A woman with short brown hair and deep-set, thoughtful eyes,
Kathleen Tew Marshall
lived a quiet, art-filled life in an old house in Paris,
Ontario. As a child, how I loved her tall living room windows opening to beds
of yellow and red tulips, and along the cedar-lined drive, a millrace that chattered
as if in long conversation with the large cream and rose nudes leaning from the
opposite wall, soft, dreaming women, painted in oil on canvas by Kay’s
artist-husband Norm. Never before had I had seen flesh bared so openly, to be
admired without snickers.
The high-ceilinged rooms felt airy by day, cosy at night,
elegant compared with the plainness of my suburban home. By the millrace
windows stood a Victorian settee upholstered in silk mustard and cream stripes,
but my favourite seat nestled under the nudes in the front corner, a generously
pillowed beige divan flanked by low shelves dense with books. Two pale, thick
rugs on the glowing hardwood led my sinking, stockinged feet toward the far end
of the room. There, the dark polished table always displayed a crystal vase vibrant
with Kay’s flowers, and at dinner was laid with white linen and silver, a
ceremony I was honoured to assist. Throughout the day and evening, Puccini,
Ella Fitzgerald, or Bach revolved on the record player.
Slow-spoken, precise, Kay matched her living room, casually
stylish in dress—her characteristic silk scarf draped with an interesting
brooch at the neck. Kay was an exotic island I was lucky enough to visit for
weekends once or twice a year, or at my parents’ house a perfume that lingered when
she and Norm came to Toronto on a ballet or theatre trip. She gave me a glimpse
of a new world where people took pleasure in beautiful objects, where talking
was for enjoyment, not just a call to meals, chores, or bed, and like a sip of
brandy, a well-turned phrase could tingle warmth through the fingertips; a
world where ideas were as valued in their own right as my mother’s smooth rolling
pin or my father’s sturdy lawnmower. Kay’s lovely old house, her measured
speech, tasteful dress, and artfully arranged flowers showed me that order need
not curb pleasure. Indeed, it had a strangely lovely appeal of its own.
Beyond my aesthetic awakening, Kay was also my role model
as a writer. She earned her living as a reporter for the London Free Press,
the Brantford Expositor, then
the Paris Star, under the pen name “Kay Tew”. Hers was the usual
small-town beat of council meetings, library events, garden shows, and the rare
fire or burglary. But she also enjoyed a free hand in writing “Sitting on the
Curb”, her weekly column, collected and published posthumously as a book of the
same name. She explored anything that took her fancy, but most often turned her
careful eye and wry humour to Ontario history, back-road travels, theatre,
books, and the not-so-ordinary people she met. As a friend said of Kay, “She
was as happy talking to a ditch digger as writing a ballet critique.”
I first became aware of Kay’s writing as its occasional
subject: Susie, the little girl with long, blond hair in the blue velvet dress
(a gift from Kay), who at an evening performance of Swan Lake silenced
the tipsy foursome in the row behind by spinning around and making the worst
grimace I could muster. The fact that I appeared in her columns made writing as
much a part of the real world as softball and riding my bike.
When I was seven, Kay wrote a book for me, illustrated by
Norm, The End of the Street: Being the Tale of the Rabbit with Wiggly Ears
and of Rosamund His Friend. Of course, I wrote stories back. Writing was
just another form of play. In grade two, when I turned detective author, Kay
was my first publisher and agent, reprinting “The Death of the Murdered Girl”
in her column. Afterwards a friend at radio CKPC in Brantford, Ontario, read it
on air. As the years went by, whenever asked, “What do you want to be when you
grow up?”, “A writer” seemed as good an answer as the expected “Teacher” or
“Nurse”.
Today when rereading Kay’s columns, I hear her voice:
direct, friendly, talking about life’s small moments, or Beauty and Truth, all
in the same breath. In my years writing my own column for Cross-Canada
Writers’ Magazine, I wonder how much of her warm, easy style had rubbed
off. I hope some did.
I began to appreciate Kay’s legacy when at nineteen and in
love, I had confided my passions in a series of small, tight poems. After her
long absence recovering from a stroke, at last she was finally able to take the
train to Toronto. I was excited to read her my newest work. When I finished,
she squeezed my hand. “Susie, now you write about your own feelings because you
are still finding out who you are. But one day you will look outside yourself
and write about the world. And if you write well enough, the world will look
back.”
I understood. These poems were like opening the tall
windows and pulling a few tulips inside for a private bouquet. I needed to
focus the inside outward, to make the walls leaning down their nudes, the
polished table, the striped settee, and the chattering millrace something to
share with others.
A week later Kay was dead. A second stroke. With the
selfishness of youth, I felt abandoned. Later I acknowledged how much she had
given already, by her love of the beautiful, her calm, her wry humour, and her
devotion to words. I also learned that the writer’s journey must be made alone.
Photo of Kay Tew, circa 1940, provided by the author
Toronto writer Susan
Ioannou has published poems, stories, and articles in literary magazines
across Canada, plus two children’s novels, a collection of short fiction, and
two non-fiction books for writers. Former Associate Editor of Cross-Canada Writers’ Magazine, she also
conducted poetry workshops for the Toronto Board of Education, Ryerson, and
University of Toronto. Her poetry collections include Clarity Between Clouds
(Goose Lane Editions), Where the Light Waits (Ekstasis Editions), Coming
Home: An Old Love Story (Leaf Press), Looking
Through Stone: Poems about the Earth (Your Scrivener Press), and Looking for Light (Hidden Brook Press). Her website is: http://www3.sympatico.ca/susanio/
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