Gladys Ina Marie, my mother, was born April 26, 1916 in Sarnia, Ontario to Emile and Emma Burge, their 4th child and 3rd girl. At 18, Emile had emigrated alone from Sweden, courted and won Emma, a 2nd generation Swede from a large family in Bay City, Michigan, who initially shunned him because of his accent. Together they moved to Canada. ‘Papa’ was a traveling lumber salesman for years; then operated a Shell gas station beside their house.
I am writing to you and about you on my birthday. My first birthday with my daughter. I am surely blessed. Where do I start?
I just want to tell you I miss you. You would like Sapphire Mignon. When she smiles at me my heart explodes and all is perfect. All is as it should be. How did you feel when I was born?
My mom, Margaret Veronica Cahill (known as Peggy to her friends), was from Dundas, Ontario. I’m not actually sure what year she was born, but the date was April 8th, making her a feisty Aries ram. It must have been in the mid...
She wore hats, hats with veils, whenever she went to church or visiting neighbours.
They made her look mysterious and she was and indeed still is a mystery to me.
Her maiden name was Margerite Turpin.
"I was an oddball right from the start - a really weird kid. I smashed all the neighbour's flower pots and smacked their newborn baby at age 3 - I don't know why... I guess I wasn't getting enough attention. I went across the street into the forest at 4, and picked bleeding hearts to sell door to door for money for my piggy bank. I faked sick from school, because I hated being harassed by bullies, and getting in trouble for colouring outside the lines." My mum - speaking about herself.
“Oh, yes, let’s, it will be such fun”, personified the way Patricia (Patsy to her friends) lived her life. Whatever she did, she did fully; whoever she talked to had her complete attention. She was a woman of great accomplishment and great passion. She died from complications of Alzheimer’s in 2004, as her mother had before her. I miss her tremendously.
My Mother was 37 years old when she died on Friday July 13, 1973. That makes her birth year 1936. I do not know the birth month, it has been so long and I was so young when she passed.
Marilyn… I got your notice at a very synchronistic moment… and so I decided to splat on the page and send it off to you. It did cross my mind that my mother might not like the idea of her world being splatted on the page and sent off for someone to read… but then again I thought… to bear witness is to validate in some way and I think my mother has in so many ways not been validated… and so… dot, dot, dot… I will validate away.
My mom was born Ramona Jean Rea, July 16th, 1933, in Listowel, Ontario. At least that is what her birth certificate says. Her birth certificate, however, was issued on April 15th, 1933, three months prior to her birth date.
People who knew and loved my mother in later life remember her as a compassionate, no-nonsense kind of woman who cooked marvelous dinners. Only I, as her only child, was privileged to know that beneath this gentle exterior, she was an adventure-loving pioneer with a tiger inside her.