Trafford Publishing: Women Who Lived and Loved North of 60

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Women Who Lived and Loved North of 60

by Toni Graeme

160 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #00-0114; ISBN 1-55212-449-5; US$19.00, C$23.95, EUR15.60, £10.80

Short stories from women who pioneered Canada's north from 1937 to the present, who wove the social fabric that helped them in the challenges and to celebrate the joys. There were bears or wolves threatening the family or food supplies, awe of the magic aurora borealis, the land, and best of all warm loving friendships that will be in their hearts forever.

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About the Book

Here are 31 short stories with many black and white photos, written by women who went north to work, for adventure, or to join a fiancé or husband. The stories span from 1937 to the present. They were cooks, nurses, teachers, and wives. Some married there, many had babies there, most worked in and out of home. The experience changed each one. They embraced life in the north with its difficulties and joys and came away feeling far richer for their experience. They had adventures with bears or wolves, they had stories about honey buckets, no indoor plumbing or fresh milk, and ball gowns for formal dances and doing their laundry in a bucket with water that had already served for each family member's bath. They brought warmth to the north and gentleness to the otherwise harsh environment. Journey through the north and the years with these wonderful warm, brave and resourceful women as they recall their lives there. You will wish you could have known them.

Read an interview with Toni Graeme at bookreviewcafe.com

Reviews
These wonderful heartfelt stories bring you into the past of women lucky enough to have these awesome experiences North of 60.
Reading about these courageous and powerful women brought me to think back to the strong and brilliant women in my family. Growing up in the early 1900's, my great-great grandmother would walk to the mills for work everyday, through snow, rain, sleet, frigid cold and sweltering heat. Then raising her children in the depression and facing other problems during those times.
These women say they are very fortunate to have the experience of being in this area of Canada. Some met their true loves there. Some raised families. But they all had the time of their lives.
If you are interested in the earlier times, and a different part of the world from yours, then pick up this book!
-Lisa, on authorsden.com
Toni, it's been years since I was in Alaska, too many years... but it haunts me still. And the northern lights, aurora borealis, just as you describe it... lights my dreams. Thank-you for the reminder. I will be looking for your book.
-Zinta Aistars, Kalamazoo
I sent my sister this book thinking she might like it, she lives in England in a small village. The book has done the rounds of her friends and she phoned to say that all thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, because many of the women had girl friends who came to Canada as war brides it was a delight for them to hear how some other English women had fared. The exoticness of such a far away place was also a factor.
-Eliza Hemingway, author of The Butcher's Dog
I read Women Who Lived and Loved North of 60 with considerable delight. It was like being invited to a tea party of long time Northern friends. The women's voices were genuine and exactly as I would have expected from the diverse range of contributors Toni has been able to track down and talk into writing for her.
One of the small sadnesses on has as "progress" comes here is that 'the North gets further south every year'. Now with phones and faxes and internet connections some of the special qualities of Northern living deserve special; attention. Toni's book gives a genuine and familiar voice to Northern women, and it is a pleasure to read."
-Anne Crawford, long time Northerner, Mother of three and Cabinet Secretary and Deputy Minister to the Premier, Government of Nunavut
from Friday December 22, 2000 Yellowknifer by Michele LeTourneau
Definitely, the motivation behind Women Who Lived and Loved North of 60 was to fill a gap in Northern literature. There are many tomes that fill the shelves, telling tales of bush pilots, miners, adventurers and explorers.
One hardly hardly hears of the equally adventurous women who worked here, raised babies here and created homes for their families.
Most of the stories give only the briefest glance of the writer's experience, a brief overview, if you will, which left me wanting more -- more detail, more substance, more personality.
Perhaps Graeme's effort is a first step, much in the way the anthology itself came about.
At an Arctic Luncheon Club in Victoria, where former Northerners gather to reminisce on a twice-yearly basis, Graeme noted that few of the women spoke of their experience.
At her prompting, they began, and Graeme realized what rich lives they had lived in the North.
It's to be hoped that other women will take on the challenge Graeme throws out with this slim volume, and write in greater depth about the challenges, joys and adventures they encountered North of 60.

