Dossier f80 - Roberts, Mabel

File consists of a recording of Mabel Roberts. Topics of the conversation include confusion of subject's sense of time, living in old age home: lack of significant events to mark passage of time; dull, merely routine nature of daily activities. Attendance at Queen's, 1914-17; Hen Coop residence, Clergy St. at Earl. Brockville childhood; father's position as railroad yard foreman. Glass candlestick, brought from Ireland by immigrant grandmother. Family photograph; younger sister's 8-year employment with Mayo Clinic. Mother's frailty. Subject's ambition to teach since childhood; unexpected university entrance, willingly funded by family scarcely able to afford it. Thirty-five year teaching career at collegiate level; position as Head of English Dept., Brockville collegiate. Deeply felt desire to teach; desire for better position, salary, leading to enrolment at Queen's. Subject's current age (86) ; Queen's associates Jessie Dyde, Mabel Powell. Segregation of sexes in Catholic separate school education, instruction of sexes by separate Orders. Shock to subject of 'beautiful' convent's slow obsolescence, renovation as modern condominium. Subject's welcome into co-ed public collegiate, fortunate relations with principal. Absence of tension between Protestants, Catholics. Lack of distinction as continuation school teacher prompting desire for university education. Recent gift of book 'from a student who remembers'. Close friendship with Charlotte Whitton at Queen's; picture of Whitton 'at loose ends' as rooming house student, using subject's residence room as home base. Relations between Kay and Charlotte Whitton; division in family religious upbringing. Summer employment as prairie schoolteacher; love of prairies. Financial responsibility for family since father's early death; support of brother through MD programme at Queen's; lack of funds for travel. Reading habits; dependence on reading to pass time in old age. Appreciation of Dr. Husband's encouragement of study, teaching efforts at Brockvilie Collegiate. Pleasant living conditions, staff, at Fulford Home for the Aged; absence of other Queen's graduates, 'No Queen’s grads have grown old in Brockville.'//Aunt's dressmaking and millinery shop in New York state; mother's pampered role as adored half-sister (photograph), subject's childhood fascination with mother's wardrobe. Parents' generosity, willingness to self-sacrifice for children's needs; encouragement of subject's university ambitions. Courses of life pursued by sisters; subject's lack of temptation to marry, never having met a suitable husband. Satisfaction with past life, desire not to live much longer: acceleration of loneliness once friends have gone. Summer holidays passed pleasantly near Brockville. Majority of female teachers in subject's day; uncontested selection of subject as Dept. Head. Hateful responsibility as elected female officer for keeping women students at Queen's to the 'straight and narrow'. Disappointing class reunion c.1920, lack of interest in reunions since; Queen's lack of prominence in subject's life now; special quality of university life which distinguishes it in the memory of those who have experienced it. Charlotte Whitton's unrestrained sense of humour, warmth of friendship, ignorance of prospects. Interviewer's account of Elizabeth MacCallum. Opinion that the excellence of female students in the 1900s resulted from their being a select few. Friend's opinion that friendship with Whitton reflected ill on subject's social status, respectability. Recollection of Min Gordon.