Some memories of my grandmother, Esther McDonald

Tuesday 6 March 2007


by Bev Wigney (Kay)

The following are some memories of my grandmother, Esther McDonald. I’ll leave most of the biographical information about her for another time. However, here is a little background information about her. She was born, Esther Lancaster, on November 29, 1890. She grew up in Ottawa, and married Alfred Ernest McDonald in 1912, when she was about 22 years old. Alfred would have been about 35 – in his memoirs he states that soon after they married, they moved to Sydney, Nova Scotia where he played a season for the Sydney Millionaires, before retiring from professional hockey at age 36. Alfred and Esther raised seven sons and three daughters, as well as a son from Alfred’s earlier marriage to Julia Gilligan who died some time around 1910. The family made a few more moves before returning to eastern Ontario to live in Iroquois, and later, in Ottawa. You can read more about that part of the family history in Alfred McDonald’s memoirs on this website. However, this piece is about my own recollections of Esther McDonald. Most of the photos that accompany this piece can be viewed in a much larger size — just click on each image for a larger view.

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My earliest memories of my grandmother, Esther McDonald, are from when we were all living on what was then the south edge of Ottawa, on the east side of Bank Street, south of Walkley Road. I say “all” because several members of the McDonald family had bought lots within three or four blocks of each other, and built houses there in the early 1950s. The family business, McDonald Brother’s Equipment was located on the west side of Bank Street not far from most of the houses. Alfred and Esther’s house on St. Paul Avenue was about 3 blocks over from my parent’s house on Nottinghill Ave. Alfred died several months after I was born in 1955. Esther continued to live in the St. Paul Avenue house for several more years. Before my family left Ottawa in 1963, I would occasionally spend the night at my grandmother’s house. I have a recollection of packing up a red flannel nightgown into a paper bag with manilla handles, and making the great journey from my house to my grandmother’s house. My mother called my grandmother on the phone to tell her I was on my way over, and my grandmother called my mother to tell her when I had arrived after the three block trek.

My grandmother’s house was a small, four-square, Boyd block “exposed aggregate” house (incidentally, this is of some interest to me now as I researched the history of the Boyd houses while at university). The house had quite a sunny kitchen and living room at the front, with the dining room and bedrooms to the back. As I recall, the house was sort of a busy place, with various McDonalds always seeming to stop in for a visit, along with some of Esther’s sisters who were also living in Ottawa in the 1950s.

I don’t remember much else about her house except that she always kept a bag of yarn or balls of cotton and her current crochet project in the living room next to the sofa. She was a excellent at crocheting those very intricate lace doilies that used to be displayed on table tops at one time. She could do all sorts of amazing patterns. She also liked to crochet afghan blankets to use up left-over wool. Some time before she died, she left a bag of afghan squares and a partially completed blanket at our house or cottage. Many years later, I crocheted more squares from the left over wool (I had learned to crochet squares from my grandmother when I was quite young). I completed the blanket as it seemed like a good thing to do. I expect that my mother still has that stored away somewhere.


I have a particular memory that may be shared by some of my cousins, or perhaps this will jog a few memories for them. It is of a day just before Christmas, probably around 1960. Esther had invited some of her sisters over to the house — Betty, Mae and Rae (Rachel). Some of my cousins were there too, but I can’t recall which ones. We spent the day making Christmas decorations and other small things. My grandmother and her sisters used to make angels for the tree using crepe paper for the dresses, and soft white tissue paper with cotton balls inside for the heads. The hair was made from cotton balls, and faces were painted on the heads using water colours. Each angel was customized by making muffs out of cotton balls, and sticking foil stars (the kind teachers used to stick on papers), on the hair or paper dresses. Lollipops were attached inside of each one and a little string in the back was used to attach the angels to the tree branches. They seemed quite magical to a five-year-old. We also made little dolls out of acorns — the acorn was the head, and the bodies were made from various colours of felt cut to make a little cone with the acorn sitting on top. These were decorated to make them look like people in costumes from different cultures. While all of the above was going on, someone was making cookies and other treats in the kitchen. It all seemed quite busy and I’m sure my grandmother and her sisters enjoyed the activity as it was probably how they would have prepared for Christmas many years before.

