SIFERD o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-01-02 published
Margaret ATWOOD,
Dietitian (1909-2006)
Headstrong woman loved the outdoors and helped inspire her daughter
and namesake, Canada's celebrated author and poet
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page S7
A dietitian by training, strong-willed and independent by upbringing,
the original Margaret
ATWOOD raised her children on a diet of
thrift, reading aloud and the freedom to explore their natural
and intellectual surroundings. By the time she was a grandmother,
economy was ingrained as a habit rather than a necessity, but
the years had not blunted her sense of adventure.
"Quite some time after the event, I told both my parents that
I had tried LSD," her younger daughter, Ruth
SIFERD, said
recently. "Daddy pursed up his mouth and looked disapproving.
Mum leaned forward and said, 'What was it like?' "
Staying with her grandmother when her parents (writers Margaret
ATWOOD and Graeme
GIBSON) were away was "fantastic," recalled
Jess Atwood
GIBSON, 30, now a graduate student in art history
at Yale University. "My grandmother would allow me to feed her
Venus flytrap endless small pieces of ground meat on toothpicks,
and she would show me how to tickle its fronds, pretending to
be a fly, and give me an account of its digestion."
Every morning before school, Mrs.
ATWOOD would sit young Jess
on a stool and wind her hair into long, fat curls around her
finger with a white comb dipped in a glass of water. "For a seven-year-old,
the best grandmother possible was one who could both explain
plant digestion and curl hair into ringlets."
Although Margaret
ATWOOD has always resisted interpreting her
own fiction for readers, she told literary biographer Rosemary
Sullivan (The Red Shoes) that her muse was the mother figure.
Mothers run the gamut in Ms.
ATWOOD's work from holy terrors
to benevolent nurturers, but the story that is probably most
autobiographical is "Significant Moments in the Life of My Mother"
from Bluebeard's Egg.
"I used to think that my mother, in her earlier days, led a life
of sustained hilarity and hair-raising adventure," Ms.
ATWOOD
wrote. "Horses ran away with her, men offered to, she was continually
falling out of trees…" It is only later that Ms.
ATWOOD realizes
that "the stories were just the punctuation" in a life that had
"long stretches of uneventful time."
Margaret▼
Dorothy▼
Killam▼
ATWOOD was born in the Annapolis Valley
of Nova Scotia. The eldest of five children of Harold
KILLAM,
a country doctor, and his wife
Ora
Louise
WEBSTER, she was socially
shy but physically daring. A tomboy, she delighted in walking
the barn ridgepole and riding her two cherished horses, Dick
and Nell.
She was 17 and sliding down a banister at Normal School in Truro
when Carl ATWOOD, a hard-working self-made man who had grown
up in the backwoods of South Shore, Nova Scotia, spotted her
and immediately fell in love -- or so he said.
As wily as she was headstrong, she got the better of her father
after he refused to let her bob her hair in the 1920s. She waited
until he had a dentist appointment and made her plea while the
drill was whirling. He retorted that she could do anything she
wanted as long as she left him alone, and so she went straight
to the barber and had her waist-length tresses chopped.
Perhaps that's why her father declined to send her to university
on the grounds that she was "frivolous." Instead she taught school,
saved money and won a scholarship to Mount Allison University.
She graduated in domestic science and became a dietitian and
nutritionist.
After a long courtship with Carl
ATWOOD -- money was scarce and
she was having "too much fun," as she later told her children
she finally married her beau in 1935. Besides having a PhD,
he was an expert woodsman and the only one of her suitors that
her father didn't dismiss as a "jackass." They spent their honeymoon
canoeing down the Saint_John River in New Brunswick.
Then they headed for northern Quebec, where Prof.
ATWOOD, an
entomologist, had a small forest insect research station. Living
first in a tent then a cabin, Mrs.
ATWOOD raised her first two
children, Harold and Margaret (Peggy), without the benefit of
running water or electricity -- during prime insect season --
from spring until fall. Prof.
ATWOOD pawned his fountain pen
to pay the hospital bill when Peggy was born in November, 1939.
The family spent winters in Ottawa, but Mrs.
ATWOOD much preferred
the bush, where she could swim in the cold northern lakes --
"refreshing, refreshing," she invariably trilled as she strode
purposefully into the frigid water. She also loved to grow vegetables,
pick blueberries, fish, shoot grouse, sweep the dirt out the
door in the morning and be done with housekeeping for the day.
"My mother baked her way through the war years," Ms.
ATWOOD remembered,
"with no-butter, low-sugar recipes, and when we ran out of protein
she'd open a can of Spam, mix up some Klim milk powder, or go
down to the end of the dock and throw in a line for pickerel."
In 1945 the
ATWOODs moved to Sault Ste. Marie, where Prof.
