First Person. Valerie Knowles
principal artery, Laurier. Further opportunities to broaden her horizons arose in World War 1 when she set about recruiting and organizing neighbourhood women for a knitting war. Under her direction, countless socks and sweaters were produced for the local Red Cross Society, which then distributed them to the Armed Forces. Her Red Cross work and the administration of the Rockland, Clibrig and Kildonan households absorbed most of the organizing ability that she had demonstrated as a young girl and that she would later put to such remarkable use in politics.
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As 1916 drew to a close, Cairine Wilson watched the life ebb away in her father, the quiet, intimidating figure who had played such a formidable role in her early development. On 19 December, following a brief illness, the Senator died at Kildonan. He was seventy-six. In an obituary the next day, the Montreal Star informed its readers:
On June 14 last, Senator Mackay had a narrow escape from death when an electric car crashed into and ditched his motor car. He suffered serious injuries and for a time his life hung in the balance. He recovered, however, and had apparently regained his old-time health and vigor. Less than a week ago he was taken ill and did not again leave the house.
The funeral cortege, as had so many before it, wound its way from Kildonan to Crescent Street Church, where a service was conducted on the afternoon of 21 December. Afterwards, family members and a large number of friends and dignitaries assembled on the frozen slopes of Mount Royal to participate in a graveside ceremony at the Mackay family plot. Here, sixty-one years after leaving his beloved Caithness, the Senator was buried beside his wife, Jane, and his “friendly” uncles, Joseph and Edward.
Robert Mackay left an estate valued at $8,200,180.07, a sum that translates roughly into $80 million in today’s dollars. After legacies had been made to a wide variety of institutions and to old family retainers like the coachman, John Scott, a residue of $7,753,542.84 remained. It was left to the Senator’s six surviving children: Cairine, Anna, lawyer Hugh, Edward, an engineer with the Bell Telephone Company in Montreal, George, a hardware merchant in Lethbridge, Alberta, and the second engineer in the family, Angus, who lived in Wickenburg, Arizona.
According to the will, which became a model of its kind, the residue was divided into two equal parts:
One part which was divided into equal shares among the surviving children;
The second part which, in the words of the will, “shall be held, administered and managed by my Executors who shall hold it in trust for such of my children as may be alive at my death and the issue of any deceased child as representing their parent so that each living child shall have no share and the issue of a deceased child collectively one share.
“My executors shall administer the whole of this half of my Estate or whatever may remain of it in their hands as one mass, dividing the net income therefrom among the beneficiaries entitled thereto according to their respective rights.
My executors shall pay to each child of mine who may survive me, during his or her lifetime, his or her share of the net income corresponding with his or her share of the principal.”15
So that each heir would have a share equal in value to the shares held by each sibling, the will provided that every child, in rotation, would choose the household effects that he or she desired. Those who selected more than they were entitled to were to be charged for the excess value of their shares. It all sounds straightforward enough, but because of the size of the estate and the number and personalities of the beneficiaries, it took years to wind up the proceedings. Hugh Mackay was even writing to his sister, Cairine, about the distribution of effects at Kildonan as late as 1922. All the haggling aside, the chief significance of the estate settlement is that it left Cairine Wilson a wealthy woman, who could well afford to make generous contributions to causes of her choice, the Liberal Party being one of these.
While the estate was being settled, a family crisis erupted. Although potentially very serious, it was not without its amusing and ironic overtones, although Cairine Wilson would probably have failed to recognize these at the time. As the years progressed, however, she would develop a worldly wise sense of humour that allowed her to laugh gently at the world’s flaws and people’s imperfections while at the same time maintaining an awareness of her own weaknesses and strengths. The crisis involved Angus, the revered older brother who, in her eyes, could do no wrong. Aimiable, paunchy Angus, who had a penchant for alcohol, went on a bender during a stopover in Buffalo while en route from Montreal to Arizona in January 1918. Picked up by the police, he was taken to their headquarters, where he was searched and found to have a valuable diamond brooch and diamond studs on his person. When questioned about this, he told a disconnected story about being a man of influence in Montreal and heir to a large estate. Not surprisingly, this disclosure was received with skepticism, if not incredulity, by his interrogators, who then wired the police in Montreal for information about their subject. On learning of Angus’s plight, his brother, Hugh, contacted a Colonel E.R. Carrington, in Ottawa, who instructed a Toronto detective agency to dispatch two “operatives” to Buffalo to locate Angus and report on his condition. The men left immediately for the border city where they learned that five husky policemen had been required to handle the inebriated engineer.16 Cairine Wilson, Hugh, Edward, George and Anna also paid a hurried visit to Buffalo where they saw their brother in the General Receiving Hospital and learned for the first time of the existence of his commmon-law wife, Grace. After leaving hospital, Angus appeared before a magistrate and was formally discharged. Five months later, in June, he died in Oakland, California.
Cairine received the devastating news of Angus’s death when she was pregnant with her sixth child, Anna Margaret, who would be born on 9 December 1918, following the family’s move to Ottawa. This took place in the fall of 1918 hard on the heels of the purchase of the Rockland mills by the Riordan Paper Company and the formation of a new lumber merchants’ partnership comprising Norman Wilson, Gordon C. Edwards, W. Humphry, John Cameron and E. Bremner.
The five partners carried on a wholesale lumber operation in Ottawa which, before being sold to another Ottawa lumberman Edgar Boyle, carried on the W.C. Edwards name. Although a part-owner, Norman never devoted much time to the business. On weekdays he customarily spent an hour or so at his office in the Victoria Chambers on Wellington Street and then devoted the rest of the day to other pursuits. After lunch at the nearby Rideau Club, for instance, he often spent the afternoon curling or golfing, depending on the season. Two or three times a week he drove to Cumberland to oversee operations on the Wilson family farm, which was run by a manager before it was turned over to Angus Wilson, Cairine and Norman Wilson’s son. Norman, in other words, effectively retired from active business at age forty-two.
Less than three years after the Wilsons’ move to Ottawa, their kindly benefactor and friend, W.C. Edwards died. With his death, on 17 September 1921, a central figure passed from their lives, leaving a fund of cherished memories that included frequent visits to the Wilson home with birthday and other anniversary gifts for the children. As evidence of his respect and fondness for Norman Wilson, the Senator had made Cairine Wilson’s husband an executor and beneficiary of his large estate.17 The following year his wife, Norman’s sister, Aunt Kate, died, without leaving a cent to her brother. Catherine’s will had originally provided for a legacy of five thousand dollars to her brother, but before her death, this entry was crossed out and initialled by the three executors.18 To add further insult to injury, Catherine had ensured that Norman and Cairine Wilson would never own the Edwards’ beautiful family home at 80 Sussex Street, now known as 24 Sussex Drive. In line with Catherine’s will’s instructions, Edith Wilson, her sister, was given possession of the house for one year, after which it was deeded to Catherine’s nephew, Gordon Cameron Edwards, the son of her husband’s older brother, John.
Cairine and Norman Wilson had been led to believe that they would eventually inherit the stone mansion that stands on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Ottawa River and the Gatineau hills. However, because Senator Edwards had transferred ownership of the house to his wife in 1916, the Wilsons would never occupy this celebrated landmark. Always very jealous of her energetic, able sister-in-law, Catherine had seen to it that neither Norman nor Cairine would be among her beneficiaries. Anna Loring wrote immediately to her sister