Kathleen May Mather 1917-2010
by Janine Mather
Kathleen Kidney was born in Fort Saskatchawan, Alberta in 1917 to a Scottish father and a Canadian mother of Scottish decent. She was the 5th daughter born in a family of eight and always said how disappointed her father was that she was another girl! She was a sickly baby as well and I am sure there were times when her mother thought she would not survive but, as many of you know, she was born with a iron will to survive!
My mother’s family moved to Waskatnau ( Wa set na ) Alberta where her father set up a general store and she had fond memories of growing up in this small, tightly knit community. As a girl she taught herself to play piano and guitar and, although quite shy, would be very much a part of the communal sing songs around the piano.
At some point, the family moved to Edmonton where one of their neighbours was a energetic , blonde boy called Jack. Although it sounds like her first impression of him wasn’t very positive they ended up falling in love! They married in 1939 and she became a miner’s wife. He and his brothers worked in and managed a coal mine that his father owned in Namao on the Sturgeon River. It was hard, dangerous work . During those years there were two or three accidents in the mine that almost left Kathleen a young widow with two small children . Her life then was physically hard and demanding. She used to describe washing nappies with a scrub board in back of their house and preparing Dad’s bath in front of the fire so he could wash off all the coal dust when he finished his shift in the mine.
Desperate to get out of the mine my father did a remarkable thing- he became an actor! He had always been involved in dancing, acrobatics and acting in amateur dramatics and when he had an opportunity to do that for a living he jumped at it! My mother went from being a miner’s wife in a small isolated community to being an actor’s wife in Winnipeg -within a very short time! The story goes that Dad received a telegram which he opened and read after his shift. Apparently he just looked at my mother and said “start packing we’re moving to Winnipeg!” No discussion! I don’t think my mother ever really adjusted to this amazing reversal of their fortunes! However, it opened up a world of interesting places and creative people that she would never have otherwise experienced.
My parents had four children. The great tragedy of their life together was the death of their second son in 1954 from Leukemia. I’m sure you can imagine the affect of this loss on my mother. I certainly remember her becoming very withdrawn in her bereavement . However, it was during this period of morning that my mother started to paint. Her oil paintings showed a real talent for colour and texture, and in her choice of subject, the landscape , revealed a deep connection with the natural world. There are those of us who feel she had real potential artistically and that it was a shame that she didn’t have the opportunity to study and develop this more.
During their marriage my parents lived in Winnipeg, Toronto and Los Angeles . They were great travelers and would think nothing of driving across the continent to visit family or friends. During their married life they covered quite a lot of North America, Britain and even Portugal. When they got into their 70’s I would hear a lot about how they wouldn’t be around much longer as they were getting old but then I would get a post card from somewhere like southern California! I figured that if they could jump in the car and drive 3,000 miles they must be in better shape than they thought! They continued their travels into their eighties when they came to visit me in Somerset . They were married for 66 years.
My mother came from a remarkable generation of Canadians. Her life span stretched from the first world war to the “war on terror”, from the age of the plow horse and model T Ford car to the computer age. When she was growing up in the 1920’s there were still Native Americans living on the reservations who had fought with Sitting Bull and you could still find the bones of Bison on the grasslands of Alberta. No other generation in human history has experienced so much change.
Perhaps this is the key to understanding my mother’s complex personality. She was raised by Victorians in a pre-psychological age when you were expected to behave properly, to be practical, hardworking, stoical and keep your feelings to yourself. Women were expected to either get married and have children or have a career, but not both .Yet she was a woman of huge depth and emotional intensity with enormous unfulfilled potential. She was a sickly child and struggled with ill health all her life yet she outlived all her six siblings, her husband and three of her children. She was indomitable. She was a survivor.