ATWOOD
set up another insect lab. With this change of venue, the family
spent the warmer months of the year at a cabin on the shore of
Lake Superior.
Mrs. ATWOOD put her children to work picking berries at a cent
a cup, which she preserved for eating in the colder months. Her
daughter Peggy still remembers seeing her mother waving a broom
and yelling "Scat" to chase away a bear that had trashed the
food cache.
The family moved to Toronto in 1946, so that Prof.
ATWOOD could
begin teaching zoology at the University of Toronto. Their second
daughter and third child, Ruth, was born five years later, in
1951. Mrs.
ATWOOD was 42, but age wasn't the only factor that
differentiated her from most of the other neighbourhood moms.
She hated housework and was oblivious to the consumer boom of
the 1950s and 1960s.
"She had absolutely zero interest in colours of furniture, curtains,
or other 'girl' stuff -- Dad did all that," remembered her younger
daughter, Ruth. "As long as things were cleanish and had no holes
she was happy." She was attached to "things" for their sentimental
value, but otherwise material goods were of little interest.
"The Depression mentality of reduce-reuse-recycle came naturally
to her and was very useful in the bush and on canoe trips."
Besides raising three children, to whom she read aloud voraciously,
Mrs. ATWOOD was committed to Scottish country dancing and ice
dancing, an activity she enjoyed until she was 75.
Her last years were mired in ill health, but even when she was
blind and bedridden in a nursing home, she never complained.
She didn't believe in whining.
Margaret▼
Dorothy▼
Killam▼
ATWOOD was born June 8, 1909, in Kinsman's
Corners, Nova Scotia She died at home in Toronto this past Saturday.
She was 97. Predeceased by her husband, the zoologist Carl
ATWOOD,
she leaves her three children, their families and her younger
sister, Joyce
BARKHOUSE.
There will be a memorial service later
in the month.
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SIFERD o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-01-03 published
ATWOOD,
Margaret▲
Dorothy▲
Killam▲
Peacefully, at home, on Sunday December 31, 2006 aged 97. Wife
of the late Carl Edmund
ATWOOD. Survived by children Harold
ATWOOD
and spouse Lenore, Margaret
ATWOOD and spouse Graeme
GIBSON,
and Ruth ATWOOD and spouse Ralph
SIFERD; grandchildren, David,
Robert, Evan, Mathew, Graeme, and Jess; great-grandchildren,
Madelaine,
Rowan,
Carl, and Sarah; and sister Joyce
BARKHOUSE.
A memorial service will be held at the Humphrey Funeral Home -
A.W. Miles Chapel, 1403 Bayview Avenue (south of Eglinton Avenue
East), on Wednesday January 17, 2007 at 3: 00 p.m. The family
wishes to thank Eileen Allen and Melinda Dabaay, the tireless
caregivers who over the past seven years enabled our mother to
stay in her home, as she wished. In lieu of flowers, donations
may be made to the Couchiching Conservancy, Box 704, Orillia,
L3V 6K7, 1-705-326-1620 nature@couchconservancy.ca.
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SIFTON o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-10-13 published
WOOD, Geraldine Marie "Zsa" (formerly
SIFTON, née
McINTYRE)
(July 30, 1917-October 10, 2007)
Passed away of natural causes peacefully at her home surrounded
by her family: daughters Lyn
WESTWOOD,
Martha
SIFTON (Mike) and
son, Jamie
SIFTON
(Suzanne.)
She was predeceased by her first
husband, Clifford McLean
SIFTON in 1953, her second, Peter
WOOD
in 1987 and her eldest son John (Jack)
SIFTON in 1989. Also by
her parents William Jacob (1980) and
Alexandra (1991)
McINTYRE,
brother Jack (World War 2) and sister Peggy (1981),
She will be missed by her stepchildren David (Nancy), Alastair
and Jennifer
WOOD and her grand and step-grandchildren, Ashton
and Whitney
WESTWOOD,
Tiffany
(Jason)
SIFTON and Joshua, Daniel
and Thea WOOD.
She will also be missed by her sister Mary Lou
(Jim) and their children Jamie and Mary, as well as by the children
of her sister Peggy; Sandra, Sue (John) and Shelly.
She was a wonderful wife, mother, step-mother and friend, and
her magnetic personality drew a wide circle around her during
her years in Saskatoon, Toronto, Greenwich and Darien, Connecticut.
Each summer, she was the much-loved chatelaîne at her beloved
Whitney Point in the Thousand Islands. Her generous heart will
be remembered by us all.
A memorial mass will be celebrated Tuesday, October 16 at 2: 00 p.m.
at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, 354 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto.
(At her request, cremation will have taken place before the service.)
The family will welcome all Friends at a celebration of Gerry's
life at her home after the service.
In lieu of flowers, a donation to the National Ballet of Canada
in her honour will be appreciated.
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