God
Serve others
And thus, with His help,
Become the girl God would have me be.43
UNIVERSITY DAYS
A little more can be discovered about True’s university days. She later recalled that: “My father sent me to Victoria, which is the first line of the college song. An awful song. My father sent me to Victoria and resolved that I should be a man. And so I settled down in the quiet college town on the old Ontario strand. That was when Victoria was at Cobourg.”44 She began her studies at Victoria in 1917 when she was only sixteen years old. A classmate recalled many years later that “she was the youngest and smartest student in the freshman class.”45 Clara Thomas knew several women who graduated from Victoria College around the same time as True and said that they all seemed imbued with the same drive, dedication and strong sense of ethics, whatever field they later entered. They were a small, select group. Women composed only a handful of Victoria’s graduates at that time. They were also the first generation of female graduates empowered by womens’ acquisition of the right to vote.
Once again, True excelled academically and was involved intensely in all the activities that the university had to offer. Margaret Addison, the Dean of Women, wrote in her letter of reference in 1922 that: “Miss Davidson has unusual ability, did very well in her college course, especially in English, in which she is exceptionally gifted. She has much originality and initiative; she is energetic, interested in games and in dramatics, in which she took a prominent part while at College.”46 The College Registrar and Associate Professor of English, C. E. Augery, noted in her reference letter that: “I can confidently say that she is one of the best students I have ever had....She has exceptional ability in debating and as an essayist and writer of verse. She is thoughtful and courageous and well qualified to exert a strong influence in any school fortunate enough to secure her services.”47
Brandon Collegiate Institute, Manitoba. True taught English here in 1923 to help raise the money needed to return to Victoria University to take her Masters Degree. Courtesy David Cobden
In addition to topping her classes academically, True was active in a myriad of committees including the 4th Year Executive and the Women’s Undergraduate Association and was President of the Women’s Literary Social Executive. The information below her photograph in the 1921 yearbook read:
J.G. (“True”) Davidson
“Laughter, Love and Tears”
Weaknesses —Class, Dramatic, “Y”, Presidency of Literature
Strong Points—consuming chocolate bars, composing rhythmical nonsense
Glory—Debates, oration contests
Shame—Last month’s essay unwritten
Extraordinary—Passion, vitality, energy, nerve
Ordinary—Her “bete noir”
Past—Ubiquitous, various, rainbow-hued
Present—Flaming, intense, moody, alive
Future—Inky black or rosy gold.48
There were very few men at university in her first years there. As she later said, “We came in the fall of 1917 and the war wasn’t over until the next year. In our third year there was a flood of returned men. The whole college changed and it was quite an experience. A sort of traumatic experience.”49 It is this reminder of her age during World War I that eliminates the persistent rumour that True never married because the man she loved had been killed in battle. She was 13 when the war began and only 17 when it ended. It is highly unlikely that she would have formed such a lifealtering attachment at that young age. What is perhaps more interesting is the need so many people have felt to invent a romantic reason for her not marrying.
This photograph shows True, aged 16, wearing her C.G.I.T. uniform in 1917. Courtesy David Cobden
In many ways, True was Victorian in her attitudes. She was too Victorian to discuss the details of any romances and somewhat surprised that anyone would have the bad taste to ask, but occasionally, in a naughty mood, she would acknowledge that she had her opportunities. Clara Thomas remembered her class “discussing Sarah Jeannette Duncan’s The Imperialist. “To the ears of the young in 1975 the dialogue sounds pretty stilted and one young man remarked that he simply couldn’t believe that young people ever talked as Duncan wrote them.”
“Indeed we did,” said True. “When I first went to Victoria, we weren’t allowed to have dances. We had Conversats, and we marched around the Great Hall to music. Then the veterans began to come back after the war, and they used to walk us right out of the room and upstairs to dark classrooms. And soon, we were allowed to have dances in the Great Hall—better to have dances in the light than students upstairs in the dark!”50
Agnes MacPhail recalled a similar entertainment at her high school where, once a year, “the young people walked around the auditorium in couples. When the music ended, the boy escorted the girl back to her seat and chose another partner for the next “promenade.” At the last promenade the partners enjoyed a dish of ice cream together.”51
True later told an interviewer that she had her romances, but that they were pretty tame.
I was pretty innocent and unsophisticated and I thought if I were attracted to a man I must want to marry him and when ...I found out about what went on between young men and young women...I think it turned me against the whole thing. If I wanted a man to kiss me I thought I ought to want to marry him and when I came back to Toronto in the Roaring Twenties, when people were lying down in swathes on the floor in darkened rooms and drinking themselves into stupors, it seemed to me all so sort of messy. I guess I’m a romantic. Any man I could talk to I would talk to. The only time we exchanged passes was if we couldn’t think of anything to talk about. The result was that the men I had little affairs with, I don’t think would have been happy with me any more than I would have been happy with them. I would have driven them crazy. They had a narrow escape. I think they realized they were well out of it. This is a sad fact of life. Women want men who are stronger than themselves, men they can look up to. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry if I couldn’t have made the man’s interests mine... I grew up thinking I would find a man who was so strong and great and wonderful that I would be glad to spend the rest of my life looking after him and my children. And I just never found any such person.52
True learned to turn such questions into a joke. Many years later she told a student who asked why she never married that “....in my twenties I realized that I talked too much for any man, and I certainly didn’t plan to give up talking.”53 Emily Smith told me that “with the right person she would have had a very much happier time. She didn’t have that support system. She talked to me a lot but it wasn’t like having a family.”
Although True never found the person to whom she could give the complete dedication she felt essential for marriage, the thought that such a person might come along did not die right after university. Among her clippings from the early 1930s was one headed “Why I Asked Her to Marry Me. Ten Men Give Their Reasons.”54
In 1922 True graduated