from Tuesday December 5, 2000 Victoria Times-Colonist

Women of the North: Victoria writer's book tells women's stories of rugged, yet alluring land
     For adventurer Toni Graeme, the call of Canada's North began when she was just a child. In 1947, her mother took her and her brother and sister to Dawson City for a holiday via a Princess ship, the White Pass & Railway and a paddlewheel riverboat that is now beached in Whitehorse for tourists to view.
     Graeme still remembers the soft summer skies and breezes and the smell of chamomile growing wild.
     When, in 1978, she felt restless and unchallenged by city life and her work for the Vancouver Resources Board, she awoke one morning inspired to strike out for the Yukon.
     "I thought I would atrophy if I didn't go somewhere," she recalls. "I have a curiousity about the world and about people."
     She pulled up stakes mid-life (she'd raised seven daughters), climbed into her station wagon and began a 10-year adventure to live in Whitehorse and Yellowknife.
     She found solitude, peace and spirit as well as satisfying jobs - helping open a transition house for battered women; as a counsellor travelling to Indian and Inuit settlements to discuss education and training; and as executive director of the Women's Secretariat in Yellowknife advising government on matters of concern to women.
     Graeme, who now lives in Victoria, says she's always been led to work on behalf of women. Her latest effort in that vein is the new self-published book Women Who Lived and Loved North of 60, a collection of stories by 30 women who went north for adventure or to accompany their men.
     The idea began at the Arctic Luncheon Club in Victoria. Members, former northerners, meet twice yearly to reminisce. Graeme noticed that few female members went to the microphone to chat about their lives. She suggested the mike be brought to each table. As women's stories began to tumble out, she realized they'd lived lives rich with adventure and friendships.
     "It was like sitting in a circle in a room and hearing them tell their stories."
     That is, indeed, the charm of this book.
     She invited women to set their stories down on paper and advertised in the Northern Miner and elsewhere seeking articles.
     Kay Muir first experienced life North of 60 in the summer of 1937 living in a tent on the shore of Gordon Lake with her husband Ken, a mining engineer.
     "We were constantly surprised by visitors arriving in very official looking planes - one day it was the governor general accompanied by a bevy of newspapermen including Pierre Berton and Gordon Sinclair and we all shared lunch in the canvas-covered cookhouse."
     Marnie Drury, a nurse, tells of her life in Whitehorse in 1944. Her first house had so little water that she bathed her two children first, took her turn in the water and then washed the floor with the bath water and used the leftovers to flush the toilet.
     While the conditions were primitive, life was not without social graces. Drury writes "In the South, my idea of a tea had been egg salad sandwiches and chocolate cake. You cannot imagine those Yukon teas! Seven or eight different kinds of sandwiches exquisitely served on Royal Derby and Doulton plates, seven or eight kinds of cakes...Many a young bride had relapses just thinking about giving a tea."
     "One of my favorite memories is of having a dinner at the home of one of the 'pillars' of society. After a sumptuous repast, one of the guests quietly asked to be excused to powder her nose. The host immediately rose, pushed aside his chair, lifted trap door to the basement, and ushered his guest down to the loo. That's Yukon for you."
     Betty Mackie recalls selling the contents of her rented house in Dawson City for the owner in 1950. She got a call from the town's best known madam (late of Paris, France) saying she would like to come and look at beds. Betty and her friends couldn't understand what she wanted to do with all the beds because she already had some.
     "Everyone agreed it was a puzzle, but our prim bank manager's wife had the solution," wrote Betty. "'Oh, I think they need them all for the men; and the women themselves just hop from bed to bed, don't they?' she said."
     Hilda McIntyre, who was a camp cook north of Yellowknife in 1945, recounts the bear who helped himself to the fragrant loaves of bread she had set out to cool. Hilda first shut the door of the cook shack and dragged the dining table to bar the bear, but her anger overcame her fear.
     "Grabbing an armful of stove wood, I climbed onto the table, opened the canvas flap above the door and began throwing sticks at the bear...the bear appeared confused and tore at the ground in anger sending up showers of dirt. Just when I thought he was about to attack he backed off."
     The picture that emerges from the book is one of frequent hardship but a deep sense of community. Canada's North fosters independence, sharing, caring and a certain reverence of nature.
     Mary Saich was a teacher at an Anglican residential school and recalled donning mukluks and parkas and heading off to midnight service on Christmas Eve.
     Sue Shirley takes you with her aboard her three-wheel vehicle as she bounces over Arctic tundra during an ice-fishing trip with Inuit friends from Rankin Inlet in 1992. You grit your teeth with her as they jolt across the frozen land.
     You watch patiently with her as she eases her hook into a hole in the ice - "the lake bottom [a] rich tawny ochre, the rocks on the bottom also brown and ageless reflecting their anonymity and the water blue-green." You even feel the cold as she stands and squats repeatedly to force the blood through her limbs.
     There are constant references to the magic and mystery of the northern lights.
     Brenda Cox, who was living in Lake Harbour on Baffin Island in 1972, wrote: "We dressed in our warm parkas and stepped outside to view the panorama as we often did for entertainment in the evenings...The sky was a deep royal blue, which made it seem more vivid in contrast to the snow...Suddenly as we watched, the sky exploded with northern lights in a wild display of bright pink, green, and red - whipping across the sky in long perpendicular and swirling motions. They were everywhere at once. We didn't know where to look. We were caught in some magic spell that took us right out of time and place."

