Florence Patterson MacLeod, 1925-2014

This past week one of the good ones departed this mortal coil. I first savoured the kindness of Florence MacLeod 43 years ago, in April of 1971, when with no asset other than a strong young back I materialized at Big Bras d’Or to begin dismantling the derelict old house that had once been Florence’s own.

A good Christian lady, Florence took one look at me and decided I must be a harmless idiot who needed charity. There I was, rather like a Tibetan monk slowly building a mandala, pulling nail after nail out of her humble old house. Who but an idiot would think it a useful expenditure of time and energy to salvage whatever lumber might be serviceable from a derelict building whose roof leaked, a shelter only to deer mice and barn swallows. If a fellow wanted to construct a cabin down at the shore wouldn’t it be smarter just to head into town and buy the necessary sticks? Well, as mentioned, my assets excluded the ability to buy new lumber, hence my one-man salvage operation.

Florence was soon aware that I subsisted solely on Kraft Dinner; she took pity on me. She baked bread and tea biscuits and delivered them to me. In years to come, though I was no longer indigent, the bread and tea biscuits kept flowing.

Family and community were all to Florence. Many times I visited in her kitchen, took in the latest school pictures of grandchildren, heard stories about the old days and people who no longer walked among us. She loved to pick berries; many were the occasions, in August, I saw her gathering lush blackberries below the road in fields she had known and harvested for decades. 

Though I was never fortunate enough to see her in action, Florence clearly found reason to appreciate winter; she loved ‘coasting’, hurtling downhill on her GT Racer sled. She liked summer too: that was a time for gathering with friends, enjoying a chilled Alpine or three, reveling in all the laughter that seemed to avail itself on such occasions.

I have a picture of her on the cabin deck in the mid-1970s, stubbie in hand, reveling in a good time with my Mum and Florence’s late, lamented sister Sadie. The photo effuses fun and friendship.

Florence’s last years were not kind to her. Her mind failed sooner than her body; before long she could not remember who I was.  She died this past week in her 90^th year. I was asked by the family to accept a ritual role I’d never played before: pallbearer. We six stood at the front of the church, left side, as the choir led the congregation in soaring renditions of I Come to the Garden Alone, How Great Thou Art and Abide With Me. Even my unbelieving old heart stirred.

If in a fashion we live in the memories of others after we are gone, Florence will live for time to come: picking blackberries, walking down my road bearing a load of bread and tea biscuits, raising a stubbie to her friends’ good health, coasting hellbent down a snow-covered slope.