Jane and her brother Frank Palmer have accrued many fine memories from their childhood visits to Manitoulin. Initially these summer treks were to Treasure Island, after Frank Sr. got an invitation from one of his old students, Joe Hodgson, in Toronto in 1946. (Joe Hodgson and his wife Jean operated this iconic Lake Mindemoya resort for many years.) The Palmers loved Treasure Island and after several visits, found their own tract of land on the west side of Lake Mindemoya, high on the ridge. Today, the remodeled home boasts large beautiful windows that encompass the lake view and allow the multitude of fall colours to flood in. Elaborate stonework solidifies the shoreline and the elevated ridge. Jane kindly gave the writer a tour of her abode, decorated with hers and her father’s fine art. This was followed by tea and later by lunch. Upon arrival, Jane’s table was laid out with memorabilia of a life well-lived, reflecting the adventurous soul and organization of a fine teacher.
“My dad had the Rock and Rail gift shop built by Harry Liscomb in 1955. Frank built the window frames in his own Toronto garage. The store went up a few years after Joe and Jean Hodgson had encouraged him to get out of the city.”
Frank Sr. had a love for crafts, and this would be a new focus for him. He wanted to share the artistry of local talented individuals. The Canadian artisans’ work would include handwoven items, scarves, purses, soap-stone carvings and prints and Frank’s own artwork.
Additions and modifications to the shop were done over time. The ‘L’ shape and the fireplace were expertly completed by Bill Elford in 1962. A large red stone became the center of a Santa Claus built into the front. Two years later, the landmark rock and subsequent rail were added. “The rock had to be blasted to shrink it a little, then rolled slowly by brother Frank and dad. Rails were added to reflect the name of the shop.”
At the cottage, the steps to the water and the Quiddler’s Bench, part way down, were built and dedicated in 1978. A bit of irony: quiddlers are people who sit and contemplate, but Frank Sr. was not a quiddler. He was a hard worker and very proud of The Rock and Rail. His neighbour was Roy Cooper, owners of Cooper’s Transport, both at the gift shop and at the cottage.
Paternal grandmother Mary Ann (Stolten) Palmer with her stunning blue eyes and good work ethic was a head cook in a mansion in Leigh, Kent, UK. She had married grandfather Frank in 1900. They later immigrated to Brantford, Ontario. Grandfather became a machinist, bricklayer and carpenter. Best of all, he was a visionary. He freed up money by applying for a mortgage when he bought his new home. This was unheard of at that time.
He liked to tease too. “I remember him throwing mother’s cabbage around like a baseball while she was waiting to cook it. Another time he noticed someone climbing up to the kitchen attic. He removed the chair, stranding the person. Despite these ploys, he was a good family man who liked to end his day with a stout or a brandy.”
Jane Ann Palmer was born to Ruby and Frank Palmer on August 19, 1935, the hottest day of the year. “Dad said you could have fried an egg on the cement outside Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital.” Jane was named after grandmother, Mary Ann Palmer. “We lived in a house surrounded by rose bushes on the Scarborough Bluffs. “At 18 months, I remember crawling to give dad each of the screws to put the new play pen together. When it was done, my howling until freed, showed my early need for independence.”
“Early memories include Christmases with grandmother. We enjoyed delicious tarts, pies and Yorkshire puddings. It was family time. Another recollection when I was just a toddler, was dad taking me to the neighbours and putting headphones on me. I recently realized that I was likely listening to the very first broadcast of the CBC on November 2, 1936. I still listen today.”
“Then there was the trip to Manchester, England in August of 1938. It was my birthday and a cake had been made on the ship. I gave cake to everyone around me only to find there was none left for me. My father was heading to a teacher’s exchange. We would spend a year at Manchester,” Jane recalls. “We saw Windsor Castle too. I was three-and-a-half when he put me on the stone wall in front of the castle. Upon our return, customs wanted to keep my brand new big golden teddy-bear, but dad convinced them to give it back with a little cash.”
“Back home, dad taught special education, industrial arts, at the Church Street School for Boys for the Toronto Board of Education. It was 1939, the onset of the war, when we built a house in the ‘planned community’ of Leaside, just east of Toronto. I started Kindergarten in 1940. Later, a wartime project for school was collecting quart baskets in the fall. We collected many and they were likely put to good use. Red Cross classes at school helped us with wellness and preparation for war on the home front. Blue tokens were needed for butter and sugar.”
Jane was friendly, chatty and gregarious. “I wanted to take ballet and piano lessons, but these options were not available during the war.” In February of 1941, Frank was added to the family. A year later, dad’s sister Dorothy died in childbirth. She was 26 and this event shattered the family. The baby lived and was taken by her dad. Frank still had one sister, Minnie, and a brother, George.
