and of my publisher, Barry Penhale, of Natural Heritage Books. True would have approved of John and Barry’s efforts; as she told the Barrie Kiwanis Club in 1928, “anyone who did anything to promote Canadian literature was doing a service to his country.”3
The staff at Victoria College and the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library were very helpful. Special thanks are due to the staff of the Archives and Special Collections section of the York University Archives who helped me work through the large collection of True’s papers that were donated to them after her death. True was a pack-rat who didn’t believe in wasting paper, frequently reusing the back of older documents and writings. Their patience and encouragement as I tried to sort out what was written when was very helpful. Since I did the research for this book while holding a full-time job, I am particularly appreciative of their willingness to try and work around my days off.
The written sources gave me the majority of the dates and events of her life but only a small taste of her personality. Fortunately, no one who met True ever forgot her and one of the great privileges I have had while working on this project has been the pleasure of meeting and speaking with some of the extraordinary people whom she knew. In fact, one of the most difficult parts of researching this book was deciding to stop interviewing. Every person I spoke to suggested at least two more people to whom “I had to speak.” It was hard to declare a halt. Meeting such fascinating people enriched me as much as they did the book.
I am especially grateful to her nephews, David and Michael Cobden, for all of their help and advice. While the list of the others who shared their memories of her with me in interviews and letters is too long to provide here, I hope they will recognize their contributions in the text and accept my sincere appreciation for their help and honesty. If this book succeeds in any way to effectively convey a true picture of True, it will have been because of the memories and opinions that they so generously shared with me.
Eleanor Darke, 1997
1
A CHILD OF CANADA
FAMILY
Jean Gertrude Davidson was born in 1901 in Hudson,Quebec. She assumed the nickname, True, early and reinforced its use throughout her life, even refusing to acknowledge any other name on occasion4. Although the reference letters from her professors all called her Jean Gertrude5, her listing in Torontoniensis, the University of Toronto yearbook listed her as J.G. “True” Davidson.6 The first letter she received from Bryn Mawr offering her a scholarship addressed her as Miss J.G. Davidson, but subsequent letters were addressed to “True” Davidson, no doubt at her insistence.7 Although she couldn’t have known how useful it would be to her future career, her choice of name was an inspired one. As one of her friends later said, “It was a good name for her... she was smart...a good short political name.”8
Because her father was a Methodist minister, the family moved frequently. By the time True left high school she had moved nine times and had lived in four different provinces. Although it was common for the Methodist clergy to change churches frequently, moves were generally within the same or nearby conferences. Her father appears to have difficulties as a minister, necessitating more frequent, complete changes. Charlotte Maher, who knew True near the end of her life, recalled her saying that her father “sort of got fired from some of his parishes.”
True, herself, chose to regard these moves as a positive thing. As early as 1931, she was quoted as claiming “Canada in general as her home, for, she explained, she had lived in almost every province.”9
True was enormously influenced by her father. She seems to have spent her whole life trying to live up to what she thought he wanted her to be, writing years later that:
...at school I was expected to top my class, and school, and even my province. Every time I met an expectation it became harder to face the next time I failed to do so...But it was not until I was a middleaged woman and my father was dying that I discovered that he had been fiercely proud of me all along, and only wanted me to be all that I was capable of being. Which is very different from being first. And the realization changed my entire life...10
True’s father, John Wilson Davidson, was born at Union, Ontario, on April 29, 1870, one the large family of James Davidson and Jane Hepburn Grant, who was descended from the same ancestor as Ulysses S. Grant. True later described her ancestors as United Empire Loyalists, “the stiff-necked, unreasonable kind.”11 Like another famous woman of her generation, Agnes MacPhail, this family background had a marked influence on her personality. Terry Crowley wrote of the MacPhail’s family that “More than their heritage made [them] hard-working and self-reliant. Life provided few cushions apart from the support of relatives, and they were only to be called upon in the most dire emergency.”12
True’s father, John Wilson Davidson. Reputedly a brilliant scholar, True’s father seemingly lacked the interpersonal skills to be a successful minister. Courtesy David Cobden
John Davidson’s early education was in Union and St. Lambert, Ontario, and at the St. Thomas Collegiate Institute. He graduated in Arts from Victoria College in 1898 and then in Theology in 1900, winning numerous medals and prizes including the oratory prize. He was ordained the same year and immediately married Mary Elfleda Pomeroy, the daughter of a Methodist minister. Their first charge was the mission church at Hudson-on-the-Lake, Quebec, where True was born one year later. The next year they moved to St. Lambert, Quebec for one year; then to Montreal, where True’s sister, Marsh, was born. These charges were followed in quick succession by Ormstown, Quebec (1904-5), Waterloo, Quebec (1905-9), and Delta, Ontario (1909-10). Then, when True was nine years old, they moved west to Vancouver (1913-1915), followed by a move to Regina where the pace of moves finally began to slow. Rev. Davidson served as minister of Wesley Church in Regina, Saskatchewn from 1915-1919; then moved to Rae Street Church, still in Regina, from 1919-22.13
The most open interview True ever gave about herself was to Warren Gerard for The Globe Magazine in 1971. In it she revealed an “extraordinary affection for her parents” and said of her father that:
Well, he was a very brilliant man. The whole family was brilliant. They were of Scottish extraction...[She describes her father as not a worldly success in the church.] I don’t know what happened. I think that perhaps my mother cared too much. Perhaps she was too ambitious for him. Perhaps he was too proud. Perhaps he had difficulty finding his way with people.14
True dedicated her book, The Golden Strings, to her father with a poem which reads in part:
To My Father
Misunderstood and lonely
Almost to the end,
Your courage never faltered,
Your will knew not to bend.
Pity you learned and patience
Beyond all grief or mirth,
And your love was rooted deeply
As a tree in ancient earth
You found a sweet solution
For frustrate human pain,
And your faith was clean and quiet
As grass after rain
She
