A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine. November's Theme: "Grateful"
Volume 7 Issue 1 ISSN# 1708-3265

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Illuminations Aleesha Stephenson About the Cover Orna Ben-Shoshan The Answer Is: Heart Dj Brown Gratitude - Rote or Heartfelt? Rev. Cheryl Jewett Souvenirs Alegria Imperial Past Options Phil Kotofskie Grateful Someone Else Has Control David Reber Unusual Friends in Unusual Places David Suzuki PhD Women debunk myths in Mythogyny Women Elders in Action (WE*ACT) The Envelope Please… An Interview with Jeremy Safron Being Mindful Janet Alston Jackson Pet-sense Jean Hofve DVM Get On Track! Lucy Brandt Lifetalks Dawn Baumann Brunke Walk Your Talk Aleesha Stephenson Wiccan Voices Crystal Blanton, HPs Meditate a Moment Featuring: Aleesha Stephenson Cards & Curios Tarot Deck Reviews: with Dan Pelletier Lotus Birth The Waterbirth of the Malcolm Twins Davini Malcolm Raw Protein Bars Francine's Finest Archived Reviews All of T.S.M.'s Reviews

"It was a good life even though we were poor as heck. We didn't know that we were poor because everyone else was at that time, too" says Alice West of her childhood in Winnipeg during the Great Depression. What Wilma Hanson recalls of those hard times in Kansas was "the dust that covered the thistles 'til you couldn't see the fence."

Both their stories and seventy-six others from women elders of BC's lower mainland will be read in Mythogyny, an anthology of unattached, living on low income women elders' true life stories either as a whole or in excerpts.

Against the backdrop of today's societal breakdown and financial challenges, their voices ring with relevance as they relive dramatic experiences of the '20s, the deprivation of the '30s, the chaos of WWII both here and abroad, the rebuilding of the '50s and the upheaval of the '60s, '70s and '80s, right up to the readjustments of today.

Senior women who underwent extensive training in interview techniques, gathered the stories on a tape recorder, then transcribed, read these for themes, pruned some and edited them for cohesion, excerpted others and organized the seventy-eight "voices" for a book with no extraneous writing.

What turned out as a predominant theme are the myths they grew up with, especially in marriage, the realities they faced and how in debunking and surviving the falsity of myths, these women lived lives more impressive in their reality than myth could ever be.

Most of them, marrying or having a baby in their teens or early 20's, fell for the mythical "prince", who when unmasked turned out unfit for "happily ever after". A number had to deal with the "other woman", and poverty in their marriages; "Who can live on $9 per hour?" one of them still asks.

Most of their marriages ended in bitter divorce with one woman losing custody of her kids and everything she worked for, a landmark case in BC court. "But I didn't have to write him out a cheque at the end of every month," she said; he had pursued for alimony.

While guide questions were discussed in the training and used in the interviews, the stories yielded individually textured narratives out of the spontaneous telling. Some of the stories personalized history such as that of the woman among the "freedom riders" in the US. A number of them talked about fun during the wars like a "party sometimes in the bomb shelters", while one of them simply recalled a wartime job driving a forklift for a company making elevators but which was also manufacturing Lancaster bombs.

A number of the storytellers recall "patches of Eden" in places they grew up as they moved in BC like the Doukhobor communities. Some poignant events have also turned up like a woman finding her biological mother who, it turned out, was the caregiver her adopted parents had hired for her as a baby.

Most of the storytellers are now in their seventies, a few in their sixties and four in their nineties. In the course of the book's production, two have died.

Most turn out to be immigrants from Europe, and England, a few from the US, four from Asia including three from the Philippines. A lot of them live in Vancouver, a number in Abbotsford, Burnaby, Langley, Maple Ridge, Nelson, and Smithers. One or two come from Delta, Grand Forks, Nanaimo, Port Moody, Sooke, and Telkwa.

Mythogyny concludes a story gathering project entitled, "Lessons Learned: the Lives and Times of Women Elders in BC", which Women Elders in Action (WE*ACT) undertook with financial assistance from the Women's Program, Status of Women Canada and 411 Senior Centre Society in Vancouver. WE*ACT is an initiative of 411 Senior Centre.

Price: $15/copy (excluding shipping)

For orders:
Call Jan Westlund at at 604-684-8171 local 228 or email jwestlund@411seniors.bc.ca.
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