Frank Sr. added teaching machine work, tool and die, to adult men at the Central Technical School. It was The War Emergency class. This is where he met Joe Hodgson of Manitoulin Island in 1941. Frank’s third job until 1945 entailed classified work at the airport. He would get home nightly, in a limo, at 1 am. Weekends were family time. Each Sunday, the family would climb into the 1940s Dodge and go for a drive.
By 1946, Jane and Frank’s parents had separated. Frank’s third job became summer school where he taught his expertise to teachers. That was also the first summer that Frank, daughter Jane and son Frank headed for Treasure Island with an invitation from Joe to come for a visit.
“We had a terrific time with the Hodgsons on beautiful Manitoulin Island. Alan Tustian took Frank under his wing. Jean and Marion were there to help as well as Margaret Love who worked there. Margaret later came home with us to be a housekeeper in Toronto. She stayed for 22 years.”
At 10, Jane was singing with the Children’s Crusade Choir as well as two other choirs. “Once, we sang with the Symphony Orchestra of Toronto, featuring music by the Mendelssohn Choir. She liked art too. Late in Grade 5 I met our next teacher, Mr. Gillespie. He held a piece of my art and he was saying to my current teacher that, ‘Jane is advanced for her level and she is to be encouraged.” Jane’s confidence went up a notch.
The Grade 8 graduation ceremony was in the fall. “I had been wearing braids, so I had my hair cut and I learned to dance. Wine penny loafers, zoot suits, with tight ankles, baggy folds to the knees, were popular as was basketball and volleyball. The history teacher was good because he shared his knowledge with stories, making history so much more memorable. Chemistry and history were my favourites. The chemistry teacher felt I would make a good lab technician.” In Grade 13, Jane became secretary of the student council. She was also one of 10 finalists for Queen of the Prom.
During high school, Jane took French and became one of a group of playground leaders for three schools for three summers for the Leaside Recreation Association. It was basketball, baseball, crafts and a wading pool with activities like The Big Splash, Mr. Muscles and Miss Wading Pool. Jane also spent several winters working at the Robert Simpson company selling girls’ clothing. She was asked if she wanted to be a manager, but Jane had her sights set on teaching.
After high school, an ad in the paper for a receptionist position at the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) caught her eye. Upon arrival, she was told there were no openings. Back on the elevator she ran into a man who asked her why she was here. She told him she was looking for a job and there were no openings. The next day Jane got a call and was hired as a receptionist and switchboard operator. She stayed one year. Then she went back to the recreation office to be their secretary for the summer.
Manitoulin was always a summer attraction. In 1952 at 17, Jane bravely rented a car and drove with a friend up to Manitoulin to the Alan Tustian cottage for a visit. In the mid 1950s Jane and her brother took a commercial five-seater plane from Malton Airport to Gore Bay Airport.
In September of 1957 Jane enrolled at the Toronto Teachers’ College and became a class representative. In 1958 she was hired by the Scarborough Board of Education. She taught Grades 1 and 2 so had the same children for two years at Hunter’s Glen School. When she left in 1963, one of the parents held a ‘thank you’ tea for her. She got a Leonard Bernstein/Glenn Gould record from the mother of Mary Crammond, the student with the auburn curly hair.
“Mary found me years later in 2015 in Guelph. She had contacted the Retired Teachers’ Association after I had written an article for the association’s newsletter. Mary saw it and felt it sounded like her teacher.” Mary asked the association to have Jane contact her. Soon Jane had a happy reunion with her auburn-haired student, and she returned to Mary the Bernstein/Gould record with Mary’s mother’s name written on the jacket.
In 1963, Jane was driving a blue Corvair and was working at Yonge and St. Clair at Deer Park School. “We had a creative principal, Lloyd Dennis, who suggested we make the classroom into a small town with two mayors, a community, helpers, garbage collectors, policemen and firemen, mailmen and mailboxes. Chains were made for the mayors, hats for the helpers. Masking tape edged streets and roads. One year, we had a Native village of birch bark and we featured stories by Mary Lou Fox.” Jane took university classes to further her teaching credentials.
In July of 1969, following in her dad’s footsteps, Jane was on a Cunard Lines ship, The Queen E. Two, heading to England for a teacher exchange. “By the time we reached the mid-Atlantic, we had a man on the moon. People on the ship celebrated ‘disco-style’ with the twist and flashing lights. It was exciting.” Jane arrived at Hillsgrow Infant and Primary School in Wellington-Kent to teach 44 six-year-olds. “I grouped the kids to facilitate the learning process and that worked very well.”
The year included regular meetings with other exchange teachers. “It was refreshing to hear new points of view. At Christmas, we headed to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. We enjoyed an aerial display of small jets and we saw the Dome of the Rock, the Sea of Galilee, the Church of the Nativity and the Wailing Wall. We didn’t make it to Masada as I had gotten sick on Christmas Eve from some curried chicken the night before. We enjoyed the architecture of the churches but there were soldiers everywhere from the war two years earlier.”
