Our community lost a great lady on Monday. Beatrice Collins (Bea) was 93. As Ed Arnold described in his tribute to her yesterday, she was the matriarch of the Collins family.
19 children. My heavens....
I won't repeat or try to top Ed's touching tribute, but I did want to contribute my own memory of Bea. Our paths didn't cross until the early 2000s, when I was ramping up my freelance writing career and interviewed her for an article I was doing for the Toronto Star about her, and her family....to which she consented.
At the time I interviewed her in the old homestead on Edison, just east of Monaghan Road. Her grand-daughter owned the house at that time....I think it still had the 'Queen Bea' sign on the outer wall by the front porch....and Gramma Bea was driven over for the interview.
There we sat, in the kitchen as Bea held court and told stories. I remember looking around that rather small house and thinking, 'how in heck did a family of 19 children live in this house?'
Love, and ingenuity and creativity, committment and 'making do' made it all work.
She was one-of-a-kind. We can learn a lot from her and her legacy, especially in these times. Including the wisdom in setting aside all the myriad of structured lessons and all the driving and running around, and just letting the kids go out to play.
Kids don’t know how to do that anymore, if seems….
My favourite story of her’s is that even with all those kids over there on Edison, they were always inviting their friends over and there was always an extra place for an extra mouth at dinner. Trouble was, said Bea, sometimes it was hard to keep track of all those kids, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have another parent call up to see if their Johnny was ‘over there.’ Sure enough, Bea would go upstairs to a sleeping household, do a head count and find an extra one…..
I also did a piece for Chatelaine on Bea. For that one as many of the children (and a couple of grandchildren) as were available gathered in the home of one of her daughters (I apologize, I forget which one but it's off Wallace Drive, if I remember. Was it Pam?). We all sat around, and all the kids swapped stories about their great mom (and grandmother). It was quite the night, and it all culminated later in a cool group shot with most of the kids and grandkids.
I can't recall if Laura Gainey was one of them. It was before she died. The late Cathy Collins, Laura's mom, was married to Bob Gainey.
I was going to post the Chatelaine article here, but the electronic version is stuck inside my old laptop which is now a boat anchor.
But I'll see if I can scan the picture from the magazine tonight and post it here.
Rest peacefully, Queen Bea. You have earned it.