answer to Édith Piaf, and during her last three years at OCA she played second violin (“very badly”) in the University of Toronto’s symphony orchestra. There were close ties between the university and the art college, on more than just the academic level, so Frances — holding the view that if you want something, ask for it — went to them and asked to play the violin. “The experience opened my eyes to new dimensions in music. It was a wonderful time, an adventure. It also showed me, once again, that people aren’t going to be aware you want something unless you let them know. Most of the time they’ll give it to you. Often they’ll be delighted you asked.” Generations of people who have been in business for themselves have recognized this as the Entrepreneur’s Rule Number One.
In the latter part of 1952, Barbara Howard left Jarvis Street for England, and Frances stayed on in the small studio. During this period she was still working for the veterinarian Dr. Edith “Bud” Williams (nicknamed “Bud” for unverified reasons, though the story is that a tiny niece or nephew couldn’t pronounce “Edith,” which is the way many of us get our nicknames). Williams shared accommodations with her friend Dr. Frieda Fraser on Burlington Crescent just south of St. Clair Avenue. Frieda, a tiny woman, barely a hundred pounds and to a great degree a recluse, was professor of preventive medicine at the University of Toronto.
“I first met Bud just before I went into Sunnybrook Hospital,” said Frances. “Ruth Holmes, who taught museum studies at OCA, introduced me. I worked for Bud part-time after school for three years, and continued after graduation while I was living on Jarvis Street.”
Dr. Williams was the vet who looked after the cats belonging to Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, known in the art world as “The Girls,” two Toronto sculptors already famous for their art, and their parties. “When Frieda and Bud learned that I’d never heard of them, Frieda and her veterinary companion had us all together for dinner, and The Girls invited me over for tea the next day at their studio, an old church on Glenrose Avenue near Mount Pleasant Road and St. Clair Avenue.”
In 1913, when The Girls first arrived in Toronto from the United States, they took a studio in the Church/Lombard area, where they lived and worked as sculptors for seven years. In 1920, they moved to the old church on Glenrose and remained there for the rest of their lives.
Frances Gage’s first impression of their church was of a large room crammed wall to wall with sculptures, dust, and cats. She had never seen so much sculpture. “It was wonderful!” A.Y. Jackson, a frequent visitor to the church studio, called it “a most colourful place!” He said that in many ways it was the art centre of Toronto. And the parties! “What wonderful parties they put on!” said Jackson. “Artists, musicians, architects, and writers were proud to be invited to a Loring-Wyle party.” Rebecca Sisler, an old friend and fellow sculptor, remembered “the regular gatherings when everyone came and mingled among the sculptures (which were) in various stages of completion, and were part of the background.”
“Their parties were a legend in Toronto,” said Frances. “There was always a ‘little bit’ to drink. Frances Loring liked her rye whisky. The neighbours, all the members of the Group of Seven, and a lot of other people came. I didn’t get in on any of the really wild parties, when The Girls were in their prime. I went to a couple of them later on and helped with catering and giving out drinks, but they weren’t as wild in those days. A.Y. Jackson painted a cardboard Christmas tree, and they always put that up in December. Emily Carr was there once, but The Girls were not impressed with her, or she was not impressed with The Girls, one or the other. Pity, because she was such a great woman.”
It was through The Girls that Frances met Helen and Charlie Band. Charles Band was a prominent businessman and philanthropist, and former president of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Frances, quite frankly, considered Helen a saint. “They lived in Rosedale, near the Sherbourne subway station. Helen knew The Girls were always short of money, so she arranged for Duguid’s, the wonderful Yonge Street butcher, to send The Girls a package of meat twice a week. And these were steaks! I had some myself. Florence Wyle sometimes fed a steak to a neighbour’s dog. This big fat dog would come to the window. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she’d say and he’d get a steak.”
The Bands had a wonderful collection of works by the Group of Seven. “They also had Emily Carr’s White Church right inside the front door,” said Frances. “Charlie Band knew a lot of the Group of Seven personally.”
“Sculpture, in Canada, is something one backs into while viewing paintings.”
“I remember a young woman saying that,” said Frances. “She was writing a thesis on sculpture.” Frances shook her head. “A real winner she must have been.”
Frances was not alone in her exasperation. The Girls would repeatedly say to anyone, whether they were listening or not, “For God’s sake, look at sculpture!” Frances Loring, whose work is most certainly contemporary, nevertheless had a jaundiced view of modern sculpture, and considered much of it “adult kindergarten work.”
Academic training formed Loring and Wyle, and at the risk of being considered old-fashioned, they followed the academy’s artistic preoccupation with anatomy in their work. Old-fashioned? As Florence Wyle said, “No good work is old-fashioned.” Frances Gage agreed. Why should some artists be considered old-fashioned simply because they observe a discipline as basic as anatomy?
Now, in the spring of 1953, came the culmination of the relationship begun by OCA instructor Ruth Holmes’s simple introduction of Frances to the vet Edith Williams, followed by Edith’s introduction of Frances to the sculptors Loring and Wyle — The Girls — and the subsequent artistic, sculptural, and social relationship forged between Frances and the two sculptors. And thus, finally, to the day when The Girls approached Frieda Fraser on the subject of Frances Gage.
“They spoke to Frieda,” said Frances, “pointing out that I had a modest talent as a sculptor, but needed further training. Frieda was quite wealthy, through her own work and family money, and she agreed to finance two years of study for me at the Art Students League in New York City.”
And so it happened. Dream-like, New York rose in Frances’s mind. Later that year, in the fall of 1953, she turned her steps south, steps on a journey that would take the rest of her life.
The alleyway leading to the street was dark now. The berm rising beside the shack cast the entire area into deep shadow. The late January evening settled over the woman who still stood in the shack’s doorway. An icy breeze ruffled the light brown hair across her brow; she felt the cold, and shivered.
Time to go. For a moment a smile touched her face as she glanced inside the door, at this … this appalling shack. This incredible, disreputable, rat-infested … glorious shack.
If I had known, she thought, her mind far away, if I’d known then what I know now. No, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Not a thing. I’d do it all again, a hundred times over.
She shook her head. The thoughts of that time … so many years ago it seemed; was it only four?! She smiled again at the memory. Oh the bliss, the unmitigated bloody joy of that time, when New York was just a month away. The unbelievable wonder of it all. And the year in Paris that followed. That priceless time: the excitement, the learning, the exultation when I succeeded; the depression and sense of inadequacy when things went wrong; the challenges; and when I won, the feeling of triumph, almost sublime, of having the world, the whole world, in my hands.
Such wonderful years.
And