Most of my other memories of Esther are from summers spent at our family cottage on the Ottawa River near where Baskins Marina is located now. Several members of the McDonald family had cottages along the river just south of where the marina now stands. George and Sylvia owned the first cottage, Bob & Joan owned the second, Don & Marguerite owned the third. Our family, the Kay family, owned the fourth and last along the little lane. Don and Marguerite rarely used their cottage, so Esther often spent the summers there next door to our cottage.

Before I write more, I should mention that the photos to the left – scenes from a cottage, were from earlier years at the older McDonald family cottage on the St. Lawrence River near Iroquois, Ontario. If I find some photos from the Ottawa River cottage, I’ll add them at some point.

My grandmother loved nature and being outdoors, so I’m sure she enjoyed the independence of spending summers at the cottage on the Ottawa. My mother and two brothers would be next door in our own cottage, and my father would often be there on evenings, or on weekends depending on where he was working at the time. She would often have lunch and dinner at our cottage, but usually cooked her own breakfast. I used to stay over at Don’s cottage with her at night as she seemed to like that bit of company. In the evening, she would often put out a night line — a fish hook baited with a piece of bacon attached to a fishing rod set on the beach and weighted down with a couple of rocks. By morning, there would just about always be a Mudpout (Brown bullhead catfish – Ameirus nebulosus) on the line. She would bring it to the cottage to clean it and fry it in some thin batter. I wasn’t the vegetarian that I am today, so I would eat the morning catch with her.

My grandmother was a great one for rising early in the morning to go for long walks. She would often get up well before dawn, going for a long walk on her own, and returning just as I was awakening. She would have reports of duck families seen swimming along the river, or of seeing skunks and raccoons wandering about. At times, her walks led her quite far from the cottage. One morning, she returned to report that she had walked “down the road a long piece” and had seen a long laneway with white quartz stone. This sounded like quite a marvelous thing at the time. A couple of years later, I discovered that it was the lane to a farm (the Kennedy’s) that lived at least a couple of miles, if not more, from our cottage.

As mentioned, Esther liked nature and knew a great deal about flora and fauna. She liked to paint watercolours of wild flowers using a simple paint box. Considering her age and the time period in which she grew up, I expect that her interest in plants would have been partly influenced by the times — that was a time during which there was still quite an interest in collecting and pressing ferns and other wild plants. However, my grandmothers knowledge of plant lore went considerably beyond that of appreciating the beauty. She was also very knowledgeable about edible wild plants and also of their medicinal use. When she and I went for walks — something we did at least once a day — she would point out different plants and explain how they could be used in certain teas, poultices, or to relieve pain from burns or insect stings. As we walked along, we would pick and eat wild gooseberries, currants, rose hips, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. Sometimes, we would pick lamb’s quarters to cook up as greens for dinner. Considering that Esther raised ten children along the banks of the St. Lawrence River, it’s probably not too surprising that she knew so much about harvesting wild plants for food and medicine. Apparently, the town doctor in Iroquois used to say she knew as much as he did about medicine. She may have learned some of the things about wild plants from a native family who often used to visit her at the cottage on the St. Lawrence River in summer when they were camped on the islands nearby. In any case, her interest in nature was passed along to her children and at least a few of her grandchildren.

When I slept over at my grandmother’s cottage, we often had interesting talks before I drifted off to sleep. She would tell stories, sing songs, recite poems and play games while we lay in the dark. One of the poems that she liked to recite and which she taught me, was Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesperus. Her stories and songs were often what I would call “teaching songs” that had some moral lesson attached to them. One of her favourite songs (and mine), was this one about a dog. I’m sure it must have been a parlor song from around 1900 or so. (Note added Dec. 3, 2009 – I’ve since fond a little into about this song. In 1964, Hank Snow recorded his own arrangement of the song which appears as “Old Rover” on the LP Songs of Tragedy. There are a few differences to the lyrics, but most of the words remain the same).

