The Longest Adventure

By Belva Boroditsky Thomas

Author Belva Boroditsky Thomas loves adventure. She looks for adventure. She creates adventure. She yearns for adventure. Thomas may not climb the Himalayas or search for sunken treasure, but shes always ready to take on the forces of nature working through her life and her relationships.

In The Longest Adventure, Thomas shares her life adventure, beginning with her birth in 1929.

Growing up in a warm, self-reliant, Yiddish-speaking community in Winnipeg, Canada. She became aware early on of the world her parents came from and the wider world around her she could move into if she tried. Leaving both a religious and richly cultural community for an operatic career with the Arts Council Opera Group and the Glyndebourne Opera Festival in Great Britain, she discovered the richness to be found in the music of the great composers and became a promoter of this art form for the rest of her working years.

Marriage to a Welsh teacher of English and a seeker of his own spiritual path in Subud and motherhood with five gifted children was followed by entrepreneurial social work in the creation and development of a community cultural organization, the Preville Fine Arts Centre. She served as chairwoman of the regional school commission that introduced the French immersion program to Canada.

This memoir narrates the adventurous story of one woman who took a leap from one world to another, a plunge from one career to another, and a step from religion to humanism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491739228

Belva Boroditsky Thomas

Belva Boroditsky Thomas was born to Russian Jewish immigrants and was educated in Winnipeg. She married a Welsh teacher of English and a seeker of his own spiritual path, raised five children, created a fine arts centre in Montreal’s suburbia, and was elected chairwoman of a regional school board.

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THE LONGEST ADVENTURE

Copyright © 2014 Belva Boroditsky Thomas.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

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and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-3921-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3922-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014912432

iUniverse rev. date: 07/17/2014

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1    Adventures Of Chance And Learning

Chapter 2    Adventures Into Auntiehood

Chapter 3    Adventures Into Chance Occurrences

Chapter 4    Adventure By Experiment

Chapter 5    Adventures Into Harmonies

Chapter 6    Adventure Through Change

Chapter 7    Adventures Into Singing

Chapter 8    Adventures Of Great Intensity

Chapter 9    Adventures Abroad

Chapter 10    The Geneva Adventure

Chapter 11    Adventure Into Exciting Incidents

Chapter 12    An Adventure Like No Other

Chapter 13    An Expanding Adventure

Chapter 14    Adventure Into Maturity

Chapter 15    Adventure Into Marriage

Chapter 16    Adventures Into Parenthood

Chapter 17    Adventure Into Family Building

Chapter 18    Adventures Into Domestic Dynamics

Chapter 19    Adventures In Search Of The Spiritual

Chapter 20    Adventures Into The Countryside

Chapter 21    Adventures Into The World Around Us

Chapter 22    Adventure Into Community

Chapter 23    Adventure Into The Middle Years

Chapter 24    Adventures With A Country House

Chapter 25    Cameo Of A Brother Much Loved

Chapter 26    Cameo Of A First-Born

Chapter 27    An Adventure With Rain-Making

Chapter 28    Melissa’s Adult Years

Chapter 29    Adventures Through Travel

Chapter 30    Adventures With A Second Child

Chapter 31    Adventures With A Brave Woman

Chapter 32    Adventures Of An Organizer

Chapter 33    Adventure With An Angel

Chapter 34    At Last, It’s A Boy!

Chapter 35    Adventures Into Residences

Chapter 36    The Winding Down Adventure

Chapter 37    The Final Adventures

Chapter 38    Operational Adventures

Postscript

Bontsha The Silent

Mezuzah

Teachers 19th Century Contract

Letter To Bronfman

The Bean Conspiracy

A leap from one world to another,—

A plunge from one career to another—

A step from Judaism to humanism at a time

when few young people were doing it.

* * *

This memoir is dedicated to my family

The two Magnificent Ms—

Melissa and Michael

The two Rallying Rs—

Ruth and Raphael

The two Vibrant and Versatile Vs—

Virginia and Veronica

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Introduction

A ghostwriter could have been invited to tell this story. It would have been better organized and more coolly worded but readers would have been cheated of the taste that only the real storyteller can impart. In 2010, I began to record some of my most vivid memories. An increasingly bad tremor in my hands made it next to impossible to type anything even at a snail’s pace so I used a voice recognition program that recorded what came out of a churning mind. I imagined an accepting robot I named Hortensia entombed in the computer, entering the narrative as I spoke. I was able to use my hands to correct the text with the help of my granddaughter, Ema, who taught me something about the machine’s technology.

