Grandmothers, I see you

I’ve been chasing my three grandmothers through history of late, awed by their resiliency.

Their early adulthoods were in the 1910s. Then and now, it was a hard life for anyone without money. Young women in Canada in my grandmothers’ era had little choice but to attach themselves to a man for economic survival.

I see that truth in my 17-year-old Romanian grandmother’s sad eyes in her wedding-day photo, married off rather scandalously to a Chinese man in Moose Jaw, Sask. while the rest of her family hived off to Alberta with one less mouth to feed.

I feel it in my heart for my 27-year-old grandmother, leaving children and home country behind to travel to Canada for a better future with a man married to her sister just months before, only to be abruptly paired with her after sister and babe died in childbirth. 

I’m overwhelmed by it as I learn the tragic story of my third grandmother, whose intellectual disability left her like a lamb to the wolves.

It’s still tough to be a woman, but it was brutal back in those years. Laws and processes weren’t just ineffective, they were actively discriminatory, with a particular emphasis on rendering women economically dependent and unable to prevent pregnancy. (Today, we call that “traditional values.”)

No woman coming from an impoverished background in those years had a remote expectation of a good, safe or predictable life. My grandmothers had baby after baby, and for the most part lived hard in the poor parts of town with difficult men who scratched out a living.

I see my young grandmothers emerging these days from the censuses and various documents that an Ancestry subscription can bring you – brief glimpses of people captured at a moment in time, with the amateur family sleuth's task to then knit those moments into something more substantial.

I’ve got a newspaper archive subscription, too, but people like my grandmothers don't tend to make the newspapers. Canada’s community newspaper archives are treasure troves of local history, but women generally show up only at their weddings, when they’re dead, attending occasional society teas if they're a wealthier sort, or hidden under their husband’s names (“Mrs. Richard Booth”). 

Grandmothers can also end up neglected on the family-tree side of things, I’m finding. A lot of people tend to do trees following out the male line – the surname – while the other half of the genetic and social equation goes wanting. The tradition of women taking the man’s surname when they marry adds mud to the water.

But the story takes shape as you follow out the threads, and the tiny bits weave into bigger bits. And slowly, the haze lifts and there they are: the grandmothers.

Mine emerge as children and young women, glimpsed in a moment of their regular life that was captured in the public record. Here they are living with their parents and siblings at this address or that; here they are being baptized, getting married, waiting at the border.

I see two of them getting on boats that will bring them to Canada, but am left to imagine how they ever got to that boat in the first place.

I see another one living what I can only hope was a sheltered, good life with her aging parents in Ontario, until one parent died and the other one moved away, and she was married off and moved to Saskatoon.

All of my grandmothers ended up widows. Having lived for most of their lives as “housewives” raising long lines of children, they faced even more poverty in their final years unless family members stepped up.

My one grandmother did fall in love again after her husband died, but she couldn’t marry a second time without losing the small veterans’ pension she received owing to her first husband's military service. Then her common-law husband died, too, and she was alone.

She and another grandmother frequently lived for extended periods of time at our house, staying at the houses of their various children on an ever-changing schedule, packed off here or there when somebody grew weary of their presence. If only I had thought to ask all the questions that burn in my mind these days. Grandmother, how did you endure?

My third grandmother had the saddest of endings, institutionalized and surrounded by people in her last days who knew so little of her that her birthplace and mother’s name are listed as “unknowns” on her death certificate. She was buried without headstone or marker in a pauper’s grave in Toronto.

(The search for her, so invisible and forgotten, has taught me that there are a lot of exciting ways to follow out an ancestral mystery these days. But be careful what you wish for.)

I thank my grandmothers for giving their lives to generations of women who they will never know. I hope that they’d be happy to see us now, earning money and no longer at the mercy of our sex lives, at least for the most part.

Men still rule the world, of course. But at least there’s public discourse now – and even an effective use of law from time to time - around women not being abused, exploited, underpaid, in harm’s way, alone, discriminated against, etc. There was none of that for my grandmothers.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been outraged on others’ behalf for all the grand unfairness in this world. I now see that my grandmothers have perhaps given me that fire. Their stories give me more energy for the fight.

