On the twenty-third of April, she was on a train to Toronto for a much-appreciated leave, a brief few days with her family. She was twenty-one years old, the war was over, her navy days were over, but looking into her heart she found … nothing. She felt she knew nothing of herself, what she wanted to do with her life, what she could do with her life. Just emptiness. A complete blank. She experienced a sense of frustration, and a profound weariness. Study music? Study art? Like a child, she wanted to do both at once, but as a grown-up could decide on neither.
After a few days at home with her family, she was back in Ottawa on the first of May, as a civilian now. Her situation had changed, but it was business as usual in the committee room: Chaos. There were cartons of new flags yet to be examined and evaluated, hundreds of “old” flags that had been tested and found wanting in one way or another, and scores of designs that “seemed to exhibit a certain merit” for which Frances would have to execute the final art for the committee’s consideration. By mid-May, she was reproducing what would become the lucky semi-finalists. “Most of them were stupid, though,” she said with a long sigh of resignation.
But as sometimes happens in the senseless backing and filling of committee work, a ray of common sense penetrates the clouds of confusion. Someone pauses, and says “Hey, hang on a minute. We’ve got these flags down to about twelve. How about this: Let’s submit them to a group of experts, people who know what they’re doing.” He then looks around at the committee members, all of whom are frowning, wishing they’d said that. Far away at her drawing board, Frances sighs again. “Should have been done months ago.”
But it hadn’t been done then, and it wasn’t done now. New-born common sense was buried beneath discussions, amendments, meetings, and delays. Bureaucracy was once more ascendant. Disenchantment settled over Frances. “The matter is back in the hands of a bunch of politicians who know nothing about the job. And still it goes on! Even the big shots are getting into the act. The prime minister himself, Mackenzie King, dictated a design to me which he thought was awfully good.”
On the seventeenth of June, Alan Beddoes delivered yet another large package to Frances at Flag HQ, the nerve centre of “The Flag Affair.” She opened the parcel.
“Twenty-one variations on the red ensign.” She marvelled at the consistency of the submissions, the number of treatments that doggedly dwelt on that single theme of the red ensign, at that time the de facto flag of Canada (though historically just the flag of the merchant marine). Frances was somewhat concerned. “I wonder if the ministers are aware that a lot of people don’t want to change.”
The next day, Alan Beddoes looked in and dropped another parcel on her desk. “More red ensigns,” he said, “and, oh, here’s a bunch with maple leaves. Not much imagination out there.”
Two days later a frazzled Frances plodded up the stairs to the committee room. “Twenty-four more red ensigns, complete with maple leaves, up to the House of Commons. Will this week ever end?”
After four more days of the same monotonous story, she was growing reluctant to show up for work. “Reported in, and got three more designs that must be ready for the day after tomorrow. Don’t know how long I can keep my sanity.”
The next day: “Two more designs to paint up.” After lunch Alan Beddoes looked into her office, hesitantly, and handed her another parcel.
“I don’t want to see you!” she cried.
“It’s, uh, not many. Maybe … could you do them after supper?”
The following morning she was called into Beddoes’s office. He tried to smile bravely. “Hi, Frances!” He shuffled a few papers around on his desk. “There’s a few, uh, sort of rush orders to paint …”
“A … few … rush … orders!” She almost stamped her foot. “Do you know? Have you any idea …” she stuttered. “Are you aware that I have yet to be paid for any of this flag business?”
The twenty-second of July was her last day, and she packed her bags and left for home. As usual, she thought, with the last shreds of exasperation, after all this bureaucratic brouhaha, all these weeks of work, it would have been so much easier if they had taken the millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money and simply flushed them down the toilet.
The Great Flag Affair of 1946 was shelved and never heard of again.
To move from the active pointlessness of navy life to the inactive pointlessness of civilian life was not much of a career change, and in the autumn and early winter of 1946, Frances found herself looking for a job, any job, and growing more and more frustrated and hopeless, not to mention poorer and poorer with no source of income. The world seemed filled with jobs that started nowhere, went nowhere, and in that dull progress provided neither the satisfaction nor money to at least make them worth the effort. For Frances, sadness became depression. She was miserable at having missed the entry dates for any kind of educational institution; she still saw university as the only way to go. But she was left with a year to fill before she could try again and, not incidentally, to decide in which field she wanted to study. Her mind still jumped from art to music. Which field to pursue? How? Where? Even with the support of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, she was, as always, concerned about money. The government didn’t pay for everything.
For the moment, she was staying with her family in Oshawa, which gave her a roof over her head but also the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to contribute. She had the loner’s passion for independence, to be able to pay her own way, to be in a financial position to make her own decisions independent of anything and anyone else.
Two of her acquaintances, Jean and Jim Stafford, had recently been blessed with twins, and Frances agreed to give the parents some help for a period of three months. The pay? Five dollars per week. For a thirteen-hour day. Almost immediately she regretted the move. “God! I felt like — and was treated like — an au pair!” After three weeks, Frances had a serious discussion with the Staffords, and a new schedule was instituted. She would have the same duties, same pay, but the hours were reduced to five hours a day starting at 8:00 a.m. “Wow,” said Frances, sarcastically, “my hourly rate more than doubled — seven cents an hour to a princely fifteen cents an hour. For heaven’s sake, I knew a fifteen-year-old office boy — a mere gofer — who was making four times that!” And the incredible thing was that the Staffords seemed surprised, even hurt, by Frances’s demands for an increase in pay.
During this period, Frances had been talking to the Oshawa YWCA. An offer of work brought the Stafford situation thankfully to an end, and by the last week in October 1946, Frances was working evenings at the YWCA.
Frances was not one to stand around waiting for someone to tell her what to do. From the outset she became involved with many of the YWCA’s activities. By January 1947, she was the instructor of the sketching class, running the teen centre, giving lectures to women’s groups, and at the same time continuing with her orchestra and choir practices and studying for her chemistry certificate.
Then, on January 20, 1947, there occurred one of those acts, prompted by an inexplicable change in mental state or chemistry, that happens perhaps once or twice in a lifetime. Or was it a rough push from Destiny’s impatient hand? On that fateful morning in January, she took a firm grip on her own bootstraps, and pulled. “Okay, that’s it. Time to cut the procrastinating and get to work.” The next day, she left for Toronto and marched into the office of the registrar of the Ontario College of Art. Later the same day, she sat down with the people from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and made the decision that would change her life.
The following September she would enroll in the four-year program at the Ontario College of Art.
THE DECISION TO ATTEND THE Ontario College