My paternal grandmother, Virginia, once muttered, in sympathetic contemplation of a thistle growing through the flagstones, “Oh, how they struggle,” before tearing it up by its roots.
It was an odd sentiment, but then, in this clan of weirdos and misfits, Grandma was our unquestioned oddball-in-chief. We lost her to cancer on Monday (July 21), and, hard as it to imagine life without her, it’s even harder to imagine a life better lived.
She was born in Albuquerque in 1929. By 1933 her parents had split and dumped Grandma with relatives in Nova Scotia while her mother moved west to catch a new man. Those relatives were mostly lumberjacks, and Grandma’s earliest and perhaps fondest memories were of eastern logging camps.
When her mother finally caught her coveted diplomat, Grandma was dispatched, kicking and screaming, to Ottawa and proper society. But she arrived an irreclaimable tomboy, and no amount of charm-coaching could quite correct her troublesome habit of cursing like, well, a lumberjack.
Ottawa did afford good schools, though, and she matriculated to the University of Toronto on scholarships, where she quickly took over editorship of the institution’s communist rag.
A summer reporting job with the Ottawa Journal introduced her to the news business and Ted, a hot- tempered, hard-drinking young newspaperman harboring (maybe) equally vivid streaks of brilliance and lunacy. Rebuffing Grandpa’s initial, sometimes rather menacing advances, she warmed to and eventually married him to secure a position on the Timmins paper and, according to him, infuriate her mother.
It would prove a surprisingly successful union. Both vaguely atheist when they married, they soon embraced Christianity with a fervor that would define the rest of their lives. They founded three private boys’ schools in three provinces, a chain of influential conservative news magazines, and published a successful book series on the history of Alberta before producing a massive popular history of Christianity entitled simply, The Christians, in their “retirement.” They were sailors as well, and captained their sloop from Vancouver to Nova Scotia via the Panama Canal with a rotating crew of drunks and seasick landlubbers (a hallmark of all of their endeavors).
Along the way, she raised six children, who gave her fifteen grandchildren, who have so far produced six great grandchildren, all lovingly referred to as “little Turks” or “bastards.” The smarter bastards learned to always kiss Grandma hello and beware the tomahawk she kept behind her teeth.
She could indeed take a scalp with a flick of her tongue, or the stroke of her pen. She was a fine writer and reporter, a voracious reader and a razor-sharp editor, feared by old hands across the country, who fondly conjure a chain-smoking matron tearing their copy apart while swilling rye from the bottle.
It’s probably not far off. She spoke perfect English, always, if liberally peppered with profanity, but wasn’t above belching over her beer.
Her conservatism was hard, practical, and she didn’t suffer fools quietly, but was a staunch friend to dreamers, ne’er-do-wells, and winos everywhere. Though she might disagree with or even condemn you, she’d always find you some pity.
Bubbling up unexpectedly through her customary gruffness was a deep humanity, for people, animals, and the occasional weed. Her faith dictated that all people and things have a purpose, but I expect she sensed those purposes are often in direct opposition, and oh, how we sometimes struggle.
Her own struggle is over now. Devout, feisty, and madly in love with her husband until her last days, she died on his dedicated, devastated watch.
Goodbye Grandma. We’ll miss you. But we will struggle on.
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This article is reprinted with permission from the Edmonton Sun, where Colman Byfield has a weekly column.
