Under the Cover with Mary Lou Dickinson, author of Late Bloomer

At the time, I did not foresee that the poem I wrote in the 1940s—a poem my grandmother included in her daily column, Three Meals A Day, in the Toronto Telegram—would lead not long after to my own passion for writing. I was six then and I wanted to be either a bush pilot or the first Royal Canadian Mounted Policewoman. I didn’t yet recognize writing as more than something that I found to be sort of fun.

The poem itself was about snow— 

I remember seeing my words on the same page as Nan’s recipes just as if they belonged there. It was only much later that I realized that moment was significant. Looking back, I see how it grew into a recognition of the power words and stories can have. But it was likely the acceptance letter from the publisher and the accompanying cheque for five dollars that made it seem a path to follow then. That would buy a lot of ice cream cones at five cents each, I figured. And as time passed, even discovering how difficult the path to authorship actually was, I had long ago given up thoughts of being a pilot or a policewoman. So, it seems it was with that poem my journey began, the journey of intending to be a writer, and gradually, and finally, becoming one—with an intrepid grandmother as a model of someone who continued to create her own path.

I was the eldest grandchild of Nan’s, my mother an only child. My determined grandmother had managed to have no more than the one child. After being taken out of school in grade six to help to look after her many younger siblings, Nan did not wish to have a large family. Indeed, when she finally started to broadcast in her late forties and then was hired to write the food columns, she finally had a career that gave her access to a world that delighted her as well as her readers. When she went to Hollywood in the 1950s and interviewed many of the stars (Danny Kaye, Ronald Reagan, Joan Fontaine, Paul Newman, Jeff Chandler) and returned with signed photographs, often with her included, these readers wrote to tell her so. She was “somebody,” and she’d managed that through talent and perseverance.

Some things I learned about her early when, at five years old, I was sent by myself on an overnight train to Toronto to spend the summer with my grandparents. This happened for several summers until my brother and sister went instead of me, and I went off to a summer camp. The first year I went to my grandparents was during World War II. My father had just joined the army, and my new baby sister was only a month old. I guess my brother at three was too young to send away to our grandparents. Or so it seemed to me as he and Mum (holding the new baby) waved at me from the station platform.

I was born into what is now known as the “Silent Generation.” This memoir tracks my journey from societal silence to finding my voice. And in retrospect I realized what a good model my grandmother was for me. Even leaving that job at 75, she continued to follow her own path. She bought herself a small white sports car and took on a new role as a model. The photographer had to make her up to look older in order to represent the age they wanted for these gigs! In any case, although I was often subject to her acid tongue, she was nonetheless an early example for me of what a woman could do even within a society that repressed women. And even if, like me, one wrote very bad poetry—a fact I discovered when I found my early poem one day many years later. Indeed, it was so terrible I ripped it up. Although perhaps I’m being too hard on my six-year-old self.

So here in my memory of an unusual grandmother, I found the germs that began and supported my own journey to discovering my voice. A voice that developed for me as a writer of the “Silent Generation.” One that supported and supports the voices of women who sought, and still seek, freedom from abuse and oppression in its many forms.