The March of Days: Optimistic Realism through the Seasons of Life

By Patricia M. Boyer

Although Patricia M. Boyer won a scholarship to McMaster University with the highest mathematics marks in Ontario and graduated at age 19, literature and languages were her specialty. She first worked as a public librarian, next as a secondary school teacher, then as a newspaper editor. A community leader in arts and theatre, Patricia was devoted to human rights action in her local community and around the world, church work, drama, the education of children with disabilities, and music.

Each week she wrote a newspaper column inspired by episodes in the world around her, both local and global. She rewarded readers through articles infused with learning from literature, astute sensibility to human psychology, and balanced insights on the tragedies and comedies of life’s passing parade.

Patricia Boyer summed up her approach to life as "optimistic realism".

This collection of the best of her celebrated columns, organized through the twelve months of the year or "the march of days", includes reflections on seasonal celebrations, changing atmospheres of nature, and calendar milestones in the human cycle. A number of these concise yet poignant writings will move many readers with nostalgia as they evoke the happy events and tragic developments of the Sixties and Seventies. All of them, however, convey the wisdom of a woman whose message of optimistic realism endures like a timeless guide to living a satisfying life in the real world today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Oct 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9781926577265

Patricia M. Boyer

Patricia M. Boyer, who died in 1978 at age 66 while working on her novel, The Matriarch, was a public librarian, a secondary school teacher, newspaper writer, and editor. She became a community leader in arts and theatre, church work, and the education of children with disabilities. She authored the book Looking at Our Century. Both in her local Muskoka community and in the wider world, she was actively devoted to human rights and the work of Amnesty International.

Book preview

The March of Days

Optimistic Realism

Through the Seasons of Life

Patricia M. Boyer

This collection of ninety columns by Patricia Boyer, chosen from among thousands she wrote during her lifetime, range from changing atmospheres of nature to calendar milestones in the human cycle. She openly embraced the tragedies and comedies of life’s passing parade. Her columns, enriched with learning from literature, are invested with astute sensibility to human psychology.

The arrangement of this sampling through the year’s twelve-month march of days was devised by Patricia’s eldest daughter, Victoria. It provides a refreshing perspective on the interconnectedness of human society’s categories of time and seasonal cycles.

These poignant offerings may move older readers with nostalgia by evoking spectacular events and tragic developments of the Sixties and Seventies, but readers of all ages will find special light here simply because in most cases the subject matter, though human in scale, is universal in application.

Patricia Boyer lived her life-long quest to be a free woman in harmony with society for sixty-six fulsome years. The March of Days is her indelible signature left for posterity. Despite her diverse range, these concise offerings to Patricia’s wide readership convey the consistent wisdom of a woman whose message of optimistic realism remains a timeless guide to leading a fulfilling life in the real world today.

© J. Patrick Boyer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, stored, transmitted or reproduced by any method or in any format without the written permission of the publisher or a valid licence from Access Copyright.

Blue Butterfly Book Publishing Inc.

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First edition, soft cover: 2009

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUGING IN PUBLICATION

Boyer, Patricia M.

The march of days : optimistic realism through the seasons of life /

Patricia M. Boyer.

Includes index.

Includes articles written as newspaper columns 1971–1978.

ISBN 978-0-9784982-1-4

Electronic edition, ePub format:2010

ISBN 978-1-926577-26-5

1. Boyer, Patricia M. 2. Journalists—Ontario—Biography.

3. Muskoka (Ont. : District municipality)—Biography. I. Title.

FC3095.M88B68 2008       971.3’1604092       C2008-907267-7

Design and typesetting by Gary Long / Fox Meadow Creations

Photographs from the Boyer Family Archives unless otherwise noted

Front cover photograph by Gary Long

No public money was received or solicited for publication of

this book. Blue Butterfly Books thanks its patrons for their

support in the marketplace.

This book is dedicated to everyone

who strives to renew their community

through the uplifting richness of culture.

Foreword

What Writing and Journalism Is Supposed to Be

by Pamela Wallin

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

I always thought Sydney J. Harris, a U.S. journalist and author who wrote the syndicated column Strictly Personal from 1944 to 1986, hit the mark succinctly when he said those words.

As I settled in for my third flight of the week, I found that rare moment of quiet and calm, and therefore the opportunity to peruse a rare copy of a collection of columns written by my friend Patrick Boyer’s mother. He’d given me the book because Patricia Mary Boyer and I share some of life’s experiences: both daughters of Saskatchewan, both writers of columns for small-town papers, and both realists as described by Mr. Harris above.

Reading her artfully crafted words, it was as if I had magically tapped back into that rich vein of the common, shared nature of the stories of our lives. She wrote of the simple joy of reading a garden catalogue and the hope it inevitably inspires about tomorrow, and spring, and new beginnings. Her treatise on the ballpoint pen evokes memories of an earlier time before technology ruled our lives and when writing longhand actually gave you time to think rather than just to react. And I both cringed and laughed when she conjured up the days before discipline was deemed a bad thing and teachers used the dreaded strap to rule their roosts. Yes, stories of everything from falling stars to our nation’s dream—the moments of our lives that merge to make our memories.

