Mother

Mary Ursula Walsh was born into the Great Depression. Though more muted than in some regions, the hardship of this era reached deep into the farming community near Westwood, Ontario. Her family clung mightily to their Irish roots; they all knew the details of the boat upon which their ancestors had arrived in 1825 under the emigration scheme devised by Peter Robinson. Landing in Cobourg, the Walshes, Englishes, and Heffernans travelled north, around Rice Lake, before settling in the rolling lands between Hastings and Norwood toward Scott’s Landing, now Peterborough. Her father was a respected but stern farmer. Her mother a well-loved teacher. Many folks still trace their elementary education to the one-room schoolhouse presided over by Mary Walsh.

My mother was still young when world war ravaged humanity for the second time in that century. She thought that when the war ended there would be no more news. The radio would go silent. Newspaper pages would be empty with no battles or casualties to report.

As soon as she completed high school, Ursula became a teacher. Just 17. Already independent, she had spent the previous four years at a boarding school in Peterborough. My mother didn’t comment on these years. Neither fondly nor poorly. Queries were tersely dismissed.

She was teaching in Fort Erie when she met Bob Conroy in the mid-1950s. He was a construction supervisor working on expanding the project to harness the electricity generating power of Niagara Falls. They married in September 1957. I was born the following year. My sister, Patti, followed a year later. My brother, Steve, three years after her.

By then, the young family had moved to Harrison’s Corners—a five-acre plot carved from a large and productive farm north of Cornwall, Ontario. Dad was now working on another massive hydroelectric project damming the St. Lawrence River, uprooting entire communities to create new, modern, centrally planned and eerily similar villages of Long Sault and Ingleside.

Both Ursula’s mother and her mother-in-law taught elementary school. From a 10-yearold’s vantage point, every conversation in those days originated from the classroom—or the teacher’s lounge. Axes were ground. Aggravations vented. Broad sweeping reforms proposed. It was grist in a mill from which there seemed no output—none that a younger version of this observer could discern.

We argued always. Especially as I entered my teens and through the rest of our days together. Mostly about politics. Sprinkled with religion and economy. (We were living in the last days of dying mill town.) Occasionally life choices were thrown into the mix.

She held her views fiercely, but rarely, as I recall, prescriptively. When I was arrested as a found-in at an Ingleside bar, she arrived at my subsequent court date with a new t-shirt that proclaimed in large bold font for all to see, “Support your local pub.” I had turned 16 that day.

She earned a B. Ed while teaching full-time. Nights and summer courses. She read her essays and papers aloud repeatedly until she was satisfied the ideas were clear and her arguments defensible.

When her kids had grown and moved on, her parenting days were over. So was her marriage. Ursula was ready to move on. To the next part of her life.

When we returned home from time to time, it was as visitors. That was clear. When I had arranged to leave a car and some furniture at her home as I ventured through Europe for a year, it was not a surprise upon my return to find she had hired a man to take it all away. It wasn’t a statement. Or an act of irritation. Time was up. That was that.

She took the death of her parents hard. Surprisingly so. She felt alone. Abandoned. It was a peculiar and unexpected response from someone I had known to be efficient at erecting partitions.

The next phase of her life was devoted to her dogs. We had always had dogs, mongrels all, when we were growing up—but never, ever in the house. That all changed, however, when she became immersed in the training and competitive performance of pedigreed Golden Retrievers. Her home became their home. There were always three or four animals where the humans had been. Her life was like that. Arranged in tidy, manageable packages.

When Alzheimer’s began to rob her of memories, my sister encouraged Ursula to move near her home in Slave Lake, Alberta. She spent her final years in the care of the kind folks at Nanaimo Memory Centre on Vancouver Island.

We were able to visit her twice in the intervening years. In 2017, her past life had been reduced to fleeting and random snippets. By 2019, the person we had known was gone.

With her passing on June 20, we can now celebrate this fiercely independent contrarian and her contribution to our lives. She was unforgiving, but not in a festering or bitter way. Her assessment, once adjusted, remained fixed. She made no effort to fit in or adapt. No desire or need to reconcile. Unflinching.

She was practical, hard-working, focused and strong. She was of a time. Of a place. She did what she thought needed doing. Always kind, supportive and welcoming, but never in a showy or overly expressive manner. She valued independence and self-determination above all else.

A childhood spent in a Depression and war had taught her that life was fragile and unreliable—that things don’t last. That the good moments of the present merely portend the bad things around the corner.

She lived her life on her own terms. It was harder than it sounds.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca