Grace Sparkes: Blazing a Trail to Independence

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wright, Marie-Beth, 1946-

      Grace Sparkes : blazing a trail to independence / Marie-Beth Wright.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued also in electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77117-004-8

      1. Sparkes, Grace, 1908-2003. 2. Sparkes, Grace, 1908-2003--Political activity. 3. Teachers--Newfoundland and Labrador--Biography. 4. Newfoundland and Labrador--Biography. I. Title.

LA2325.S63W75 2013      371.10092      C2013-902164-7

© 2014 by Marie-Beth Wright

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $157 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 157 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

In memory of my dear father, George Green,

who imparted to me a love of books and learning

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

1 Growing Up In Grand Bank. Patten Princess

2 Academic Pursuits. Twillingate Calling

3 A Young Bride. Lifelong Passions

4 Confederation Versus Self-Autonomy. Combating Joey

5 A Lost Country. New Political Realities

6 Challenges of a Changed Life

7 Going It Alone Into Parenthood: Trophy Children and Stage Mothers

8 A Sense of Self. A Sense of Country

9 A Pioneer’s Handbook

10 Beloved Teacher: The Prince of Wales Connection

11 Careers and Family

12 University Supporter

13 Provincial Tory Matriarch

14 All She Valued: Music, Church, Curling

15 Community Figure

16 Resurgence

17 Second Time Around

18 Nationalistic Causes

19 Modern Committees

20 Oxen Pond Landscape. Senior Years

21 Advocacy and Legacy. Values Imparted

22 The Final Curtain

Acknowledgements

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

FOREWORD

GRACE SPARKES WAS A TRUE force of nature, the living exemplification of those described by George Bernard Shaw as being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, and thereby discovering the true joy in life. She marched to the beat of her own drum and cared not whether others heard it or not. Feisty, principled, opinionated, and self-confident, she had no hesitation in making her voice heard above the crowd. Thousands of her fellow Newfoundlanders knew her name, but very few knew anything about her. Marie-Beth Wright has now remedied this gap with a full-length biography of this wonderful woman.

Far too many biographies are simply hagiographies, attributing near-saintliness to their subjects and glossing over or explaining away any of their failings that had to be mentioned. By far the better ones are those written by authors who subscribe to Oliver Cromwell’s direction to Sir Peter Lely, taking his portrait, to paint it warts and all. Ms. Wright has given us a full account of Grace Sparkes’s life, warts included.

The author describes Grace’s life fully, from her privileged childhood as the daughter of one of the leading families in Grand Bank, an important outport in the first part of the twentieth century, through her brief marriage and the difficult years that followed the all-too-early death of her husband, John Sparkes, and then her final years, when she came into her own. The author has delved deeply into Grace’s story. There can be few, if any, still alive who knew Grace who did not share their stories with her; and she has trawled through the archival records and the contemporary periodical literature.

And what a remarkable woman Grace was, and what a remarkable life she lived. The years she spent teaching in Twillingate taught her much about the reality of life in Newfoundland in the 1930s. Her fierce patriotism, putting Newfoundland first and foremost, developed into the wellspring of her public life. She fought against Confederation with all the strength and skill she possessed. When that battle was lost, she fought just as hard to make the new province the place she believed it could be. Those were the years—the early 1950s—when Joseph Smallwood and his Liberals came to dominate Newfoundland’s public life. Grace spoke out against their failings, and campaigned passionately against their policies. She had the courage to stand for election as a Progressive Conservative at a time when few did.

Grace Sparkes wasn’t the first woman to stand for election in Newfoundland; indeed, she never won a political contest. But she led the way for all the women who have sought a place in public life since Confederation. Many forget that no woman was elected to the post-Confederation House of Assembly until Hazel McIsaac won St. George’s in the 1975 general election. I knew Hazel well, and can testify that she proudly acknowledged that Grace was one of her inspirations. Premier Kathy Dunderdale’s decision to name two provincial ferries the Grace Sparkes and the Hazel McIsaac was a happy and fitting acknowledgement of their contribution to our public life.

Grace’s life was filled with difficulties. Ms. Wright does not scant these; she describes both the good times and the bad candidly as well as sympathetically. She was helped enormously in this by the willingness, almost eagerness, of Grace’s friends to share their recollections of her. Grace’s only child, her daughter Doris, also spoke frankly about her relationship with her mother, who was at one and the same time controlling and domineering as well as loving and supportive. There can be little about Grace’s family, her friends, her beliefs, her passions, her opinions, and her troubles that remains unknown: it is all here.

Grace’s later years were very good ones. She was laden with the honours she deserved, including honorary doctorate degrees from Mount Allison and Memorial universities. She died in 2003 at age ninety-five. Her life—her work and her accomplishments and above all the spirit in which she approached them—stands an inspiration to those who share her love for Newfoundland. The book is a worthy tribute to her.

Edward Roberts

March, 2013

PREFACE

I EMBRACED THE CHALLENGE OF writing Grace Sparkes’s biography, for she is a terrific role model, especially for young girls and senior citizens. Her healthy, active living and her pride of place transcend generations.

Grace was an extraordinary volunteer. Fifty years later, community service is built into most educational programs, such as the International Baccalaureate Program, acting as credited curriculum in many provinces and states. Grace’s community service is legendary, earning her the title of JayCees Citizen of the Year, A Person of Distinction Award from the YMCA, and many other accolades.¹

Currently, dedicated programs interest girls in medicine, engineering, and technology, such as Memorial University’s Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). Grace had chosen medicine in 1924! She operated in male-dominated areas for years, namely politics, golf, and curling.

This brings us to her lifestyle, early to rise, pursuing mentally challenging activities along with lots of physical activity. As a high percentage of our population reaches traditional retirement age, Grace’s complete disregard for the word retirement is a magnificent example of how to keep a keen interest in lifelong activities and the world around you.

Pride of place is another concept that Mrs. Sparkes embraced and internalized. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Folk Festival was founded in 1976, and its patriotic songs, the pink, white, and green, the celebration of tradition and heritage, are stalwart components of the ever popular event in Bannerman Park and of myriad homegrown music and heritage festivals province-wide. This plays to Grace’s strong attachment to her native Grand Bank and Newfoundland heritage, sixty years before its modern revival.

Her defining attribute: being avant-garde, like Panasonic Electronics, slightly ahead of her time. While Grace’s privileged upbringing and formal education gave her a huge springboard from which to view our particular piece of geography, her passion, commitment, and style were unique, individual, and unforgettable.

CBC’s Pigeon Inlet series characterized her to good advantage in the role of Grandma Walcott. Grace presented this portrayal of bygone Newfoundland with purposeful tender loving care.

Grace is admirable for the independence, conviction, devotion, and determination she showed as a woman in the early twentieth century. In the struggle to define what form of government should follow Commission of Government in the lapsed Dominion, she was heavily involved. It is fitting that the female role in the struggle to restore Responsible Government, largely ignored, should now be clarified and held up as an inspiration.

While I share her interest in education, theatre, sports, and politics, Grace leaves me behind in a cloud of dust, since I am only an armchair curler and a neophyte golfer.

More than anything, her unofficial motto (There it is—go get it!) inspires a Kipling-like attitude² defined by the early Newfoundland settlers, Bob Bartlett, mountain climbers, and achievers in every realm. Indeed, aptitude and ambition can only take you so far; it is attitude that defines a person. In Grace Sparkes’s case, all three A’s were merged into a dynamic five-foot lady whose independence, verve, and motivation were unique.

— 1 —

Growing Up In Grand Bank. Patten Princess.

1908: The first year ever to be heralded by a ball dropped at Times Square at the stroke of midnight signifying the New Year.¹

1908: Billy Durant, a carriage builder from Flint, Michigan, incorporated General Motors Company on September 16, an enterprise that would go on to become the world’s mightiest car company.²

1908: Gold Bond, a leading therapeutic over-the-counter skin care brand providing trusted quality skin care, was founded by Chattem of Chattanooga, Tennessee.³

1908: The year the now defunct penny became truly Canadian and was minted in our country for the first time.⁴

1908: William Coaker, Newfoundland union leader and politician, founded the Fishermen’s Protective Union, a cooperative movement for fishers, on November 3, following his speech at the Orange Hall in Herring Neck, Newfoundland.⁵

1908: In Grand Bank, home to banker schooners and a highly developed yet fragile society, the tenth child of Elizabeth Hickman and John Benjamin (J. B.) Patten was born on February 19, a girl, christened Grace Margaret.⁶

1908, a very significant year around the world!

Grand Bank is roughly 360 kilometres west of St. John’s, but just as the Burin Peninsula could hold its own against townies on the soccer field, it was also extremely savvy in commerce and politics. It was from this expertise that Grace Patten sprang. Its superb location and European link via the French Islands remains every bit as lucrative in the twenty-first century as it was in the seventeenth and eighteenth. To obtain a glimpse into Grace’s world of Grand Bank’s heyday, just take in a summer theatrical performance there, courtesy of the Grand Bank Theatre Festival. The Grace of eighty years ago would have auditioned for a part and would have enjoyed driving works with other cast members while presenting the lingo and traditions of Grand Bank.

*  *  *  *  *

J. B. PATTEN’S HOME SAT at the corner of College and Main streets in Grand Bank, well positioned to observe the flow of activity through the then bustling community. In a picture from Robert Parsons’s Vignettes of Grand Bank, the Patten home is identified in a photo showing the old and new Methodist churches and is described as a long two story house.⁷ Today a monument to fallen soldiers occupies the area backing onto a flat meadow stretching southwest. George Forsey, Charles Hickman, Wilson Hickman, and Eli H. Patten, Grace’s brother, are remembered for their sacrifice in the Great War. Corporal Eli Patten, a member of the 102nd Canadian Battalion, became, unfortunately, the first Grand Bank casualty of the Great War.⁸ The site is still a hub of activity with corner stores and Manuel’s Restaurant immediately opposite, along with the United Church and Memorial Library.

The ancient Forward and Tibbo warehouse, part of the J.B. Foote premises, backs onto the inner harbour. Ballasted breakwaters support docks that nearly circle this secure haven from the ocean’s might. The lighthouse bearing the scene of a long-ago collision with a departing schooner⁹ signals the spot where protection from heavy seas is terminated. At the bottom of the harbour, the sea’s saltiness is met with fresh water, flowing outward from Grand Bank Brook. For the first half of the twentieth century, Grand Bank was totally focused on the sea to provide community wealth. Nowadays, the population looks inward to the sputtering economic engine of the peninsula, Marystown, and to the Trans-Canada Highway. The fading glory of Grace’s Grand Bank lives on in the George Harris Museum, the Seaman’s Museum, and the faded facades on Water Street.

Upon leaving the Trans-Canada near Goobies Irving Big Stop, your vehicle embarks on a series of high rolling hills and far-flung marshy plateaus. Grace’s heart would have warmed at the sight of Swift Current nestled in the arms of Placentia Bay as her car or bus proceeded over the mostly denuded hills toward Marystown.

Nearer Bay l’Argent, trees attain a respectable height, and on an overcast day the hills appear silver through the mist. The abundance of French names—Jacques Fontaine, Grand Bank— would have reminded Grace of the stiff competition that had always existed between the English and French nations for the fertile fishing grounds off Newfoundland’s South Coast, dating back to when the area was known as Grand Banc, inhabited by French fishermen in 1640, essentially a fishing settlement with about seven families.¹⁰

The Treaty of Paris in 1763 gave Saint-Pierre and Miquelon to the French, forcing the English population there to relocate to Grand Bank and Fortune Bay. Place names such as Spanish Room and Portuguese Fortuna (Fortune) reflect the other prominent players in Newfoundland’s cod fishery.

