Broad Is the Way: Stories from Mayerthorpe

By Margaret Norquay

In 1949, Margaret Norquay moved with her new husband, a minister with the United Church of Canada, to Mayerthorpe, in northern Alberta, a village in the centre of what was in those days a pioneer hinterland. Broad Is the Way is a collection of stories from their seven years there. Told with affection and gentle humour, the stories cover the challenges, heartaches, and delights of a young community and a minister and his wife in a very new marriage. Topics include the experience of orphan children sent to work on Western farms, manoeuvring for a restroom downtown for farmers’ wives in need of a place to change their babies while their husbands did business, dealing with the RCMP over liquor found in the church basement, and the generosity of spirit shown by the community to the Norquays. Throughout the book, Margaret Norquay’s indomitable spirit and determination are evident and illustrate her passionate belief in making positive change and having fun while doing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Release date: Aug 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9781554587629

Margaret Norquay

A lifelong pioneer, Margaret Norquay has always been involved in community development, first with Farm Radio Forum and then with the Canadian army, where she served as a welfare officer. Postwar, in Dunnville, she was the first woman in Ontario to be appointed a community recreation director. Her marriage took her to Mayerthorpe, Alberta, as a minister’s wife and community volunteer. Later she wrote documentaries for CBC’s Take Thirty and became the director of studies for Open College, Ryerson.

Book preview

Broad Is the Way

Mayerthorpe, Alberta, circa 1950

Broad Is the Way

Stories from Mayerthorpe

Margaret Norquay

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Norquay, Margaret, 1920–

  Broad is the way: stories from Mayerthorpe / Margaret Norquay.

(Life writing series)

ISBN 978-1-55458-020-0

   1. Norquay, Margaret, 1920– 2. Mayerthorpe (Alta.)—History. 3. Spouses of clergy—Alberta—Mayerthorpe—Biography. 4. Mayerthorpe (Alta.)—Biography.I. Title. II. Series.

FC3699.M39N67 2008   971.23’303092   C2007-907608-4

Cover design by Blakeley. Text design by Catharine Bonas-Taylor.

© 2008 Margaret Norquay

This book is printed on Ancient Forest Friendly paper (100% post-consumer recycled). Printed in Canada

Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

www.wlupress.wlu.ca

Contents

Foreword by Sara Norquay

Preface

1 As the Twig Is Bent

2 Holy Matrimony

3 We Arrive in Mayerthorpe

4 Not by Bread Alone

5 Money Back Guaranteed

6 No Hornets Here

7 Mr. Kringsberg’s Christmas Dinner

8 In a Pinch, Use Tarpaper

9 Sweet Singing in the Choir

10 Nobody Asked Me to Buy a Ticket

11 No 911 in the 1950s

12 Don’t Tell Your Husband Everything

13 Best to Hang On to a Big Jack

14 Glad We Didn’t Have Noah’s Animals

15 Never Mess with the WCTU

16 You Need to Dress Up for a Wedding

17 Purged of Pity and Fear

18 Too Bad They Don’t Brew Beer

19 Scrub Trees May Have Deep Roots

20 Sympathy and Prejudice Come with a Crack on the Head

21 Recycling Gallon Cans

22 Founding Edmonton’s United Community Fund

23 Learning to Be a Woman

Foreword

My mother, Marg Norquay, has always been a storyteller. When I was young, she often said that one day she would write a book. Sometime after she retired for the second or third time, I started asking her to write her stories down. Finally, she took a writing class with Beth Kaplan, and soon the stories poured forth. This book is a selection of what she wrote over the last seven or eight years.

These stories were originally written as individual pieces, so the chapters read as if they were being remembered; the telling of one story reminds the storyteller of the next without strict concern for chronology.

The stories reveal my mother’s slow awakening to an understanding that other people often had expectations of her that she didn’t recognize or didn’t meet. The first story of her upbringing helps explain her later reactions to living as a minister’s wife in Mayerthorpe from 1949 to 1955, when most of the stories take place.

My father, Jim, was born in 1919 and grew up in the town of Conniston, near Sudbury, in Northern Ontario. He went to Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he met my mother. He did his fieldwork as a young divinity student in the Peace River country of Northern Alberta. His love of the people there led him to return to Mayerthorpe, when he accepted his first pastoral charge. In the 1970s, when I travelled there with him to visit his old parishes, we met many people who remembered him and welcomed us into their homes to reminisce.

My mother was born in 1920 and grew up on an acreage near Port Credit, Ontario, which is now part of Mississauga, a suburban city west of Toronto. She served in the army during the Second World War and was the community recreation director for the town of Dunnville, Ontario, before she married Jim. She wrote her MA thesis about her experience in Dunnville.

My parents lived in Mayerthorpe until shortly after my brother was born in 1955. Then they moved to Edmonton. My parents continued to build and run Surprise Lake Camp while they lived in Alberta.

The bear story is one of my favourites, because I remember when it happened. I was old enough to be a camper in the cabin where the tadpoles were kept in the biffy cans, but I slept through it all and was told the story. Many years later, I took my children to see Surprise Lake Camp. It still offers camping experiences to children and young people, and Uncle Bill’s cabin, where our family stayed, is still there.

