealt with, she returned to hacking down thorn trees, hammering two-by-fours, warding off stray bootleggers at night, and submitting articles to The Party Line, a fledgling newspaper published by my friend Whitney Millard’s mom.

Five years later, mission accomplished, we immigrated to Africa – and she did it all over again.

Reflecting on International Women’s Day it occurs to me to hope that my daughters (and my son) will be inspired by such matriarchal tales, and that, in turn, the next generation will also be encouraged.

Perhaps these reflections will prompt you to craft stories about equally influential women in your life.

I sincerely hope so.

The tales are worth the telling.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” Diane Ackerman, poet – Newsweek, September 22, 1986

“In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.” – 

Dame Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister


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Tags: International Women's Day, Scotland