“It was also fun to visit local stores and museums. I remember getting permission to get some brass plaque rubbings using black and white linen paper. We got an invitation to visit both garden parties for The Queen in June and Princess Margaret in July. In June, the iron gates at Buckingham Palace opened for us and we were led to the garden where tea was served. We were in day dress which included hats and gloves. Prince Phillip was talking to a gentleman right beside me.”
The July party included other teachers from the Commonwealth and the USA. “We were standing in a semi-circle chatting with Princess Margaret, who told me her sister the queen was in Canada at the time. She was a beautiful person. It was all quite a thrill.” After a visit to Iceland, Jane returned home on The Queen E. Two and headed back to New York. “It was thrilling to see the Statue of Liberty framed in my porthole as we arrived.” A train took her back to Toronto.
Jane spent another two years in mid-town teaching Grade 4 from 1970 to ‘72. About the same time, she took three library courses and worked part-time in the children’s section of the East York Library. At Queen Victoria School, Jane and another teacher worked with new immigrants in an art and math group to entrench the English language in a practical way. They had an early Commodore 64 computer to assist with this task. She also took an in-depth colour therapy course and several art and photography courses for her hobby as an artist at OCA (Ontario College of Arts). “In 1984, I won a Nikon camera for my efforts.”
TVO’s Barbara Boyden organized a program that sent children’s books from publishing houses to the school so the children in Grade 3 could illustrate the stories and send the books back. It was a successful program and must have stimulated the artistic talents and confidence of these young artists. Jane continued to teach at Queen Victoria Public School in Parkdale and enjoyed teaching a multi-cultural Grade 3 class until her retirement in 1995. The school’s population of 900 had harboured 50 different languages and Jane had spent 36-and-a-half years as a teacher.
After retirement, Jane increased her curling time, her favourite recreational activity. “I have tried all positions from lead to skip, but second is my favourite because there is less sweeping!” Jane adds, smiling. She also continues to enjoy photography. Two years later, after several workshops, Jane added pastels and beading to her artwork. She showed the writer a beautiful bracelet crocheted into circles and then braided to fashion the finished product. Ms. Palmer is also a poet, wordsmithing the English language into meaningful rhythmic verse. An example is seen in the poem ‘Mindemoya.’
In 2010 Jane moved to Guelph where her childhood friend of 70 years, Lynn Mays Lipski lived. “She was one of five of us who rode about on our bikes and played together in Leaside.”
“An important event? A few years ago, after watching the Anaheim Mighty Ducks to an NHL championship, Randy Carlisle brought the Stanley Cup to the Island. We all signed a deer hide and then had our photo taken with Randy, Elaine Billings and the deer hide. It was a special day.”
“My favourite seasons? Spring, fall and a touch of winter. I love the sap greens of spring renewal and the exquisite dancing light of the fall with its crimsons, russets, and ochres and finally, the glistening snow of winter.”
“Any collections? I have some of the Rock and Rail plates, directly imported from Copenhagen over 20 years. These are the Royal Copenhagen plates with the unique borders. In 1969, I visited the overseas head office and talked to the manager. My dad’s shipment was being prepared and I added a little note for him, ‘Dad, I’m here.’ He was surprised when he opened that box.” Jane was also gifted a blue and white figurine of a girl with the words, ‘Come again.’
“My strengths? I like to put myself in another’s shoes and feel their concerns. We don’t know the journey of another, but we can share a smile and lend an ear. There was a demure, slight Chinese lady, head bent, hands at back. I just smiled and said hello, how are you? Eventually she looked up, caught my smile and returned a dazzling version of her own.”
“Anything I still want to do? My dad sent an annual letter about Island folklore, seasons and activities to all his customers and I would like to put them all together in a book.”
“What am I proud of? Being 84 and still vibrant, active and independent. If I could go back in time, I might have stayed longer in England; I felt at home too. A mentor? Grace Kelly Hayden, 10 years my senior and my neighbour in Leaside. She made a raw silk outfit for The Canadian Ball in England. My legacy? School lessons; for example, it was a common theme to ask the children to join hands and sing Michael Jackson’s ‘We are the world, we are the children.’ Let’s make it a better place.” Also, “one of the hardest things will be to say no to smoking or drugs. Stay true to yourself.”
In May of this year, Jane moved to Manitoulin Island, the place she cherished growing up. She now lives full-time in the family cottage that she and Frank own. It is a beautifully renovated building, well-suited to the woods that surround it and the rock-supported ridge that soars down to Lake Mindemoya below. The view is enchanting.
“Today, I still like to take pictures with Jan McQuay, just as I used to do with my dad. I participate with the historical museum in Mindemoya. Like me, my dad always thought Manitoulin a true piece of God’s country: the woodland and skies as they change with the seasons, the sun and moon rising. In the cities there are cars with people preoccupied with their own thoughts. They don’t appreciate their surroundings. Here we have a different culture and I love it. That’s why I am here now, here to carry on Dad’s legacy along with my brother Frank.”