A few weeks before I began this work, playing Scrabble with my eldest granddaughter Becky, I was asked about my favorite piece of music. Summertime by George Gershwin was the song that was deepest in me. It was the song I would sing on the coldest nights of the winter while I was crossing the frozen Red River in Winnipeg on my way to and from school or youth activities. I would sing it over and over until I got to the other side. It was the freest and happiest sound I’d ever made, and I was glad that I was alone with no one listening.

I found two recordings on Google and introduced Becky to Ella Fitzgerald’s and Leontyne Price’s performances and we discussed the differences. The first was that of an expressive jazz singer, and the second, in the rich, full-bodied voice of an opera singer. I shared highlights of my musical passions and she was moved to say, Bobbeh, I would love to know more about your life! Would you consider writing it down so that my cousins and I could read about what you experienced in your lifetime? Just that week I had joined a writer’s circle at the Cummings Center after a morning exercise class whose motto was Use it—or lose it!

Aware of the power and effectiveness of my new communication tools, I wasn’t surprised when memories I thought forgotten rose up to be relived and recorded. One night my husband Michael and I were watching a film of the life of Kathleen Ferrier, the great British contralto who studied, as I did, with Roy Henderson in London. I remembered seeing her leave his studio before I entered, and observed the loving relationship between this fine artist and her great teacher. It was wonderful to hear excerpts from her performances with Bruno Walter and the Vienna Symphony in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde which she made famous in the 1950s. We heard her too in the role of Orpheus in Gluck’s opera where her dark luscious voice suited itself naturally to the male role.

We saw her last televised performance at the Covent Garden Opera House just before her death of breast cancer at the age of forty-three. Something rose in my throat and made me gasp for breath when they flashed the date on the screen, February 3rd, 1953. I saw her standing on that huge stage surrounded by robed priests and priestesses and heard her superb singing of the aria Euridice. I called out, I was there! I was there at that last performance! I was sitting in the third balcony of the opera house and could see Ferrier falter on her feet as she sang and almost fall forward. Two tall chorus members caught her by the shoulders and propped her up as she continued her performance. I had to go backstage to offer a comforting word. I stood in the dark with a host of other Ferrier admirers, silently awaiting Kathleen’s departure. When the stage door finally opened, a group of policemen were carrying her on a stretcher, blanketed heavily from the cold and the prying eyes of the public.

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Another memory was stirred when we were watching a documentary on the history of the opera house at Glyndebourne. We were taken on a tour of the building with its Green Room where large parties and meetings were held. I remembered the two summers I spent at that magical festival where I would meet fellow musicians and staff and where Michael and I would sit around to gossip with members of the cast. At the end of my second year, Mr. Christie, the owner, hosted an informal buffet and dance to thank all the performers and workers who had made that season such a success. Proud to be in such distinguished company, I drank more than my share of Cheers, Le-chaims, Skols, and Iechyd das—to the embarrassment of my boyfriend! I danced passionately with and without a partner. A serious gentleman with a receding hairline and a look of learning approached me and offered to swing me around the floor. He was too good on his feet to be an Englishman, and I was good enough on my feet to keep up with him. When the music stopped, he looked down at me and said rather pompously, Let me introduce myself. My name is Bronowski! I replied, Very good! My name is Boroditsky! Years later, I learned that he was the well-known physicist we saw on television being interviewed as a member of the American H-bomb team. I told my children who were keeping abreast of programs of scientific discovery, Ah yes, I danced with that Dr. Bronowski!" I doubt very much that they were impressed, but I hadn’t forgotten it!

Having spent many years striving to make a difference in the world, I finally had to tell my family and friends what I’m about. I have been a shrinking violet all these years, biting my tongue and keeping my thoughts to myself. In order to keep my fellow human beings appreciative of my presence among them, I played my role as a performer to be liked. I saw myself as an actress whose purpose was to please an uninterested audience attending a huge play, and to help people recognize the valuable actor they saw before them and marvel at her good behavior and fine talent. At other times I described myself to myself as an obedient ant carrying my load together with millions of other ants in the universe endeavoring to build the anthills needed to house us all. This connects with my philosophy about protecting the environment. For the last five decades, I have felt the need to recycle every scrap of plastic, glass, metal and paper that I find on this cluttered planet.

So why am I starting to put it all down on paper at this stage? Because it’s been a productive and responsible life, to be recorded as the memoir of an adventuress so that my grandchildren and friends can remember me with smiles, and even a little bit of laughter.