But when Patricia wrote to mark the birthday of Charles Dickens, she reminded me of what writing and journalism is supposed to be about.

Dickens once said that what is meant by knowledge of the world is simply an acquaintance with the infirmities of man. In other words, to be truly knowledgeable we must recognize human frailty. And that’s how I always saw my work as a journalist—the art of collecting and telling stories of the human condition. And that was exactly what Patricia did in her writing, with clarity and joy—as you can now discover for yourself.

When I wrote my memoir Since You Asked in 1998, I described the odd mixture of feelings or outlooks I had experienced as a young woman in the Sixties as this curious blend of optimism and cynicism that characterized the times. Little did I know then that at the same time elsewhere in Canada, a young man my age and his mother were discussing the character of those times as well, or that she would identify the same curious blend of optimism mixed with realism. Whether Patricia Boyer and I used the word cynicism or realism, the same idea was being conveyed: we need to keep our eyes wide open, even as we advance with an uplifting spirit of hope about what we can accomplish.

Patricia believed that idealists are good for the world. Thankfully her words and her spirit have been preserved for another generation in this new Blue Butterfly Books edition of The March of Days. We should cherish that.

Introduction

A Woman and Her Words

by J. Patrick Boyer

In presenting more than seven dozen newspaper columns written by Patricia M. Boyer, or PMB as she signed them, published between 1971 and 1978, the final decade of her life, this book offers just a sampler, really, chosen from among thousands of articles she wrote in many publications during her lifetime. If we inscribe our personal signatures on life by the words we use and the actions we take, this book’s contents help crystallize one woman’s clear legacy. Each PMB column, notes community activist Judith Brocklehurst, showed her warmth, humour and good sense and was read by many of her readers as though it were a letter from a friend. Her daughter-in-law, Corinne Boyer, remarked after reading one of her columns, It’s just like having a conversation with her.

PATRICIA M. BOYER (1912–1978) blended her interests with the needs of others as a public librarian, secondary school teacher, Sunday school superintendent, Girl Guide leader, choir member, drama director, journalist, author, newspaper editor, loving wife, and mother of three. She authored Looking at Our Century, a Bracebridge centennial book, and a memoir of her husband, Robert Boyer’s, career in public life, My Bob... and Muskoka’s. Patricia was writing The Matriarch, a novel, when she died.

These poignant offerings, recapturing the flavour of midtwentieth century when they first appeared, can reconnect older readers to their earlier selves as they evoke memories of spectacular events, heroic acts, and tragic developments in the Sixties and Seventies. They can stir gentle smiles of personal reminiscence, too, since Patricia’s interests ranged widely, from Camelot to ballpoint pens, from Hogmanay to the pecking order of birds. Yet just as easily, new and younger readers connect with Patricia’s writing because her subject matter, though human in scale and rooted in the particular, is universal in application. These columns are anything but time-trapped or local.

Her signature words connected Patricia’s hopeful spirit of optimism to the grounding force of realism in ways that touched people personally. Patricia Boyer believed in strongly supporting the positive attitudes of community life, says Brocklehurst, and there is little, in these pieces, of impotent grumbling at those abuses in life around her which she viewed with concern. She was not one to grouch about anti-social behaviour: drugs, drink, vandalism or whatever, though she saw it all around her and was concerned about the damage it caused. Her response was rather to give positive encouragement to all efforts to better the life of the community: be it family life, volunteer work, education, gardening, tree-planting, or research into Muskoka’s historic past.

PATRICIA AND GENEVIEVE, GENEVIEVE AND PATRICIA. The two non-twin but ever dressed-alike Johnson sisters hold posies in photographer J. Dixon’s Toronto studio [top right]. In a gleeful picture taken by their mother, Genevieve and Patricia—Paddy and Patsy— display their prized Campbell dolls from a farm gate near Whitby, Ontario [bottom right].

AFAMILY ON THE MOVE. Patricia plays checkers with her younger sister, Stephanie, on the Persian carpet in the formal parlour of Westlawn, the family home in Bracebridge. The Johnson family—sisters Genevieve, Patricia, and Stephanie, and parents George and Lillie, had moved frequently, following George’s teaching positions, from Ontario to Saskatchewan and back. In 1924 they landed in Bracebridge, where George became high school principal and later public schools inspector.

Having had little opportunity to put down roots in a single place, the Johnsons had anchored themselves to the values and characteristics they transported with them—self-reliance, religious devotion, gardening, and music appreciation. The arts of dramatic presentation, a forté of Lillie and the two eldest daughters, were portable enthusiasms too. The Johnsons also travelled in the inspiring company of great authors: Lillie’s prized collection of Shakespeare and Dickens, Shelly and Keats, all in well-read leather-bound editions; George’s texts on botany and geology and the worldly-wise poetry of Rupert Brooke and Robert W. Service; and the girls’ numerous books. Wherever they went, this culture of a self-referencing family travelled with them.

