Miss Macphail came to the Senator’s office one day when Mrs Wilson was out and “left the message that perhaps because of [her] concern about refugees, she might want to give some consideration to a young sculptor from Austria.”3
It seems that the Senator was initially reluctant to have her portrait sculpted. For, as she confessed to her good friend, Dr Henry Marshall Tory, the noted educator and scientist, “At the time, a bust was the last thing which I desired but I finally agreed, for I had always regretted not having accepted Tait Mackenzie’s offer.”4 Evidently Agnes Macphail’s example and the Senator’s all too human desire to be recorded for posterity were too powerful to be ignored.
The Vienna-born and European-educated sculptor spent the whole summer at Clibrig, the Wilson summer home at St Andrews, New Brunswick, leaving only in mid-September after the outbreak of World War Two. With him went a clay model, which he later reproduced in white marble obtained from the fragment of an old Greek column that he had picked up in a New York antique store.5 The completed marble version was taken to Ottawa where it was installed in the library of the Manor House, the stately Wilson home in Rockcliffe Park.
Kathleen Ryan, it seems, recalled this impressive sculpture when she began to entertain ideas about honouring her illustrious friend. So did Isabel Percival, who, like Mrs Ryan, was sure that the Wilson family would be glad to donate it for the purpose that they had in mind. The family was approached and after permission was granted, Mrs Ryan and Mrs Percival went to see Ellen Fairclough, Diefenbaker’s minister of citizenship and immigration.6
Cairine Wilson’s portrait bust. Sculpted by Felix de Weldon in 1939, it now sits in the Senate ante chamber.
As a close friend of Isabel Percival and the first woman to be appointed to a federal cabinet, Ellen Fairclough was the logical link with the Conservative government of the day. She was also a fortunate choice because she embraced the idea with enthusiasm, approaching the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the Senate, whose permission was required before the bust could be placed in the Senate antechamber.7
The interview with the vivacious, spirited Mrs Fairclough was not without its amusing overtones, because at some point Mrs Ryan raised the question of the bust’s low neckline. It appears that the generous expanse of exposed flesh that the sculpture depicted gave her cause for concern. Would it not invite ribald comments from some male observers? When Mrs Fairclough learned of these fears, she burst out laughing, but then rallied with the reply that “certainly everything should be done to make the Senator acceptable to the gentlemen of the Senate.”8
Eventually everything possible was done to rectify the situation. Felix de Weldon was consulted, and because he weighed much less than the sculpture, it was decided that he would come to Ottawa to make the necessary adjustments to the piece rather than have it delivered to his studio in Washington.9 In the late winter of 1959-60, therefore, he journeyed to Ottawa where he spent several days modifying the bust by carving the neckline of a dress and giving it some texture. Years later Mrs Ryan would express the view that the sculptor had done “a good job of hoisting Cairine Wilson’s dress.”
Since 1959-60 was World Refugee Year and because the Senator had long been deeply involved with the refugee cause, her two friends also included a couple of imaginative money-raising projects for the World Refugee Fund in their plans: a Senator Wilson Testimonial Fund and a garden party. A prestigious committee, composed of the two organizers; Senator Olive Irvine; Beatrice Belcourt, a longtime friend; Colonel George Cavey, the former manager of Birks Jewellers and a member of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church; Mrs Farrar Cochrane, a family friend; Senator Muriel McQueen Fergusson, a colleague and good friend from New Brunswick; Constance Hayward, a close friend who had served as the executive secretary of the Canadian National Committee on Refugees; Mrs A.K. Hugessen, a prominent member of that organization; and Yetty Robertson, wife of the distinguished Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs, Norman Robertson, solicited contributions for the testimonial fund, and the Local Council of Women staged a mammoth garden party in the spacious grounds of the Manor House. Thanks to superb organization and beautiful weather, the garden party was pronounced a huge success, raising $1,600 for the World Refugee Fund.
It had indeed been a memorable week — and an exhausting one. On Monday the Senator had returned from Washington, where she had received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Gaudet College, the only institution in the world for the higher education of the deaf, another cause with which Cairine Wilson had long been identified. Then, on Wednesday, there had been the garden party. Now, here she was in the precincts of the Red Chamber to watch John Diefenbaker, the wild-eyed populist shunned by the eastern establishment, unveil a twenty-one-year-old portrait of her, a leading member of that establishment. Ellen Fairclough opened the proceedings, then presented Mr Diefenbaker, who said in his tribute:
...I think of her as one who in the field of social and humanitarian service made a contribution as comprehensive as the numberless organizations in that field. I could name them. To do so would simply mean to name practically all those voluntary organizations which bring about the translation of the concept of brotherhood to those lesser privileged. In that field too Senator Wilson has made a contribution that is recognized throughout the world.10
After the Prime Minister had unveiled the portrait, the Senator gave a brief address, concluding her remarks with the observation:
It has been a great joy and satisfaction to me to know, and to be assured by my colleagues of my own sex that I made the way more easy for them. My husband lived in constant dread that I should do something which would bring the family and my sex into disrepute.
All I can say is, I know that I am unworthy of the tribute you have paid me today.11
It was then the turn of Mark Drouin, Speaker of the Senate, to make a few remarks, and he said in part:
The Honourable Cairine Reay Mackay Wilson completed recently thirty years in the public service of our country. Throughout this long and fruitful career she has won the esteem and admiration of all Canadians for her devotion to the common weal, the maturity of judgment and wisdom of counsel she has constantly displayed in the discussion of affairs of state, her successful initiatives for the relief of suffering and the redress of existing evils at home and abroad, her effectiveness as an advocate of social justice and security, and her personal qualities of charm, friendliness and dignity. We are grateful to her for her admirable contribution not only to the work of this house but to its reputation and prestige.12
John Keiller Mackay, Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario, was caught quite unprepared when asked to bring the proceedings to a close with a few words. Nevertheless, he managed to rise to the occasion with some fulsome praise for his friend and clanswoman, observing, “Her head is crowned not only with silver, but respect, admiration, esteem and love.”13
It would have been next to impossible for a stranger watching the proceedings to reconcile the subject of all these tributes with the tributes themselves, for Cairine Wilson was not, to use today’s overworked expression, a “charismatic” figure — far from it. Nevertheless, she had many qualities that more than made up for this: monumental compassion and loyalty, charm, political acumen, iron determination, an infinite capacity for hard work, a finely tooled feeling for style and propriety, and a certain magic authority. These played an invaluable role in her remarkable career. But so did certain traits that she inherited from her Scots-Canadian forebears. And it was her family’s position in Montreal society that allowed the Senator to move freely within the eastern Canadian establishment and to use it to pursue many of her goals.
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