Irene Dawe, Collected Clowns
Bill Schenley
By Catherine Dunphy, obituary writer
In the Miss Parkdale contest of 1923, Irene Dawe took second place.
Boy, were those judges wrong.
For almost 90 years she has been the heart and heartbeat of this
much-maligned part of Toronto. A tiny wisp of a woman, she always had
a huge hug for everyone she met in her busy days in her neighbourhood.
Suffering from macular degeneration for almost 30 years, she was
legally blind but dependent on no one and beloved by everyone. There
was, however, a TTC driver who continually pointed out to her that her
CNIB transit pass was out of date and one day ordered her off the bus.
Dawe did not go quietly, announcing to all the other passengers what
was transpiring. Everybody then marched off the bus with her (and got
on the bus that had come up behind).
Dawe had friends in every corner of Parkdale, including her favourite
cashier at the No Frills store, "because she is always so good to me,"
she told her daughter, and Linda at the bank who always came out from
behind the counter to help her with her finances. She used to
regularly drop in to see her friends at Bonar-Parkdale Presbyterian
Church, then make her way to the Ross Craig Funeral Home on Queen St.
W.
"She was always so cheerful, she always brightened my day," said Neil
Webster, who was a funeral director there. Never did she accept his
offer of a cup of tea. "Oh, I don't want to take up your time," she
would tell him.
When he ran for municipal office in 2003, she asked him to put his
sign on her front lawn. It was the first time she had permitted any
electioneering on her property, and Webster decided he had better see
to it himself. When he arrived, he spotted a handwritten note on her
door: "Dear Neil. Welcome to my home. Love, Irene."
She invited him in and gave him a stuffed clown from her collection
for luck. "I didn't win," he said, "but that clown is in my glove
compartment to this day."
Five years ago, at 92, Dawe began visiting Krystyna Kepka's Grade 4
class at Parkdale Public School on Tuesdays and Thursdays, right after
recess.
"Our lady in red," said school secretary Rhonda Moretti. (Dawe usually
dressed head to sneakered toe in her favourite colour.) "Such a sweet,
sweet lady." The children adored her and made her special cards for
her 92nd birthday.
"Dear Mrs. Dawe," read one. "I hope you live until your 100. If you
die before your 100, we are going to miss you."
"Enjoy your life and your bestest birthday party and don't die without
me saying bye-bye," said another.
And this from a boy named Joe, whom no other adult could reach: "Her
hire is wight, just like her hart. She jist like sugar."
A few years earlier she had fought to preserve the school's name,
after the old building was replaced by a gleaming new complex. A
proposal was made to rename it Wilson Brooks Public School - a fine
name, no doubt, belonging to a fine man, no doubt, but a man with no
links to Parkdale, and that would never do.
At a public meeting, the lady in red raised herself to her full 4
foot, 10 inches, stated her credentials - proud resident of Parkdale
for almost 90 years, alumna of Parkdale Public School (and winner of
plenty of penmanship awards from it), mother and grandmother of
alumni - and her position. She got a standing ovation; better still,
she got her way.
"The school had always been a central part of the community and it was
one of the few major institutions that had the community's name on
it," said Gerald Holmes, who led the name fight. "Parkdale is not a
place where you grow up and move out. For many of us, it is a place
where we stay and raise our families. And Irene represented that
continuity."
Before Parkdale filled with men and women with lived-in faces and
private demons, surviving in grimy rooming houses carved out of
defeated Victorian homes, it was widely regarded as a great place to
live: a vibrant community with the feel of a friendly small town.
Irene Acorn moved there from Prince Edward Island with her family at
age 8. She met Alonzo, her Newfoundland-born husband, when he was a
tenant in her family's home at 153 Lansdowne Ave.
In 1938 they moved to 130 West Lodge Ave., into one of the tidy
semi-detached houses owned by the Gutta Percha rubber factory across
the street. When the company decided to sell, the Dawe family was one
of many who bought the homes they'd been renting.
Daughter Lillian Gardner, who still lives in her uncle's old house
there, said she and her three siblings had an idyllic childhood,
tearing around the neighbourhood and over to the nearby park and
tennis courts. "We used to sit on the front porch on hot summer nights
and my brother would play western songs on his guitar."
Across the street, the snap and crackle of air trapped in pockets as
the rubber went through the rollers sounded like bubblegum popping.
But the factory was torn down and replaced by apartment towers. For
years, 103 and 105 West Lodge Park were home to drug dealers,
prostitutes and gangs. Dawe stayed on as police cars began regularly
racing up her street.
"My mother would never move," Gardner said. She always believed in
Parkdale.
"She typified how people feel about our area," said Marilyn Holmes,
long a classroom assistant at the school. She noted that a new wave of
community builders - families, people who go to community meetings -
is moving into Parkdale because people like Dawe never left.
Dawe greeted everyone she met on the street. She made friends grocery
shopping: "Would you be a dear and tell me where the beef broth is?"
she'd ask. She made friends with the gas company voice at the other
end of the phone. When he retired, she became close to his
replacement, sending him a sympathy card when a relative died. She met
close friend Louella by dialling a wrong number.
The kitchen of her small home is studded with red accents. The rest is
overflowing with her collection of clowns. When she fell ill, her
family wrapped her in her clown comforter to take her to hospital.
After she died there on Dec. 18, aged 97, they buried her in her red
mock turtleneck, red slacks and red slippers.