Inheriting Fierceness

In speaking with my daughter Kate (www.Katehasablog.com), I mentioned the number of amazing women from whom she and I are descended.  Frankly, it is astounding how many of them were ahead of their time, courageous, on the vanguard of social change, and just plain downright FIERCE. They weren't necessarily paragons of virtue, but who among us is?  Let me share with you a sample:

Sarah Tong Lane
My Great-Grandmother

Sarah ran the family farm when my great grandfather (renowned marksman) went off the World War I - killed in action in 1917.  She continued to manage the farm single handed for many years.  4 years later, her second eldest daughter (Rose) died at age 18 from "a heavy cold and nervous breakdown" . In the 1930's she sold the farm and moved "into town" living with her youngest daughter, Adeline - a force in her own right (see below) - only to live through what must have been hell when Adeline was murdered.  Perhaps the greatest legacy to her inner steel is through her daughters (Maud and Adeline).

Maud Lane Stephenson
My Great-Aunt 

While I have no doubt that Maud was always a force to be reckoned with, it is her more quiet strength that I find admirable.  She lost her father as a young woman, and then both her younger sisters - tragically. She married during the "Roaring Twenties", raised her small family during the "Dirty Thirties".  When her husband was 42, he enlisted in the Canadian Army and went off to the Second World War.  I am not sure how she handled 1939.  She lost her sister Adeline and her husband (who did not NEED to enlist, as a married family man) goes off to war.  She took in boarders and took over Adeline's beauty salon. When her husband does come home, he has what they would now call post-traumatic stress disease.  In those days, it was called "shell shock".  He was never right again.  He never worked.  Well, that's not exactly true.  He puttered in the work shed "inventing" things.  Maud ran a business, kept boarders, raised her two girls.  And, of course, looked after Jack.

Adeline Lane McDonald

Adeline.  Ah, Adeline.  Let's quickly skip over the fact that her father is killed in WWI when she is 7, her older sister dies when she is 11... these facts are true, and I have no doubt affected her profoundly.  But there is so much more to this phenom!  In 1929, at age 19, she won the crown of "Miss Chatham" - a beauty contest run by Hollywood producers looking for the next starlet.  The same year she married Charles McDonald. In the 1930's, Adeline owned and operated a beauty shop, employed 3 women, drove a yellow roadster, and bought vacation property along Lake Erie.  Her husband had odd jobs, chauffeuring and as a shipping clerk.  In 1936, Adeline represents her family on the "Vimy Pilgrimage" - a national event in which thousands of family representatives of soldiers killed in WWI sailed across to England and then to France for the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial by King Edward VII.  This 5'2" powerhouse was a beauty queen, a successful businesswoman in the 30's, and traveled by herself to attend an historic Canadian event.  And then, her husband murdered her.  And even her death was noteworthy: "Beauty Queen Murdered" was the headline in all the major Canadian newspapers and even those in the U.S. where a Chicago magazine (I imagine a pre-cursor to the "People" mags of today) carried a full, multi-page spread about the affair.  He murdered her because she had filed for divorce.  Her husband is eventually found guilty, sentenced to hang, and then - as the nation had begun to question death sentences - had his sentence commuted by the Governor General to mere life in prison. He was out in 12 years.

That's just a snippet from my maternal grandfather's side. My maternal grandmother (and her sister) should not be forgotten however! And maybe I should start with the great grandmother on that side as well!

Gertrude Reddick DeCou
My Great-Grandmother

Aside from the grace she showed bearing such a dreadful name (Gertrude - I mean, honestly!)... she was quite fierce in her own right.  Regrettably, I know very little of her life.  My own Grandmother adored her, worshipped her... and Ruby was pretty darned hard to impress.  There is one story, however, that really paints a picture of the kind of woman she was.  It was October 1901 (and apparently during very bad weather) when Gertrude went into labour early.  Her husband left to go get the Doctor, leaving Gertrude and 4-year old Maud at home.  As my grandmother told it, by the time the Doctor arrived, Gertrude had given birth to twins, had cut the umbilical cords, dealt with the afterbirth, and the twins were swaddled and laying near the wood stove (there were no incubators for preemies back then).  Sadly, only one of the twins survived (Lee).  Gertrude was up and back at work on the farm within a day or two.  Having had twins myself, I can only marvel at her resourcefulness and strength.

DeCou farm where Gertrude gave birth to twins, alone.