Recently, on the return from a Vancouver visit to our son, we sat next to a broad, red-faced and unassuming man who told us that he had flown from Yellowknife to join the flight to Montréal. We heard the story about his growing up in a small town in North-Eastern Québec and moving to Ontario to work as a welder. After retiring from long employment in the auto industry, he went to the Yukon on a tourist trip and became a resident. He told us of his deep passion for hunting, fishing and canoeing, and that after many unpleasant experiences in Québec’s northern fishing and hunting grounds where oppressive regulatory demands of government and local Indian agencies controlled every move, the freedom he found in the wilderness of the Yukon was exhilarating! There he was free of travel restrictions, free to wander over pristine country, free to throw his fishing lure and point his rifle where he chose, free to camp where and when he needed. And when the winter temperatures became too depressing, he was free to escape to southern Quebec. We had met a true adventurer.

Many years earlier, someone accused me of being an adventuress. I love adventure. I look for adventure. I create adventure and I yearn for adventure. I see my life as being one adventure after another with more surprises around the corner. I don’t climb the Himalayas or search for sunken treasure or undertake safaris in darkest Africa. I don’t climb into seductive beds or search for glorious heroes or undertake romantic liaisons in unknown worlds. I am always ready to take on the forces of nature working through my life and my relationships.

The Oxford dictionary gives the following meanings for adventure:

1. Chance.

2. Fortune.

3. Luck.

4. A chance occurrence.

5. An accident.

6. Chance of change or danger or loss.

7. Hazardous activities or enterprise or performance.

8. Risk or jeopardy.

9. An unexpected or exciting incident.

10. A venture or experiment.

Each one of these definitions could be a title for the stories of my life.

Chapter 1

Adventures Of Chance And Learning

MY ADVENTUROUS LIFE began the day of my birth in 1929. I was the first baby in our extended family and even more extended Winnipeg Jewish community to be born in a hospital. Our family doctor, Eetcheh Pearlman, was the first Jewish physician to be invited to practise in a Manitoba medical institution, and my mother was the first of his pregnant patients to be allowed into the maternity ward of the Catholic hospital in St. Boniface. My sisters and brothers and cousins were ushered into the world by broad-shouldered and confident Jewish midwives. Mothers and newborns cuddled together in plump bedding surrounded by cooing relatives. But I was enthroned in a sterile bassinet, with highly organized French-Canadian nuns hovering over me. They asked my father what my name was to be, and he answered Beilkeleh, a loving Yiddish name. So, in registering my birth, the nuns named me Beatrice. I didn’t discover this until seventeen years later when, needing a passport to travel to the United States, I applied for a birth certificate and discovered my Catholic connection.

I grew up in a busy household. Two older sisters, Dinah and Sork, were schoolgirls, and helped out occasionally with my care. Older brother David was preoccupied with building bridges using the cranes made of pieces of his metal Meccano set. A caboose was added to the family in the round form of brother Hillel.

Life unfolded through a series of adventures. The first I remember clearly took place when I was three or four years old. I was standing in a crib, holding on to the bars in front of me. It was dark all around me but for a thin slit of light coming in through a partially opened doorway. That light was of a warm kitchen inviting me in. There was life and laughter in that magic place, but I couldn’t get anyone to take me there no matter how much I rattled the bars and called out to the people.

My—but they were having a good time! They were laughing at one another’s jokes and telling all kinds of gossipy stories about the people they knew. I knew those people too. I recognized their names and wanted to join in the fun. I wanted to be sitting on my mother or father’s lap to snuggle and shake with their belly laughter that rang in my dark space.

I looked around for help. My younger brother was not there to share my frustration. He must have been put in another room to keep us separate and controllable. I understood already that together we were a force to be reckoned with.

My mother and father did not want to spoil a balmy summer’s evening at the beach close to the waters of Lake Dauphin in the company of their hard-working friends and family whose older children were somewhere else having a good time with their buddies.

Outside, the sky was black and the sounds of wild creatures were scary. I was glad to have my feet safely on soft blankets. I was alone and that was not desirable. I wanted company! I wanted light and warmth and something to eat and drink. I called and called and saw not a flicker of movement in my direction. I began to cry and then to scream for someone to come. I saw a moment’s hesitation on the face of an aunt and then a quick gesture by my mother to suggest that no help be given. I yelled for my brother over and over again. He must have heard me because his laments joined mine in a terrible chorus of childish chagrin.

The door opened and there stood my father sheepishly holding my brother in his arms. My mother guiltily gathered me up in hers and we were brought into the light. I understood for the first time that, if I wanted to find my place in the world, I had to fight to be included. I could have been lulled to sleep by the happy sounds of those around me, but I forced my way into the excluding community and became a member contributing to its happiness.

