Dr. Cheung stayed in China despite political upheavals and the Japanese invasion in 1937. When other Canadian doctors were ordered home, she took charge of the men’s hospital. After the first bombings in Kongmoon, she and her staff courageously cared for the wounded, and sheltered refugees. When the city fell to the Japanese in March 1939, she and her only remaining helpers (two graduate nurses) managed the hospital and had vegetables planted on the hospital grounds to provide food.
Dr. Cheung also provided medical care for three or four other refugee camps which depended on her for vaccinations against smallpox, inoculations for typhus and cholera, and treating malaria and dysentery. Times were so tough that one day a starving middle-aged woman tried to sell her two daughters to the doctor. When the Japanese invaders finally took over the mission and its hospital, Dr. Cheung could have returned to Canada with the other missionaries, but her mother was still alive and the Chinese Exclusion Act made it impossible for her to return to Canada. Her daughter would not leave her.
Dr. Cheung ended her official connection with the WMS in 1952, when the Communists took charge of mainland China, so she could continue to practice medicine. She remained in China until her death in 1966.
“We are youth without a country,”[5] some educated young Chinese Canadians claimed in the 1930s. We do not know if Dr. Cheung shared their concern — that they were Canadian in thoughts, feelings, and attitudes, yet not quite Canadians — or if it motivated her move to China. As one observer of the group wrote later, “There is a general feeling among Canadian-born Chinese that they go back to China even though they have never been before. No doubt they would feel differently if they were really accepted by all citizens of this country, for what they are and wish only to be — Canadians.”[6]
Dr. Cheung with patients in China.
Courtesy of John Price
Quote:
“Under no circumstances do anything which will give a clue to the fact that you are writing to me, much less sending me funds. I am in a dangerous position, and the Japanese would make it very difficult for me and my friends ….”[7]
— Dr. Cheung writing to the treasurer of the South China Mission in 1942.
Jack Turple singing "Ben Dean" for Helen Creighton.
Maclean’s Magazine, 1952
The First Lady of Folklore
Helen Creighton
1899–1989
She helped define Maritime culture and brought traditional music to modern recording studios and folk festivals.
Pirates ignited Helen Creighton’s passion for folklore. At a 1928 clambake in Halifax Harbour, she interviewed some fishermen who knew songs and stories from the pirate days. “Ain’t many remember those old songs these days,” said one oldtimer. “When I die, a lot of them will die with me.”[1]
Helen realized there was a lot of folklore that would soon disappear if it wasn't recorded. She spent the next sixty years of her life collecting folksongs, ghost stories, and witches’ tales throughout Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Helen became an internationally recognized folklorist, gathering about 40,000 items. She collected and recorded more than 4,000 songs and stories in English, French, Micmac, Gaelic, and German. Her legacy of sound recordings, photographs, texts, and movies forms the largest private collection in the Nova Scotia Archives, and is one of the most important cultural resources in the province.
Helen Creighton was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1899. She received a music diploma from McGill University in 1915 and graduated from Halifax Ladies’ College in 1916. As a young woman, she served as a driver with the Royal Flying Corps in Toronto in 1918, and an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Nova Scotia in 1920. Helen studied social work in Toronto until 1923, but a physical breakdown prevented her from graduating. She worked stints as a teacher in Mexico and as a journalist. In 1926, she began her broadcasting career as Aunt Helen, the host of a children’s radio program in Halifax.
After hearing the pirate tales in 1928, Helen began travelling around Nova Scotia collecting more songs and stories. She was a self-trained folklorist, covering 3,000 to 4,000 miles a year in the province: by car, foot, boat, and an ox-team taxi. She even pushed her melodeon — a heavy miniature organ she used to pick out tunes — across sand dunes in a wheelbarrow. When she started on her folklore quest she had no income. But her father, who believed in its importance, paid Helen’s bills and lent her his car.
Helen initially made recordings on wax cylinders, then acetate discs, before switiching to tapes in 1949. She collected Acadian songs from Cheticamp, Mi’kmaq songs from Chief William Paul at the Shubenacadie Reserve, German songs from Lunenburg County, English songs from the black community. She preserved ancient British ballads, including a thirteenth-century ballad called “The False Knight Upon the Road.” Sea captains sang shanties for her and William Riley of Cherrybrook shared his slavery songs.
Helen collected dances, cures, children’s folklore, and games. She became best known for her work on the supernatural, collecting a wealth of material on ghosts, buried treasure, witchcraft, and superstitions. In 1933, she recorded “The Nova Scotia Song,” sung by Ann Greenough of Petpeswick; it was later popularized by Catherine McKinnon as “Farewell to Nova Scotia” and became the unofficial anthem of the province.
Helen compiled the songs she had collected into a book; Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia was published in 1932. The book established her reputation as a folklorist and brought speaking engagements across Canada and the United States. She eventually wrote thirteen books of stories, folk songs, and ballads. The Rockefeller Foundation invited her to represent English-speaking Canadians at a folklore conference in the United States in 1942. She was then invited to collect and record Maritime folklore for the Library of Congress (1943–44 and 1948), receiving a number of fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation. The National Museum of Canada hired her to gather material in 1947; she stayed until 1965.
Helen was also enthusiastic about folk performances, organizing the Nova Scotia Folk Singers. In 1938 and 1939, she hosted a weekly program on the CBC that featured folksingers, along with folk tales. She was frequently heard on both CBC radio and television long afterward.
The works she collected have been used in folk festivals, operas, symphonies, a ballet, plays, films, and professional recordings by musicians like Ashley MacIsaac and Mary Jane Lamond. The songs Helen preserved are now sung in schools and on stages, as groups such as the Nova Scotia Mass Choir and Men of the Deeps (North America’s only coal miners choir) perform the music that would have been lost without her efforts.