Marystown, which has surpassed Grand Bank in urbanization, also clings to the shores of Placentia Bay. However, its new suburbs and commercial district flow inland. The landscape is dotted with businesses like Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, and new industrial parks.

A ninety-degree right turn takes you on the last leg of the voyage to Grand Bank. Signs along the heavily wooded highway point toward Creston, Burin, and St. Lawrence. Crossing from the heel across the ankle of the Burin boot, the highway straightens and stretches toward the horizon. Within twenty minutes you are viewing Fortune Bay.

Grand Bank is as impressive geographically today as it was in 1911, when numerous huge schooners crowded its harbour. The Natural Embankment on the west side of the harbour, now Water Street, extended westward beyond Point Bouilli. Grace’s birthplace sits on an immense flat field within three kilometres of its more hilly neighbour, Fortune, the gateway to the French Islands.

On a spectacular summer day, the view out of Grand Bank harbour is as clear as a ship’s bell. Offshore islands like Merasheen and Brunet, along with the dreamy far-off islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, dot the horizon. It is a stark contrast from the socked-in fog and impenetrable blanket which would send panicked wives on shore scurrying to the widow’s walk of their houses on windy, stormy days in less hospitable seasons.

To stay in Thorndyke Manor is to walk backward in time to when Grace Patten was a child in Grand Bank. Even though her childhood home has become a footnote in history, most merchants’ homes followed a model template. Their interiors featured wide arches, high ceilings, piano, large radiators, bay windows, hardwood floors, highly decorated stairwells, boarded ceilings, a widow’s walk, and a deacon’s bench along with ornate mouldings and doors, often in a dark veneer. Wainscotting, boarded side walls with dividing strips, and lastly, spacious sitting rooms whose bay windows turned toward the dominating ocean, were other standard features.

However, one’s dreamlike reverie to the early 1900s is interrupted by the nearby crash of the ocean against the retaining sea wall. The sun porch in the front foyer is, to this day, a warm and inviting spot to view passersby or enjoy a hot cup of tea.

Familiarity with lost ships, schooners on winter moorings, and fish dried on pebble rocks all are optics of a bygone era. Destruction from fire and tidal wave, wind filling schooners’ sails, and the black bonnets of the women with recently deceased husbands fill out the canvas. One can contemplate further the responsibility of J.B. Patten and Son for schooners and their skippers, the pressure from families left on shore in stormy periods, the importance for all hands to work together for a common goal. The dory work, the ice-encrusted riggings in wintertime, and the ships of diverse nations were prominent elements of life on the Burin Peninsula. The merchants settling up with the fishermen after a season on the banks was too often a time of dashed hopes and opportunity, but the coming of the draggers in the 1940s and the terrible loss of family men were no real reprieve for a lopsided industry where those on the front lines took a disproportionate percentage of personal risk.¹¹ Many of the South Coast’s prized schooners ended up on Langlade’s sand dunes.

Pounding surf, sea spray, intruding winds, and the Portuguese connection to many Fortune Bay harbours—especially Harbour Buffett— were also basic elements of Grace’s childhood universe. In 1910 would come motor-powered schooners that offered the fisherfolk more power and speed, essentially a ticket to more distant fishing grounds, yet thirty years later, the beach women were still only paid twenty-five to fifty dollars for the six weeks it took to dry fish.

John Benjamin Patten, Grace’s adored father, born in 1859, was a millionaire by the time he was twenty years old. When her oldest sister, Jennie, married Harry Lake of Fortune, Grace, a small girl at the time of the wedding, cried and wanted to go with them on their honeymoon (and did!). The most tomboy-like of four sisters, Grace was a gender-bender in her interests. Very competitive, she was often a long-term irritant to her slightly older brother, Gerald, who often wished he could rid himself of his very determined athletic sister.