Optimistic realism became a dynamic force in her life, shaping Patricia’s outlook on the world and all its chaotic swirlings around and within her. This imperative to be simultaneously an optimist and a realist propelled her to promote artistic expression, from her published reviews of plays that were intelligently constructive and avidly read by young actors as well as the wider community, to establishing the highly successful annual Muskoka Arts and Crafts show as a vehicle for renewing the community through culture and allowing individuals their moment of triumph as creators.

Her optimistic realism inspired innovative work in establishing, in Bracebridge’s new Victoria Street School, educational facilities and programs for young people with disabilities. It drove her to shed an early religious orientation that was narrow, in order to embrace ecumenical outreach that leapt across the old boundaries of denominational prejudice. It saw her take a lonely yet activist role to fight for human rights, whether that meant providing practical help to a Blackfoot Indian named John Leason suffering racial discrimination by police in her own town, or founding with like-minded citizens the Bracebridge chapter of Amnesty International to seek freedom for dissenters languishing in far-away dank prisons of totalitarian regimes.

This outlook of optimistic realism, just as naturally, found expression in her newspaper columns. Despite Patricia’s diverse range, these concise weekly offerings to her readers uniformly convey the wisdom of a woman whose message of optimistic realism remains a timeless guide, helpful to leading a fulfilling life in the real world today. Patricia Boyer’s writing, by openly embracing the tragedies and comedies of life’s passing parade, is enriched with learning from literature and invested with an astute sensibility to human psychology.

The person behind these newspaper columns was a wise woman who chose words with care and shot them like arrows of hope into the future. She herself knew how to take true aim. Her reviews of the Straw Hat Players summer productions at Port Carling, which she wrote late into the night after the first opening so they could appear in the weekly paper while the production under review still had several days to run, were informative and constructive, invested with her own knowledge of the play and the dramatic arts. After her death, Muskoka Summer Theatre dedicated a production to her. In Toronto, when I was doing theatre-related legal work for director-producer Michael Ayoub and he made the connection that I was her son, he declared, with some emotion, Patricia Boyer was really the only one in Muskoka who understood what our theatre company was trying to create, and her analysis of it was both a support and an encouragement to improve.

CLOSELY CONNECTED WOMEN. Patricia thrived in a family whose women strongly supported and inspired each other by their individualistic careers, even while fulfilling traditional roles as wives and mothers.

Linked with Patricia from left to right at a family summer home at Pleasant Point, Lake Sturgeon, in 1937 are: her cousin Ray Burridge, who married actor, artist, and clothing designer Everett Staples and rose to the top of her ranks in North America as an interior designer; Patricia; her aunt Mabel Burridge, who married athlete Arthur Burridge, credited for introducing the forward pass into Canadian football and for whom McMaster University’s athletic complex is named, but who became prominent herself as an antique dealer and head of the Canadian Antique Dealers Association; her grandmother Allie Hamilton Senior, whose husband, W.C. Senior, operated a successful tailor shop on Toronto’s Yonge Street and travelled Canada as a lay preacher raising funds for Baptist churches, while she was herself active in Baptist circles; her mother, Lillie; her aunt Etta Hamilton, who would live to 100; and her cousin Jill Burridge, who later married CBC Radio newscaster Rex Loring but who would pursue her own career at CFRB radio in Toronto.

Patricia’s optimistic realism comes through in many ways in her columns. Everyday episodes of life are lifted into the higher realm of written experience and examined for their symbolism and helpful meanings. The urge to create ideas, images, inspirations on paper often found her at her typewriter late into the night, family duties done and social obligations over, the writer’s drive unfulfilled.

Even so, writing was sometimes a duty to be performed, as anyone who writes for newspapers and knows the relentless advance of deadlines can attest. And in writing a regular column every week, even the most sage and literate person is sometimes more inspired, sometimes less. Yet it was through the regular writing for the newspaper that, year after year, my mother had a focus and a channel for her life as a writer. For her, as for any of us living in the newspaper world, an event had not really taken place until it had been written up and printed in the paper.

While going out of her way in many private gestures and public acts, including writing personal letters and articles in the newspaper, to celebrate the constructive accomplishments of others, Patricia did most of her own work without fanfare. There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit, she once advised. On another occasion, when we faced a barrage of criticism over some now-forgotten initiative, she proffered another bit of motherly wisdom: Only take to heart things that can make you better.

GRADUATING FROM UNIVERSITY AT AGE 19. Having entered McMaster University on a scholarship for achieving highest marks in mathematics in Ontario, Patricia graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1931, together with her older sister Genevieve who had been held back in her schooling to accompany Patricia like a twin. Their parents, George Johnson and Lillie Senior, had themselves both graduated from McMaster in 1905. Photo: HUBERT BERNSTEIN

ORATOR AND DEBATER. At McMaster University, Patricia displayed real intensity in debating, reflected even in her expression here. In 1933 when defeating a