Suffragettes on the SkyTrain: a brief memoir
for Nellie, 1929 - 2009
I met Nellie on the skytrain. She pounced onto the bench beside me and demanded to know if my book was good and what it was. I tell her Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Isn’t he dead, she says. Yes, I’m sure he is.
The book was published in the 40’s.
She tells me she’s a writer and that’s why she knows about the book. Tells me I must come to a party for her latest book of sea poems. There will be free food and drink, she tells me, certain that this alone will guarantee my appearance. She is probably used to that.
She settles into a story about having tea with the Queen, which is also the title story of one of the five books she has published, and I examine her as I listen. Her four front upper teeth, visibly lonely, are set in a mouth surrounded by hair, great tufts of hair that poke out threateningly from her upper lip and droop from her chin. (I find out later that in a picture on the back of one of her books published 16 years ago, these tufts were already in full blossom). Her hat and coat are vintage Eastside Vancouver, as is her odour. Stale – like a towel left wet too many months in a corner of the bathroom. The heels of her matted pink slippers have been stomped into oblivion, but surprisingly her socks are in good shape.
Nellie finishes her tale of the Queen with a report of a complaint lodged by the royal family when their coat of arms and the words "By Order of Her Majesty" appeared on the cover of her book.
She really wants me to come to her party. Has she mentioned the free drink and food? She’s not coming on to me, she says. She’s married. She nods in sympathy when I tell her I am as well. How are people supposed to say yes and then never look at another person? I tell her window shopping is still allowed, and she quotes a well known American writer who said that every good marriage could stand a little rotation.
At the party I’ll meet a woman who says that the greatest artists suffer from breakdowns. Nellie’s had six. But not for twenty years or so. Now she’s fine and her abstract paintings, which last month she was giving away, are selling -$3,000 worth in the last week. She has a business agent who handles all that now. I can see them at the party, she tells me.
Then she rises to disembark. Ron, she says. Ron Sparling. You and I are going to be good friends.
*****
I check out Nellie at the Library. Pick up three of her books. Martha knows her grandmother.
Nellie McClung: Writer of Canada’s first best seller. Canada’s first woman representative to the League of Nations. A member of parliament. Suffragette acknowledged with toppling the government of Manitoba over the issue of the women’s vote. One fifth of the Famous Five.
In the Georgian Straight I see there is a poetry reading at the Primal Gallery at the address Nellie gave me. I phone them the next day to ask about Nellie. Yes, they have some of her stuff hanging. And yes, she is launching her new book the following night. I decide to attend.
*****
I open the door and there are six people seated. Nellie is on the couch and recognises me immediately. I sit by her and her running monologue begins. She is tired of being Nellie McClung’s granddaughter. Is going to start calling herself Nellie Bligh. She has more cats than she is allowed in her apartment and has buried all her dead ones in the backyard. She will have to dig them up if she ever moves because she won’t be happy without all of her cats around. Peter is gone. Dead? Maybe, but I get the impression he has simply left. She mentions something about a lover and hurting Peter very badly.
When she rises to read from her new collection, the monologue continues. She never reaches the end of a story, choosing, instead, to pick up and follow each thread of a narrative that makes itself known.
Others in attendance try to reroute her dialogue. Try to stop it long enough to read one poem, but there is a joke she must tell us first, for this is how her grandmother began each reading, and despite that she’s heard more than enough about her grandmother, she has always done what her grandmother did. Her grandmother, dear accomplished person that she was, was not, however, the smartest person ever, and Nellie is actually smarter. And she will prove this someday. Now that she has written her stories and her poems, it is her turn to make her mark on the world scene, as her grandmother did.
Nellie writes letters. To everyone, but not just anyone. She corresponds with the Queen, the prime minister, the president, the pope. At one time, her position as Nellie McClung’s granddaughter warranted response. These have now dwindled. Not even the Bronfmann’s - whose jealousy of the publicity her grandmother received, she assures me, caused them to frown upon her family - would respond to her request for a small written piece on what her grandmother did to them to make them behave so badly.
Her father was lawyer. Then a judge. He shot himself in the head in the attic of their home in Edmonton. The world is so cruel sometimes.
Nellie has a short but violent cry. She is happy she is in Vancouver. Only in Vancouver, among her friends, can she be herself. Can she breakdown and cry in public. There is too much family history in Edmonton.
Nellie finally reads a poem. It is about passing beneath the Burrard Street Bridge. The words are placed on the page like a reflection in water. Sometimes I’m so clever she says. And I always pick brilliant titles. I’m not very modest though.
It is to be the only poem she reads. They cannot keep her on track long enough. Lorna, who teaches drawing periodically at the gallery, rises to leave. We stand outside and talk for a bit with the smokers.
Throughout the time Nellie has been speaking, people have arrived and left. Their clothing is typical of the marginally mentally functional. Nothing matches. And some are clearly there for the free food. They stand by the table picking at the cakes and drinking juice, sit for a moment, and then quietly disappear. Troy, a puppeteer, had an accident in 1959 and has not been able to speak correctly since. He met his wife, a European woman of great flamboyant style, in a mental health drop-in centre twenty-five years ago. They were married just recently. (Nellie met Peter while institutionalised, perhaps in Edmonton) Troy speaks through his puppets. It is the only time he has no speech impediment. He can even sing on key through them, something not possible on his own, he says. His wife keeps his puppets in good repair. Makes elaborate clothing for them. They have recently acquired a dog and this, she says, keeps her out of the hospital. Gives her a purpose in life. Someone who relies on her.
A diminutive woman, less than four feet tall, interjects political and artistic comments into the conversation. Like most in attendance, she appears to be extremely bright, but something in the mind just doesn’t quite make all the connections with reality for her.
I finally realise the gallery is a mental health drop in centre. That explains the great variety of art on the walls. It ranges from interesting to childlike. Most in attendance have at least one piece up. They explain their personal significance in response to questions from Tessa, the gallery director.
Ed, Nellie’s publisher, listens intently as Nellie speaks. Tells her it is always interesting when she asks if she rambling too much. His art, too, is displayed. More mature than the rest, simply its inclusion raises the question of his mental state.
Nellie has run out of gas. It is time to leave. She inscribes my book Nellie/Ron and Joseph Campbell. New Friendships.