Grace’s early quest to be included in social situations followed her whole life through. Maxine Rose, Gerald’s daughter, who assumed some responsibility for Grace after moving from Grand Bank to St. John’s, remembers a time when her husband’s birthday was being celebrated back in Grand Bank. To be part of the gathering, Grace, then ninety-four, went down the peninsula on the daily taxi run.

Mrs. Helen Milley (née Tibbo), descended from the Forsey family, was representative of the Grand Bank society who associated with the Pattens and Hickmans. About fifteen years younger than Grace Patten, Mrs. Milley remembers Grace teaching her to swim in Freshwater Bay, near Grand Bank. Always athletic, always practical, Grace believed that young people living near the ocean should be taught this potentially lifesaving skill. Helen remembers Grace taking her at a young age by the neck of her bathing suit, dunking her under, and then holding her up to practice leg kicks.¹²

Helen also remembers Grace as a young bride, dressed in long flowing jumpers with singular hair styling and jewellery, carrying a grocery basket as she shopped on Grand Bank’s main street.¹³ Grace was then and forever a style setter, individualistic in her flair and behaviour.

A key Burin Peninsula town, Grand Bank was a cultural and historic centre dating from the 1600s. By the end of the 1850s, Grand Bank, like Greenspond in Bonavista Bay, had a school, a doctor, a judicial system, a postal service, and a road system. Its Methodist Church, dating from the late 1800s, would have been the place of worship for the Patten family.

In 1904, the Masonic Fishermen’s Hospital was constructed and saw much service largely due to a workforce that was always connected to sea harvesting and other high-risk industry. In 1911, for example, when Grace was three years old, there were forty-eight schooners and 700 fishers plying their trade in the coastal town. Large warehouses constructed in 1912 held the salted fish ready for market. The beach women, drying fish on the rocks, similar to the graves system in Saint Pierre, were dressed largely in black with sun bonnets to protect their faces and necks. The too-frequent losses to Grand Bank storms meant someone was almost always in widow’s weeds.

The Hickmans, Grace’s maternal family who had migrated from England, were said to have moved to Grand Bank from Saint Pierre around 1762-63. Jonathan Hickman’s gravestone reads, Born at sea on a passage from England to Halifax, died May 18, 1817, age 100 years and 5 months.¹⁴ The family quickly acquired land and status to become the business and social leaders in the town. A prime minister of Newfoundland, Albert Hickman, is one native son.

The diversity of opportunities offered by Grace’s liberal-thinking parents would have contrasted sharply with those of many young girls who slaved on flakes and beaches to ready King Cod for export. Here is Grace’s life in Grand Bank in her own words as she penned it and gave to her good friend, Noel Hutton:

My very first memory, I’m quite clear it was being on a coastal boat going to Harbour Breton with my father. He had business there with Mr. Smith who operated a large commercial house, Newman and Company’s premises, I think. Strange that a child of four would go off on such a trip, but my father was delighted to have a daughter after three boys in a row. After I was married and living in St. John’s, Aaron Buffett of Grand Bank was having lunch at my apartment (around 1939). During lunch he told me that he was in Marystown when I was born. Communication then was only by water and telegraph. Father couldn’t wait until Aaron came home to Grand Bank. He telegraphed to announce my birth. Always I felt beloved and safe.

I remembered well the house where we boarded in Harbour Breton. When I was sixteen, and in Harbour Breton on the coastal boat on my way to Mount Allison, I walked to the place and could identify the entrance to the house. I knocked on the door and the lady of the house verified my memories. She still kept boarders. (Everybody in a small Newfoundland place needed a place to stay from place to place). Boarding houses all over the island were open to visitors. Hotels were unknown in the remote outports.

The first year I went to school (age five), I wanted to skate on the frozen puddles on the road one November morning. To do so I couldn’t wear rubbers. I was coming out the front door of our house and to be sure I wouldn’t slip, I put my left hand up to hold on. My sister Bessie (Sainthill) was fifteen and had little patience with small children. She banged the door and the top of my middle finger was left in my mitten. I can remember that as plainly as and perhaps even better than yesterday. I wanted to