About the Author

Toni Graeme, born and bred in Vancouver, British Columbia, of adventuresome Scottish stock, is a rolling stone gathering little moss as she wends her way through the world. She has lived in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, US, UK and India. In the North she traveled extensively and came to know and love the people and the land, within the tree line as well as on the barren lands. She and her partner built a house at Prelude Lake, 25 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife (in the bush), and as a passionate gardener, grew an abundance of vegetables and flowers, and raised Samoyed dogs. Her organically fed chickens produced many dozens of eggs for her family and others. Toni now lives in Victoria, BC.
In Yukon, Toni waitressed, was a secretary, was then the Resource Person for the Yukon Status of Women in 1978/79. After moving to the NWT, she was a secretary briefly, then Women's Employment Counsellor for Yellowknife, the Central and High Arctic for the federal government, CEIC, now HRDC and co-ordinated the training-hiring selection of northerners for the Zama-Norman Wells pipeline. In 1984 Toni was chosen to be the NWT government's first Executive Director of the Women's Secretariat and Status of Women Council from 1984 to 1988 She also served seven years as the first woman on the NWT Apprenticeship Board.
Visit Toni's website at www.tonigraeme.com

Introduction

    Canada's North has long held a fascination for many people the world over, most of whom have never ventured there but love to hear and read about it. Their imaginations soar with images of polar bears, the aurora borealis, wide empty expanses of land, ice bergs, ice floes and igloos for homes. Here is a collection stories written by women who lived North of the 60th latitude, as far back as 1937. Some went up to work, or for adventure, or with a husband or fiancé who was transferred by the RCMP, federal government or an oil and gas or mining company. Many went for short periods and soon returned south; others went for short periods and stayed a long time. Their experiences in the North affected each and every one of them.
     Each one embraced life in the North and felt richer for the experience, facing and dealing with the difficulties they encountered - loneliness, feeling isolated and missing their familiar culture and lifestyle seemed to help them mature and perhaps, reading their stories, we see they lived life more fully.
     So much about the north has been written about and by men, but these are special stories from the women's perspective. They, who often worked for a living as the men did, had the primary responsibility for birthing and raising the family, (often in his absence since travel was a requirement in many jobs) as well as making their cabin, tent or house, a hearth and home. They initiated community support systems. They brought a warmth and softness to this otherwise harsh environment. They wove the social fabric of life in northern Canada that still exists today. Unsung heroes they have been, on Canada's northern frontier.
     The authors of these stories are not professional writers; they are chroniclers, and each writes in her own way of the experiences and feelings particular to her life and view. The book's style is reminiscent of the talking circle found in native societies which respects the unique way in which each person presents themselves.
     One quickly learns in isolated communities to draw on and develop one's own personal resources, being careful not to burn bridges in relationships because you never know when you might need others, or they you. There are few resources so one needs to be independent and mentally and emotionally healthy. A good sense of humour doesn't hurt either.
     A multitude of thanks go to each and every woman who has contributed her remembrances and photographs to be shared with those less fortunate all over the world :) My thanks also go to the NWT Archives office at the Prince of Wales Museum in Yellowknife, NWT, for the three photos that accompany Mary Saich's story. Thanks also to Bud Carroll, for his editing support - he is the author of The Materialistic Wall, with Trafford Publishing.
        Toni Graeme
        Victoria, B.C. Summer 2002

Catalogue Information