Cathy MacNamee remembers...

interviewed January 2004 Hamish Kerfoot & Marina Endicott

I was born October 28, 1912. It was Thanksgiving Day, but they never had Thanksgiving on that day again. I spoiled everyone's dinner, anyway—nobody was thankful for me!

The bell

I liked to listen to the New Year's bell ringing, to welcome the New Year in.

All the people would come from the Anglican Church and we'd have a candle-lighting service. The priest lit his candle from the altar and came down to me and lit mine and said, "Cathy, you are the light of the world".

I wanted to hear that silver voice out in the moonlight, ice all over the parking lot, the sky a deep blue. It was so beautiful, it seemed like the bell should be ringing. It would make Christmas for me. My Granddad Andison from the butcher shop rang it, then Sid Reid. Just the Anglican Church bell. It was the fire alarm bell, too.

The organ

I played organ in all the churches: the Anglican, Catholic and United. I was a jack-of-all-trades.

It was a Hammond pump organ. I didn't know how to play, I just monkeyed with it till I got the right stops that I liked. Before that I didn't know enough to use the Bourbon bass, that gives it a rich dark tone. Edie wrote to me in Ontario to ask me how to play. She got the organ, later.

I played at funerals. I had the pleasure of playing at Ernie Crow's funeral. The casket was right beside the organ. There it was. I could have patted him! Two people said they wouldn't have funerals in Cochrane if Len Thomas didn’t come back and conduct them.

Once I was practicing for a wedding, playing Traumerei, and I looked up and there was a millionaire!

Two of my brothers took lessons from Elmer Higgins in Calgary. He sang in opera and married an Italian girl, but hard times must have come. He started going around to small towns giving lessons, I was upstairs when he and Grafton came up Sylvia's hair is like the night... in an operatic baritone. I often imagine him singing. At Walter Aris's funeral he sang.

I didn’t mind playing the organ until that one minister, who insisted I had to play the chants. I worried about it every morning. I didn't know where they changed because I didn't go. We only went to church when they had it, once a month. I don't think that's much of a confession of grace, having church once a month.

[At the Roman Catholic Church...] We had church in the afternoon. You wore a hat that day. Girls came in one day without a hat and the priest sent them home.

There was no stained glass in Cochrane, it wasn't available, but the Anglican Church had tissue paper with a design, Biblical pictures on it, so when the light came through you could see them. My mother was horrified. She came from the Maritimes, and they wouldn't dream of anything but real stained glass.

The Anglican Church had little kneelers. (A lot of high and mighty good-for-nothings!) They had the stove at the end of the church, with a long pipe to heat the nave. It wasn't cold. Granddad Andison looked after that.

Anglican Church people

The Ladies Guild—those were the people whose names should have been on that statue. They were the ones that held this town together. They met at home, and you got a cup of tea. The Ladies Guild packed kit bags and rolled bandages during the war. Joe Rushfeldt and I were the entertainment committee in the second war.

Mrs. Hutchinson was the beldame of the Anglican Church. Very English, she was very class conscious.

Denis Catchpole: Waxy Catchpole! People said he didn't say anything, he needed to get the wax out of his ears to hear. They were the reason why the Andisons stopped going. Mrs. Hutchinson was outraged. They had betrayed their faith! George Callaway took up a collection after his wife's funeral. Jim Hazel raised llamas at Longview after he left here.

Dean: his daughter had bare legs in church. I remember her, going through Psalms like a silk train.

Dick Lemmon came before Derek [Dunwoody]. Two big Jims and two little Dicks, we used to say.

Winnie Cook, Winnie Turner, lived at the CPR demonstration farm. She was lady soloist at the Anglican Church. The Copithornes didn't build that farm. The Copithornes used to come into town with a herd of cattle, whooping and yelling... these new people came to town and decided it was a noise and wanted it stopped, so they stopped it.

Fred Whittle sat behind me in high school. They'd ask you your name, and the name of your father.

Ernie grabbed his sister Violet—she had a voice like a moose—and my brother grabbed me, and they waltzed us around. I guess they waltzed me too much because I threw up in the clothesbasket.

Archie Kerfoot: We used to think Archie was conceited, and did not realize his great qualities until my mother was ill. Archie came to pay his telephone bill, and said, "You need overshoes".

I didn't have any. He said, "I'm going to see you get some."

He sent a cheque to me on a piece of newspaper, and said, "Don't tell my secretary about this"! I was standing beside him at a funeral, and he said how awful he felt when his mother died. He went into her closet and sat with her clothes.

I was the secretary of North Mutual Telephone. I hated phoning those directors.

The years

"Years come and years go—those years are blank to me," Cathy said, when Hamish asked her about the 1960s.

"The things that happen to people when they're young bend them a certain way."