Two little boys and their old family dog,
At the side of the stream stood one day.
The boys had decided that Rover must die,
a nuisance well out of the way.

A stone to his neck they were ready to tie.
His pleadings were of no avail.
When one little boy, slipped and fell in the stream.
The other stood by deathly pale.

One loud cry for help
and old Rover jumped in.
No sign of old age or decay.
As he slowly swam back
with the boy to his back,
The waves rolling by seemed to say.

He is your very best friend, boys.
No one could love you so true.
Although you may hit him
and kick him today,
tomorrow he’ll play games with you.

It’s true he is old now
and quite in the way,
but life to him still has its charms.
There’s only one favour I ask of you now.
Let him live his last days on the farm.

She also used to tell a story about two girls – a sort of variation on Cinderella. The kind girl who used to do most of the family chores, fell down a well and found herself in a mysterious land in which objects could speak. I can’t remember the whole story, but in one part, the girl opens the door of a cottage and hears little voices calling “Take me out! Take me out!” and discovers some pieces of toast just beginning to burn, so she removes them from the oven. After doing about three good deeds, she hears a voice that tells her to go and stand at the bottom of the well and hold out her apron. A shower of gold coins falls on her. When she returns home, her “bad” sister (the lazy one), asks how she got the gold. She immediately rushes to the well and jumps down. However, once in the other land, she doesn’t do any of the things that the first sister did, instead letting the toast burn up. When she finally returns to the well for her reward, a great bucket of tar pours down over her, and then a basket of feathers. Of course, the message of the tale was quite clear, but the story was also very amusing, especially the way my grandmother told it as she made different voices for the toast and other objects.

The games we would play were mainly teaching and memory games, although they didn’t really seem like “lessons” at the time. She and I would take turns spelling words by tracing the shape of each letter with our fingers on each other’s backs. It’s interesting, but that game really helped you to form a sort of “shape recognition” of letters. Keep in mind that I was quite young when playing this game — my grandmother died when I was about eleven, so this would be several years before. We also played adding and subtracting games the same way. And we played an “I spy” game where we would look for something in the room and give one clue at a time while the other guessed — up to three clues for an object.

The above photo, while taken years earlier at the Iroquois cottage, is probably about the closest to how I remember my grandmother. When away from the city, she dressed casually and liked to do things like cooking over a fire on the small stone oven on the beach out in front of the cottage. At night, my family often had little bonfires down on the beach. We would cook baked potatoes wrapped in foil in among the hot coals and ashes, and my grandmother sometimes made a kind of bannock bread that was cooked on a piece of fresh-cut ash sapling.

A final recollection is of a fun few days at the cottage when Esther invited some of her sisters up for a visit. Betty, Rae and Mae (Lancaster) came up and stayed at least a couple of days. While they were visiting, Aunt Mae (actually my great-aunt), decided that she would really like to roast a fresh chicken. Esther and Betty were very annoyed over the whole thing, but told Mae to go ahead if she did the whole thing herself. My mother drove her around to a couple of farms until she found a chicken. She had to kill it and clean it herself, although I helped her with it — being a curious kid. It was a hen, so she showed me the eggs that were in the process of maturing — so it was a bit of a biology lesson. I guess everything went okay and Mae way pleased, saying it was the best chicken she had had in years. On one of the evenings, the sisters decided to have a little party and made pull-taffy (again, I think this was Mae’s idea). A few of my cousins were at their parents’ cottages, so there were a few kids around that evening. The “entertainment” mainly consisted of pulling taffy and working on a jigsaw puzzle (a great combination).

That is about it for my recollections, although something more may come to mind later. I’ll add pages for anyone who happens to have stories about our parents or grandparents that they would like to archive on this site.