The Road Here

BY HEATHER KILLEN

Transcontinental Media

NovaNewsNow.com

Rachel Brighton will never see little old ladies the same way again. The Bridgetown-based photographer and editor has completed The Road Here Stories from Senior Women in Rural Nova Scotia.

This collection of stories from 21 women living in Kings, Annapolis and Digby counties was compiled earlier this year and launched last month.

Wendy Knowlton of The Women’s Place in Bridgetown initiated the project when she realized there was a wealth of local stories that should be preserved in a community book.

Brighton was hired to talk to war brides and teachers; homemakers and a secret cipher operator; a wartime gunner; businesswomen and farmers. They told stories about their careers, communities and family life.

Their ages and life experiences span five decades and chronicle journeys that cross oceans or bridge the divides of social and racial discrimination.

While each woman told a different tale of life in rural Nova Scotia, Brighton said they all impressed her with their strength of character.

Their journeys inspired her to revisit ideas she held about her own life and aging. Women have always shaped communities, but society favours youth and a woman’s worth often fades with age.

Challenged the notion of aging

These women challenged this notion through a strength and tenacity forged through hardship. Brighton worked from transcripts of taped interviews she conducted earlier this year.

“A little old lady would walk in the room and sit down,” she said. “As soon as she began to tell her story, her eyes sparkled, the old lady would disappear and I would only see the girl she has always been.”

Brighton added she was impressed with how each woman persevered through hardships and came shining through the other side with grace and dignity.

“You could see the girl that was and how the journey had shaped the person who came shining through,” she said. “Despite the hardships they experienced along the way, these women are happy, gracious, hopeful and optimistic.”

As young women, each had a strong spirit and this quality was reinforced through adversity. Some of the women lost beloved husbands and outlived their children; others fought tirelessly on behalf of their communities.

Some battles were waged in classrooms. Edith Cromwell fought tirelessly to send black students from Inglewood to a white school in Bridgetown.

Other battlefields carried women across oceans. Betty MacIvor wore a dress her mother bought her and was surrounded by heavy artillery when she married her Canadian husband in Northeast England.

‘Everything is possible’

When Norah Balcom signed up to serve in the Allied forces, she kept mum about working as a switchboard operator in Middleton. They stationed her in London, where she worked as a secret cipher snooping into Nazi codes.

After her first husband died, Frances Clements-Mills built a career as a counselor and advocate for black prisoners. The light she carried was the conviction that ‘everything is possible, and you are only as good as you make it.’

Whatever the women’s journey, lessons were picked up along the way and not simply found upon arriving in a particular destination.

“I always thought that old age was something that happens at the end of your life, a phase,” Brighton said. “But it happens throughout your life and you have to grow into it.”

The Western Area Women’s Coalition has published the community book, with proceeds to go to the Frances Mills-Clements Bursary, a scholarship fund that helps women build their futures.

The Road Here is available at the Women’s Place Resource Centre in Bridgetown, 665-5166.