Over the next few years, I began to understand that there was a lot to learn. Olga, a big-bosomed Russian farm girl who came into the city to earn and learn helped my mother to run a wonderful kitchen from which came a regular flow of tempting aromas . She and my mother shared a secret language in which they could scold us or laugh at us and I could recognize by their body language which of the two it was. My father, alongside his three brothers and many relatives, was running a small soda-pop bottling business, and was participating in all kinds of community projects such as the Mount Carmel Health Clinic, the Socialist CCF movement and the Lubavitcher Chassidic Synagogue, at the same time keeping my mother supplied with fresh chickens and reasonably priced fruits and vegetables from the local market. I admired his ability to rise at six every cold blustery morning to stoke the coal furnace in the basement. I was awakened by his movements but continued to snuggle in bed between two warm sisters who kept me cozy and comfortable when the temperature in the house dropped overnight to minus five degrees.

One cold wintry night, in the mid-1930s, when dusk had settled in early and I was sitting doing my homework at the dining room table, doodling with my pencil on some scrap paper, my mother and Olga were fussing over the stove and metal-topped worktable, preparing the food for dinner. There was a knock at the back door of the storage room behind the kitchen, which acted as a walk-in freezer during the winter and a cool parking place for all the stuff that had no space in our icebox during the warmer weather. Who would be at the back door at this time? my mother and Olga asked one another. When Olga cautiously opened the door a crack, they saw a scruffily-dressed man, gaunt and thin as a reed, stretching out an ungloved hand, and telling us that he had not eaten in days. The two women knew that the depression had brought him to this. They invited him in, seated him at the table, and served him hot freshly-prepared food. Amid the outpouring of thanks in a language not quite understood, they packed a bag of leftovers from the summer kitchen to tide him over the next few days. It’s the depression! they told me, but I didn’t understand. In the following months, the word was out, and men and sometimes women would come knocking at the back door with their hands extended. There was always something that could be handed out to those in need. I finally understood without having it explained that there were many people without families to care for them or any money to buy food for survival. It made me feel good to open the back door—never the front—and run to fetch a bag, standing behind my mother, my eyes full of wonder at her generosity as she shared whatever she had with the needy. Until 1939, the year the Second World War started, my parents kept up a service of tzedokah (charity) for all who came to that back door. I did my share by taking on a district in the South End of the city where I walked from one Jewish home to another with the Jewish National Fund blue box in hand, asking for donations for land purchase and tree-planting in Israel, projects that I instinctively felt deserved my efforts.

In my early years at school, I learned to function in both English and Yiddish, and to understand the behaviour of people like the distinguished Cantor Harris. He would come from New York to our small city to perform during the high holidays. My father was proud to have him stay in our crowded home, even if my brothers had to be relocated in our uncles’ spare beds. I was impressed when the Cantor warmed up his voice early in the morning and then came out of his bedroom looking very statuesque. One day, while he was having a bath, I sneaked into his room to study its contents. On the chair, loaded with shirts, trousers and sundry other objects because the room had no closet, I spied a strange object on top of the load. It was a corset just like the one my mother wore when she would go out to socialize. I saw that men also had to squeeze themselves into such contraptions to look slimmer.

Two years later, I was singing in our school choir led by Cantor Brownstone. Despite his tendency to shout at all the singers, pull the girls by the ears and shake the boys whenever they disobeyed, we were assured that we were fortunate to be working with such a great musician. On stage with the rest of the choir, I had a solo to sing. At the moment I reached for a high note, his upper denture fell from his mouth. I let out a scream that brought the teachers in the hall running. This experience left a lesson to be remembered through years of performing in plays, operas and solo concerts. Never be deterred by accidents on stage.

Years later, performing with the Arts Council of Great Britain Grand Opera, I was singing the Countess’s beautiful Dove Sono from the opera The Marriage of Figaro. I was in a glorious inner space. My voice was floating and vibrant, and the members of the audience were leaning forward in their seats. As I was singing with the poise of a lady of dignity and stature, I saw this strange white object sitting on the damask of my flowing gown. To my horror, I recognized that my own bra, which I had left on the back of a chair, had been caught on the lace of the gown by its hook. I breathed deeply and continued singing, raising my eyes to the rafters to appear more majestic. I never knew if anyone in the audience noticed my unusual costume, but the other artists shared a laugh after our performance was over.

False teeth were for me, at the tender age of nine, a terrible shame to bear. That year my father had to have all his teeth removed, and for a while his mouth was sore. He would grind his false teeth or click them when he was in pain. One day, I innocently asked why he made these annoying sounds. His response was extraordinary! He grabbed me roughly by the shoulders and shoved me down the stairs into the basement. In the early thirties, basements were dark and low and cold and frightening. I had to sit on the steps with no light while my mother begged him to let me come up. He kept shouting repeatedly, She must learn to think before she speaks! And that was a lesson I remembered.

