Call Me True. Eleanor Darke

met True ever forgot her and one of the great privileges I have had while working on this project has been the pleasure of meeting and speaking with some of the extraordinary people whom she knew. In fact, one of the most difficult parts of researching this book was deciding to stop interviewing. Every person I spoke to suggested at least two more people to whom “I had to speak.” It was hard to declare a halt. Meeting such fascinating people enriched me as much as they did the book.

      I am especially grateful to her nephews, David and Michael Cobden, for all of their help and advice. While the list of the others who shared their memories of her with me in interviews and letters is too long to provide here, I hope they will recognize their contributions in the text and accept my sincere appreciation for their help and honesty. If this book succeeds in any way to effectively convey a true picture of True, it will have been because of the memories and opinions that they so generously shared with me.

      Eleanor Darke, 1997

      1

      A CHILD OF CANADA

      FAMILY

      Jean Gertrude Davidson was born in 1901 in Hudson,Quebec. She assumed the nickname, True, early and reinforced its use throughout her life, even refusing to acknowledge any other name on occasion⁴. Although the reference letters from her professors all called her Jean Gertrude⁵, her listing in Torontoniensis, the University of Toronto yearbook listed her as J.G. “True” Davidson.⁶ The first letter she received from Bryn Mawr offering her a scholarship addressed her as Miss J.G. Davidson, but subsequent letters were addressed to “True” Davidson, no doubt at her insistence.⁷ Although she couldn’t have known how useful it would be to her future career, her choice of name was an inspired one. As one of her friends later said, “It was a good name for her... she was smart...a good short political name.”⁸

      Because her father was a Methodist minister, the family moved frequently. By the time True left high school she had moved nine times and had lived in four different provinces. Although it was common for the Methodist clergy to change churches frequently, moves were generally within the same or nearby conferences. Her father appears to have difficulties as a minister, necessitating more frequent, complete changes. Charlotte Maher, who knew True near the end of her life, recalled her saying that her father “sort of got fired from some of his parishes.”

      True, herself, chose to regard these moves as a positive thing. As early as 1931, she was quoted as claiming “Canada in general as her home, for, she explained, she had lived in almost every province.”⁹

      True was enormously influenced by her father. She seems to have spent her whole life trying to live up to what she thought he wanted her to be, writing years later that:

      ...at school I was expected to top my class, and school, and even my province. Every time I met an expectation it became harder to face the next time I failed to do so...But it was not until I was a middleaged woman and my father was dying that I discovered that he had been fiercely proud of me all along, and only wanted me to be all that I was capable of being. Which is very different from being first. And the realization changed my entire life...¹⁰

      True’s father, John Wilson Davidson, was born at Union, Ontario, on April 29, 1870, one the large family of James Davidson and Jane Hepburn Grant, who was descended from the same ancestor as Ulysses S. Grant. True later described her ancestors as United Empire Loyalists, “the stiff-necked, unreasonable kind.”¹¹ Like another famous woman of her generation, Agnes MacPhail, this family background had a marked influence on her personality. Terry Crowley wrote of the MacPhail’s family that “More than their heritage made [them] hard-working and self-reliant. Life provided few cushions apart from the support of relatives, and they were only to be called upon in the most dire emergency.”¹²

      True’s father, John Wilson Davidson. Reputedly a brilliant scholar, True’s father seemingly lacked the interpersonal skills to be a successful minister. Courtesy David Cobden

      John Davidson’s early education was in Union and St. Lambert, Ontario, and at the St. Thomas Collegiate Institute. He graduated in Arts from Victoria College in 1898 and then in Theology in 1900, winning numerous medals and prizes including the oratory prize. He was ordained the same year and immediately married Mary Elfleda Pomeroy, the daughter of a Methodist minister. Their first charge was the mission church at Hudson-on-the-Lake, Quebec, where True was born one year later. The next year they moved to St. Lambert, Quebec for one year; then to Montreal, where True’s sister, Marsh, was born. These charges were followed in quick succession by Ormstown, Quebec (1904-5), Waterloo, Quebec (1905-9), and Delta, Ontario (1909-10). Then, when True was nine years old, they moved west to Vancouver (1913-1915), followed by a move to Regina where the pace of moves finally began to slow. Rev. Davidson served as minister of Wesley Church in Regina, Saskatchewn from 1915-1919; then moved to Rae Street Church, still in Regina, from 1919-22.¹³

      The most open interview True ever gave about herself was to Warren Gerard for The Globe Magazine in 1971. In it she revealed an “extraordinary affection for her parents” and said of her father that:

      Well, he was a very brilliant man. The whole family was brilliant. They were of Scottish extraction...[She describes her father as not a worldly success in the church.] I don’t know what happened. I think that perhaps my mother cared too much. Perhaps she was too ambitious for him. Perhaps he was too proud. Perhaps he had difficulty finding his way with people.¹⁴

      True dedicated her book, The Golden Strings, to her father with a poem which reads in part:

      To My Father

      Misunderstood and lonely

      Almost to the end,

      Your courage never faltered,

      Your will knew not to bend.

      Pity you learned and patience

      Beyond all grief or mirth,

      And your love was rooted deeply

      As a tree in ancient earth

      You found a sweet solution

      For frustrate human pain,

      And your faith was clean and quiet

      As grass after rain

      She ends the poem with the dedication, “All I have done, my father, Since then, I owe to you.”¹⁵

      Whatever her father may have lacked in worldly abilities, True believed that he had a true calling and never doubted the sincerity of his faith. Her entire life appears to have been a search for the same depth of faith and for a calling to which she could give the same level of devotion. She told an interviewer that “I have a very clear recollection of church services. My father’s hair became white very early and he did have a very rapt and dedicated look.”¹⁶ Although her religious faith was never as easy or uncomplicated as that her parents appear to have had, she credited them for having shared their faith with her and wrote that “My parents and my church may not have been, as they seemed to me, the best parents and best church in the world, but they gave me the God that I shall never quite lose. The best Christmas gift for any child.”¹⁷

      Charlotte Maher said that she always pictured True’s father from her description as having been “a dour type who always dressed publicly in a tight collar...” All sources seem to indicate that he was an austere, very correct, highly intelligent, very principled man with a deep sense of religious calling, a scholar whose ascetic, reasoned faith wasn’t easily conveyable to ordinary, compromising people.

      In 1930, True wrote a short story which may have illustrated her belief that her father had sacrificed a successful scholarly career to work as a country minister. In the story, a country minister has written a novel and is considering submitting it for publication. His wife encourages him by reminding him of the kind comments made by his university professors about his writing. However the manuscript is unpublishable