Betty Gerrard (1916-2008) – a tribute to my mother

My mother was born Aug 10, 1916 in Timperley, near Manchester England. From an early age she was athletic, playing cricket at the age of two. She attended school in Timperley, followed by Dudley Bank School in Hale, Eden Hall in Cumberland, Cheltenham Ladies College and Oxford University. At Oxford she obtained a BA in History, and in addition was captain of both cricket and field hockey teams. On one memorable occasion, bowling for Oxford, she was instrumental in getting many of the Cambridge batters out, while, during her own turn at bat she scored more runs than the whole Cambridge team put together.

While at Oxford, she also met her future husband John and they were married August 27, 1941. The first four and a half years of their married lives were difficult war years. Betty and John were separated as John served with the allied forces in North Africa, Italy and in what is now Israel.

After the War, my parents lived in Birmingham, England, coming to Saskatoon in Canada in 1955 where my father was offered a position as the first Head of Pediatrics at the University of Saskatchewan medical school.

During the years in Saskatoon my mother wrote four books – We Came to Canada (1967), Strange Encounters (1972), Travels with My Husband, Journeys in Africa and Asia (1986), and Gladly to Learn. The last, never formally published, describes her passion for learning, her formative experiences in school, and her own approach to helping her own children learn.

In Gladly to Learn, my mother describes how she and my father believed that young children “can do a great many seemingly dangerous things if they are shown the right way to do them” and how they “urged our three year olds and even our two year olds to go up ladders, to venture on haystacks and roofs and reckon no tree unclimbable.”

My mother had strength and fortitude, particularly when dealing with illnesses, which is difficult to describe. In her early 20s, she was diagnosed with a melanoma in her left eye. She lived the rest of her life with a glass eye, but never let this limit her. She was able with her one functioning eye to read avidly, to play golf and to live life so well that many people around her never realized she had only one eye. Some years later she was found to have a parotid gland cancer and was told she probably had only a few years to live. She lived more than 50 years afterwards.

My mother was a wonderful storyteller. She was a historian and many of her stories were about political events and about politicians. And I am sure that such stories and her interest in, respect for and admiration for many politicians were an important factor in my eventually becoming a politician.

She was very devoted to her seven grandchildren, and to the very end, it was news from her grandchildren which was more important than anything else. Her last major trip, at age 90, was to the wedding of her grandson Philip to Malin in Sweden, and to visit friends and relatives in England.

My mother died June 26th. Her health had been excellent up until her stroke a year and a half ago. Even after the stroke she was soon back walking (after a few weeks, she refused any longer to use a walker), and got around remarkably well, continuing to live with my father in their condominium in Saskatoon, and going for regular walks in the neighbourhood up until ten days before her death.

Photos: Top - painting of my mother as a young woman. Middle: My mother in about 2001. Bottom. My parents in 2006.