AS the story of Helen Page's life unfolds, the 95-year-old is as open about the low points as she is about the highlights.
She was born in Winnipeg, Man., on Oct. 16, 1916. Her mother died when she was 10 and her father when she was 15. School stopped at Grade 10 as there was no money for more education.
"I didn't have much supervision or training in family life," Helen recalls. "I had to learn as I went along."
Life got brighter with her marriage to David Page, a journeyman machinist, and the birth of their sons Kenneth and Lawrence.
When the war came and the jobs went to the lower paid apprentices, Dave enlisted in the army, serving overseas for six years.
Back in Canada, as the war industry boomed and it seemed like everyone was making money, Helen and the boys subsisted on Dave's wages, $113 a month.
Helen made her way to Vancouver in 1943. She boarded her boys with a family in White Rock, moved in with her aunt and went to work at the B.C. Electric depot on the corner of Hastings and Carrall streets.
She made the doughnuts that were shipped out daily to the tram stations and served them with coffee to the tram drivers - plain or iced for five cents.
It was hard being separated from her children but, "It was the best thing I could have done for my boys," says Helen, who visited on her long weekend every fortnight.
At war's end, the Canadian government carved a new subdivision out of farmland in Richmond, offering an acre of land, a house and a 25-year mortgage to returned veterans and their families. The Pages' portion would be the family home for 54 years.
Dave died of a heart attack in 1957, when 10year-old daughter Joy was at school and the boys had started university.
Helen provided room and board and they paid for tuition and books. Helen's part-time job at The Bay became full time. For less than $80 in those days, she could put a side of beef, cut and wrapped, into the freezer. Milk and cream came from neighbouring farms.
She was already canning and preserving her own produce.
Providing for her family was all in a day's work for Helen. Coping with life was a different story.
"I was shy," she explains. "I had to force myself to do things. I learned to speak up for myself."
Neighbours got Helen involved in a new chapter of St. John Ambulance.
"The big brass were coming to review us and I was left in charge," she remembers. "I practised on Joy, getting her to march and turn and stop until I felt confident."
Helen married for the second time in 1964. Ruben Hanson died of a heart attack 20 years and nine months on, the same length of time as Helen's first marriage. Helen continued to volunteer with St. John Ambulance and at the children's hospital for years after retiring in 1981.
Her home, with its fruit and nut trees, flower and vegetable gardens and room for family gatherings, was the centre of family life until 1996 when the Vancouver airport built a new runway.
Every two minutes, airplanes travelled the flight path directly overhead.
Helen and the other residents of that original post-war subdivision fought back, unsuccessfully.
Since 2001, Helen has lived happily in West Vancouver where she tends her garden and bakes special "grandma cookies" for friends and family.
Health problems don't slow her down, though she wishes, "Mother Nature would leave me alone for a change."
She walks to Park Royal and back regularly. She learned to cope with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) by taking part in the BREATH Program at Lions Gate Hospital.
Despite the neuropathy that numbs her hands, Helen intends to complete the shawl she's knitting for her fifth great grandchild, a girl this time, due in the new year.
"Mom is determined to finish that shawl and she will do it," says Joy. "She keeps putting one foot in front of the other. Our mother has been a help and inspiration to all of us through good times and bad."
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 7782792275 or email her at lander1@ shaw.ca.