How much better would their lives be if my grandmothers were coming of age now? Well, that’s an interesting question to reflect on.

Two of my grandmothers were from impoverished immigrant families desperate to find work in a strange new land. The other had an intellectual disability at a time when people like her either died on the street or were locked up.

A hundred years have gone by since then, and the changes in society have been extraordinary. But life is still far from good for people like my grandmothers.

Autism cuts add one more burden to families

Cuts to government-funded programs are raining down in all directions. Alicia Ulysses gets that the end of free karate lessons for her 16-year-old autistic son is pretty small potatoes given all that.
But sometimes a mother just has to stand up and say: Hey, you guys, have you ever considered what you’re really taking away from the child at the other end of a decision like that?
In B.C., families can qualify for up to $20,000 a year in government funding to help pay for special services for a child with autism who is under age six. That amount will be increased to $22,000 next April. Nicholas Ulysses is 16, so the maximum his family qualifies for is $6,000 a year.
It’s a needed program, and here’s hoping nothing bad happens next year when the government makes changes to the way parents access the money. But the problem for families of older children is that the kinds of activities that would benefit their child often don’t qualify for funding - or not for long, at any rate. So it is for Nicholas, whose government-funded karate lessons came to an end this summer.
The kinds of autism services government prefers to support are therapies that target very young children, who benefit immensely from early intervention. Once a child moves into the “six to 18-year-old” category, however, they’re as developed as they’re going to get in terms of their autism. They qualify for considerably less support, and far fewer services that fit their changing needs.
Up until the latest rejection letter, Nicholas’s mom has been able to make a case to government that karate lessons qualified as an “other intervention recommended by a professional.” Even so, the decision has been revisited almost every year since the family was approved for $4,000 a year in funding in 2005. Each time, Alicia has to get yet another letter of support from a registered psychologist attesting that karate is beneficial for Nicholas.
It’s true that the teen enjoys both the sport and recreation of karate, and that neither of those activities qualifies for autism funding. He definitely needs the exercise, which Alicia is pretty sure the government would agree with if they’d ever actually met him.
But Nicholas’s karate is about much more than that, says his mom. When he’s at his karate lessons, he feels like he belongs. He’s got friends. He’s got purpose. Those are things that a lonely boy with autism doesn’t get to feel very often.
“At school, people treat Nicholas very nicely, because they know that’s what you’re supposed to do,” says Alicia. “But they never call once to invite him to a movie, or to a birthday party. These kids want to feel normal - they want to be involved in normal things. Not everything in their life has to be a therapy.”
Therapy is no longer the issue for a child the age of Nicholas, she adds.
“Now, it’s about coping. I took Nicholas for a job interview today and it went really well. But that’s because I did his resume. I got him in the right clothes and shoes. I made sure he brushed his teeth. He doesn’t need intervention anymore - he needs help with everyday things.
“OK, the research says that people with autism need this or that kind of service, and that’s what we’re supposed to want. But meanwhile Nicholas is a lonely boy, nobody’s calling, and he wants a girlfriend. Slowly, slowly, these kids learn to give up, because they feel the rejection.”
Laurel Duruisseau, of the Victoria Society for Children with Autism, says karate and gymnastics are two of the biggest bones of contention between her society’s 150 members and government. She says occupational therapists recommend such activities all the time, but government resists funding them.
“The funding is really intended for one-to-one intervention, which is fine for a four-year-old but not such a good fit for a 16-year-old,” says Duruisseau. “We’ve pretty much all been through it with our kids. Any activity that you can put a typical child in, chances are the funding won’t cover it.”
Her group created a new charity - Mosaic - just to try to get around the problem. It runs drama and art programs for autistic teens. “Karate is actually on the list for us to look at adding,” says Duruisseau.
A high-profile B.C. court case over funding for services kept autism in the headlines for a long time, until the case was lost at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004. Alicia says there’s still “a lot of noise” about autism in the province, but little change. This week, the government scrapped a $5 million fund that paid for a particular kind of autism therapy for 70 B.C. families.
“When we speak up, I don’t think they want to hear it,” she says. “My case is a minor one, but there are others that aren’t. And it’s not fair. Every little thing adds another burden to a family that’s already stretched.”