We lived in a busy house. Sister Dinah was working for our bottling company and preparing for her marriage. Sister Sork was being courted by a tall, friendly and very quiet young man by the name of Sonny Udow. As often as possible they would take over the sofa on the porch and carry on in a way that astounded my younger brother and me. Curious and adventurous, we would park ourselves halfway up the stairs to the second floor, an advantageous position from which to see onto the porch and into the living room.

On the chesterfield in the living room would be our Olga with a strange young man whose arms were wound around her body with his body terribly close to hers. On the porch were Sork and Sonny in almost identical positions. And they were all kissing continuously, it seemed. We call that smooching, I explained to my brother pompously. But what I couldn’t understand was what these two young men were doing with their hands. They were running them all over the place—into the blouses and under the skirts and over the bodies of these girls. This was high entertainment for the two of us who should have been upstairs asleep and we giggled quietly at the play. In fact, we were giggling so hard that Hillel lost his balance and fell down the steps, hitting his head on the corner of the banister. His head opened up and blood gushed out. The young lovers fell apart, assessed the situation, and rushed the lad to the hospital for many stitches to his scalp. Sork and my mother made sure we found other kinds of evening entertainment.

Chapter 2

Adventures Into Auntiehood

IN 1939, WHEN I was ten years old, my mother and father married off their eldest daughter Dinah to Harry Mindess who was studying law at the University of Manitoba. I was a kid sister whose main job was to stay out of the way. My brother and I were amused onlookers in the hours spent planning the wedding, making the guest lists, choosing the formal costumes, taking advice from all the family members who had already married off children, baking and freezing the pastries for that all-important sweets table, the highlight of a proper Jewish wedding. For this grand occasion, all the family and guests were in gowns and tuxedos, I wore a purple velvet dress and Hillel a three-piece white suit. The Hebrew Sick Benefit Hall on Selkirk Ave. where all important social events were held, was crowded with exuberant well-wishers, and the tables were loaded with food and drink. The speeches, the music, the laughter and the pleasure of togetherness made me proud of the celebration.

Two years later, having settled in a duplex on Burrows avenue, the young couple gave me the gift I’d been yearning for. A baby was on its way to initiate me into Auntiehood, an important role in any family hierarchy. When I was told that Rebecca had been born, I was so excited I hopped onto the banana-barred bicycle that I hated the look of, and cycled three miles to Atlantic Avenue where my piano teacher, Mrs. Hirshfield, lived. I forgot to take my music for the lesson, but I did bring the great news that I had at last been given a niece named Rebecca, who became known as Rebbie.

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My father holding my first niece and nephews

Living close-by, I was able to help my sister out just as she had once helped my mother in the care of Hillel and me. I baby-sat as often as the exhausted parents needed and I was paid twenty-five cents an hour for this service. I was free to have friends over to keep me company, and as I was just becoming aware of the cute fellows who were members of my youth group, I took advantage. I invited two boys at a time with a girlfriend so that we could dance to the music on the radio. They were not particularly interested in spending a Saturday evening with two silly girls when they might instead have been listening to the CBC Hockey game at home, but when promised some good things to eat as well as the radio broadcast, they agreed to baby-sit with us. So we held onto each other and swayed to the nasal sound of Foster Hewitt’s voice rising and falling rhythmically as he reported the game with unremitting intensity.

It was at this time that my mother realized that she had to make certain that my brother Dave succeeded in his University entrance exams. She recognized that our household with its noisy inhabitants calling out for whatever they needed, moving about from one floor to another, using the kitchen and dining room for discussions and gossip, was not the place for study. She understood that, unjust as it was, Jewish students in the province faced a system of enrollment in which only 5% of the candidates for engineering, medicine and law could be of Jewish origin. That meant that Dave had a slim chance of being accepted in the electrical engineering class that interested him.

My mother found the money to rent a room at the Merchants’ Hotel on Selkirk Avenue, a stop-over Inn for farmers and tradesmen, and saw to it that, for two weeks, Dave could study and sleep in peace. Hot home-cooked meals were delivered to his room by different members of the family. He passed the exam and graduated with top marks. Jews were still not accepted into the bastions of industry and banking so my brother could only get a job as a draftsman in an Ottawa government office. The Second World War was raging in Europe, and after he quietly married his beautiful redheaded Elsie in the nation’s capital, he joined the Canadian army where he was immediately enrolled as an officer in the Engineering Corps. He served in France and Holland helping to rebuild those countries’ infrastructures. Elsie returned to Winnipeg to live with her in-laws and bring her first son into the world without her husband