The Mayerthorpe stories are told as my mother remembers them, and some details, such as the cost of things, have faded from memory with the passing of years. Did the choir gowns cost exactly $350? Did they really charge fifty cents to see the amateur show? When you read about how they got rid of Huh! for $150, you need to know that the car wasn’t sold until after my grandparents had given them a new Austin, a fact that is mentioned in a later story.

If you are not from the area where the stories take place, you might like to know that gumbo is the legendary sticky mud that ungravelled roads turn into after a rainstorm. It has been known to swallow cows and cars, and is one of those elements of northern life, like giant mosquitoes and flesh-eating blackflies, that live on in tall tales and family histories.

In 1962, my parents left Edmonton and moved to Toronto. There they lived and worked in church communities in a large urban setting with much the same concern for people they had in Mayerthorpe. But those stories will have to wait for a book of their own.

Sara Norquay

February 2008

Preface

The title for this collection of stories comes from Matthew 7:13 (King James Version): ... broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.

The stories were originally written for my children. The events described occurred before they were born, or when they were very young. Now, ministers’ wives have their own careers—something unthinkable in the early fifties. The stories portray a time that is no more. However, readers may find some familiar truths.

When I was a young girl, dinnertime at home was spent vigorously discussing politics and economics. Sewing and baking were not emphasized. As a minister’s wife, my contributions to the Ladies’ Aid bake sales that supported the upkeep of the manse were limited to pouring tea. I did want to be involved in my husband’s ministry. I offered to spice up the Aid meetings by arranging for guest speakers who would address the concerns of the wider church and community that I thought, as Christians, we should at least try to alleviate. But this offer was never taken up. I apparently did not fit the mould of a minister’s wife and was often criticized.

However, despite the disapproval expressed by some, there were those who cheered me on. To be sure, they were a minority. But without them there might have been no stories. So my thanks go to all who helped me on the way to destruction.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the many friends, family members, and participants in the events described, without whom there would have been no stories to write. I would especially like to thank the members of Beth Kaplan’s writers’ group, who served as helpful critics over several years. I am also indebted to Ellen Garfield, who assisted in the preparation of the manuscript. Lastly, a thank-you to my daughter, Sara Norquay, who assisted in the editing.

one

As the Twig Is Bent

I was brought up to believe that there was nothing in the world I couldn’t do, provided I was willing to work for it. It was a rather useful belief for a child to have, but as I grew up I began to realize it wasn’t entirely true: I knew there were some things I’d never get to do because I was a woman. But at the time I didn’t want to do any of them, so this knowledge didn’t trouble me.

My mother had more education than most middle-class women of her generation, and more than anyone else in her immediate family. She graduated from Toronto General Hospital as a nurse in 1915, and this training imbued her whole life. She had also taken a six-month course in nutrition at the Toronto Technical School and, thus armed, she felt entirely competent to bring up a healthy family. In 1916 she married my father, a struggling young lawyer, and my oldest sister, the first of five children, was born one year later. We were all what were then dubbed Dr. Brown’s babies, meaning that Mother followed implicitly the instructions of the current leading Toronto pediatrician. He advised my mother that I was a delicate child who already knew too much and that I should forego kindergarten and not attend school until my seventh birthday.

With a birthday in April, I was seven and a half by the time I entered junior first, now called grade one. By that time, thanks to tutoring by my older sister, I had memorized word for word all of the first primer: The little red hen she found some wheat. She called the cat. She called the dog. She called the pig. Who will help me plant my wheat? Not I, said the cat—Not I, said the dog—Not I, said the pig. When I got to school, I was elated when I seemed to be ahead of the whole class in reading. However, I didn’t know which group of letters referred to which words, a situation my shocked teacher finally discovered. One day, with my eyes firmly fixed on the page, I read the wrong story. I did manage to pass at the end of the year, but I was the only one in the class whose handwriting was never judged good enough to earn a notebook, a problem that put me in constant conflict with my teacher, Miss Merton. I was sure I’d inherited my handwriting from my father, whose writing was notoriously bad. To prove the point, I insisted that when a note had to be written to my teacher explaining the reason for an absence, my father would write it for me. But Miss Merton didn’t think writing was hereditary. The idea that I was delicate followed me till the end of high school. It may have been fuelled by the sorrow of my mother over the death of our baby brother who died of spinal meningitis, a death my mother mourned for many years. But as a child, I always thought it was because I looked like Aunty Gladys, my father’s much-loved sister, said to have died of a heart attack. However, I was sure she died of a broken heart, because she wanted to marry a Roman Catholic and the family wouldn’t let her. I never believed I was delicate, but the myth robbed me of two more years of school, one after a bout of strep throat, when I should have been in grade two, and another in high school when I had scarlet fever. The result was that when I went back to school, I worked doubly hard, determined to make up the lost time.

At the end of my first year at school, we moved to the country because my father thought that was the best place to bring up a family. He built a house on a ten-acre lot, a quarter of a mile east of Highway 10, on the old Middle Road, which later became the Queen Elizabeth Way. We moved there just after the 1929 stock