Pearl DeCou Bishop Iler
My Great-Aunt

Pearl was ahead of her time, like my Grandfather's sister Adeline.  Pearl married William Bishop in 1917 and endured his drunken debauchery and abuse for 13 years.  She saved her "egg money" little by little until in 1930 she had enough to hire a lawyer and divorce him.  May I remind you that this was 1930?  I wish I knew what she did after that, where she worked, which year on Christmas Day she married her second husband, Roy Iler.  But I don't.  I know she spent a great deal of time travelling all over the United States on bus tours and I love her sense of adventure and drive to experience being free.  I know that she had to move from the little place she lived when she divorced William Bishop because she could not even attend church because of the scandal.  In the new town she settled in, she let people believe she was a widow.  After she married Roy Iler, they moved to Windsor which is the only place I remember visiting her.  She was an avid quilter and painter, and I regret that she died long before I was aware of her fierceness, long before I could ask her how it all happened, how she managed, and where she found the strength.

Ruby DeCou Lane (Wedding Day)
My Grandmother (maternal)

In this photo of Ruby's wedding you see, Maud (standing on the left most side), Adeline (kneeling on the right foreground), Pearl (to the right of the bride, Ruby), Gertrude (behind Pearl) and peaking out between Ruby and Pearl must be Sarah.  

Ruby's brother Lee was a big disappointment to her father. He's in this picture, actually, peeking out from behind my Grandfather. You can see that he is smaller than my Grandmother - and she was not overly tall.  Dan DeCou (far right) must have hoped for a son to help on the farm, but Lee wasn't it.  Ruby, in fact, was the one who worked alongside her Dad on the farm.  She went to school, worked the farm, pitched hardball on two teams (one a men's team, since she was the best pitcher in the county) and then would come home, get all dressed up and go out dancing.  I have a little photo album of hers that is page after page of photos of boys/men she "went with" as she put it.

Ruby was a hard worker and remained a hard worker her entire life.  It irked her that women could work as hard or harder than a man and not get equal pay - or even equal recognition.  In the 1960's and 70's, she worked alongside my Grandfather in "his" toy wholesale business.  That was in addition to doing all the housework.  Every Christmas, my Grandfather would give her a crisp $100 bill as "thanks" for her work at the shop.  It still makes me wonder why he never realized that it was a $100 "slap in the face". I rarely saw my grandmother 'take it easy'.  She worked all the time.  When she came for a visit, she would clean things and fix things that my mother (who worked full time) didn't have time to do.  Ruby was unstoppable.  In her 80's, she helped my mother pack up the entire contents of a large house and then unpacked them at the new one.  Yes, she was unstoppable and indefatigable.  

And then there is my own mother, Evelyn Lane Hawkins ... and then back to Lane, if the truth be told.  My mother was complex, with many tragic flaws that don't belong in this telling.  But if we are telling true here, she was also a woman to be reckoned with.  My mother was quite tall for her generation (5' 10") which, when added to the fact that she was extremely bright, made it a little hard in the dating department.  She always thought she was not that attractive, but she was wrong.  She obtained the highest mark in her high school graduating class, but the full university scholarship prize went to the male "top of class".  My Mother attended university for 1 year - that was all her parents could afford - and then went to Teacher's College (called "normal school" back in the day).  My mother taught elementary school for a number of years before and after her marriage to my 6'6" tall father.  And then she did what most women of her generation did in the late Fifties and early Sixties:  she became a mother and a housewife...  and a help-mate to her Air Force Officer hubby.

My mother followed my father to his many postings, as was expected in those days.  First to British Columbia - far from her friends and family and in a dreary, wet climate that added to her feelings of isolation.  She had two small children by the time Dad was posted to Germany, then Italy, then back to Germany, before heading to Labrador. And while I have no doubt being in Europe was grand, and I know how much she loved Labrador, it was still a lot to have almost sole responsibility raising 3 small children (my sister was born overseas).  Dad traveled a LOT.  She was alone a LOT.

After being transferred back to Ontario, money was tight and my parents decided that Mom would go out to work.  She started selling encyclopedias (remember those?) door to door in the evenings.  I shudder to think of this.  Eventually she got a job teaching, but times were changing and she now needed to get her B.A. So, she worked full time teaching grades 7, 8, and 9, continued to manage the household as Dad was still away a LOT, and went to night school where she eventually graduated with summa cum laude (tops!) honours.

My mother spent much of her adult years frustrated by a society that had raised her with one set of expectations, imposed another set, and judged her by a third set.  An exceptionally bright woman, who had wanted to study medicine but could not, took on the role of home-maker and mother (i think somewhat reluctantly!) and then was forced by economic changes to become a working mother - and then faced the scorn of her own generation of women.  She used to tell me that I would need to realize that "I can't have it all" (meaning, career , family AND self-actualization).  She had to parse it out into stages, I think.  I'm hoping I'm doing a little better at it.  And I think I didn't really appreciate what it cost her emotionally to live in the times she did with the situations she faced.  

I come from impressive female stock.  There is a thread of inner steel, of determination, of grit and accomplishment that runs through my DNA.  Fierceness as a legacy!  So, I think that maybe on those days I feel like I just want to cocoon under the duvet rather than face the work day or minor little problems, I need to pause and remember that the women in MY family do not shrink back, do not hide; they dare, they dream, they do!