Helen collected folklore until she died in 1989. Nova Scotians enthusiastically shared their songs and stories with the popular folklorist while she was alive, and they have not forgotten her. In addition to her enduring legacy of music, Helen Creighton has been widely honoured in a multitude of ways. There are three documentaries about her life, and she received six honorary doctorates and awards, such as the Order of Canada, the Queen’s Medal, Fellow of the American Folklore Society, Honorary Life President of the Canadian Authors’ Association, Distinguished Folklorist of 1981, and the Canadian Music Council Medal. In 2011 she was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The Helen Creighton Folklore Festival in Dartmouth and the Helen Creighton Foundation are dedicated to preserving the memory of this remarkable Canadian heroine. Each year at the East Coast Music Awards a talented performer receives the prestigious Dr. Helen Creighton Lifetime Achievement Award for lasting and profound influence on the Atlantic-Canadian music industry.
Quote:
“Was it prophetic that I was born with a caul? This thin membranous tissue that sometimes covers the face of a newborn baby is universally known in folklore, and folklore was to become my life’s work.”[2]
Battle at Montgomery’s Tavern, 1837.
The Original De Grassi Kids
Charlotte De Grassi
1823–1872
Cornelia De Grass
i
1825–1885
Armed rebels were threatening Toronto. Two teenage girls helped save the city.
The Canadian TV franchise Degrassi is probably our most successful TV export, licensed in at least 147 countries from Saudia Arabia to North Korea.[1] Some fans of the popular teen drama, which began with The Kids of Degrassi Street in 1987, may know that the shows were filmed in Toronto. The name comes from De Grassi Street in Riverdale. The street was named after Captain Filippo De Grassi,[2] an Italian immigrant who served in the British Army, whose England-born daughters were heroines during the Upper Canada Rebellion.
The De Grassi family settled near the Don River Valley in Toronto in 1831, where Filippo received a land grant of 200 acres; he later bought an additional 200 acres in 1833. Even with income from their sawmill, the De Grassis struggled to survive. When their house burnt to the ground in the spring of 1833, they lost everything they had, including money, jewellery, and provisions for six months. The De Grassi couldn’t afford to pay the expenses for the sawmill, so they leased it out — but the renter ran away without paying his bill.
The De Grassis were still facing hardships when the 1837 Rebellion broke out. A group of disgruntled reformers, led by Toronto’s first mayor, William Lyon Mackenzie, became increasingly discontented with the government and the officials who dominated administration and control in the colony. Mackenzie persuaded radicals to draft a constitution based on the American model, and to forcibly seize Toronto when all the troops in the colony had been sent to Lower Canada in early December 1837.
When rumours of rebellion spread, Captain De Grassi stood behind the government led by Sir Francis Bond Head. De Grassi recollected, “after the fire I managed amidst great trials and difficulties to struggle on until that unfortunate rebellion broke out in 1837 when Mr. W.L. Mackenzie thought to take upon himself more than regal functions and declared that my property with that of many other loyal men should be parceled out among his followers.”[3] Charlotte and Cornelia De Grassi soon showed they were equally loyal to the government.
It was a winter night — Monday, December 4 — when De Grassi heard about the rebellion. Eager to investigate and help the loyalists, he left home at 11:00 p.m. along with his daughters, fifteen-year-old Charlotte and thirteen-year-old Cornelia. They encountered rebel troops at Helliwell’s Place, a brewery. Scared that her father would be taken prisoner, Charlotte distracted the men while her father and sister slipped past. De Grassi made it to Government House, where he joined the Scarboro militia forces under Colonel McLean. Charlotte and Cornelia returned home safely, managing to evade the armed rebels.
On Tuesday, December 5, the De Grassi sisters headed into Toronto, where they conveyed information about the rebels at the Don River (Cornelia had spied on the rebel camp at Gallows Hill) and checked on their father. That same day, a group of 500 to 700 rebels (armed with pitchforks, staves, and rifles) marched south on Yonge Street to confront a small force of about 200 to 250 volunteers and militia. A battle broke out when a group of loyalists opened fire on the rebels, who quickly fled after the poor evening light led them to believe the front ranks of their force had been killed; in fact just two rebels and one loyalist died. There is no record of whether the sisters came close to this skirmish.
Governor Head didn’t know how many rebels there actually were, which was critical information for determining government strategy. On Wednesday, December 6, Cornelia was asked to spy on the rebels, so she rode on her horse to their headquarters at Montgomery’s Tavern. At the nearby wheelwright’s shop, she feigned interest in a sleigh, but the rebels took her prisoner. When Mackenzie arrived with the news that the rebels had taken the Western Mail, the teenager saw her opportunity to escape. Cornelia jumped on her horse and rode off in a storm of bullets. Back in Toronto, she told Governor Head the number and condition of the rebels. Realizing the rebels numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands, and that they were poorly armed, Head decided to suspend negotiations.
Cornelia’s information was considered crucial to the outcome of the 1837 Rebellion. Mackenzie himself wrote: “Dr. Rolph then advised us not to go into the city till towards dark — told us that Dr. Horne had employed a woman as a spy (De Grassi, I think he called her) who we had let pass, and Dr. H. had persuaded Head to hold out, assuring him our numbers were less than supposed.”[4]
While Cornelia was spying on the rebels, Charlotte was relaying secret messages behind enemy lines. Loyalists had detained Charlotte at the market, and begged her to deliver an important dispatch, as there was no horseman available. She carried it along Kingston Road and returned safely to the city with an answer. But as she was heading home, she was spotted by a large group of rebels before Sinclair’s Clearing. Shots rang out. Both Charlotte and her pony were hit; one account noted that one ruffian fired at her face. Wounded, she raced home.
On Thursday, December 7, the fearless Cornelia followed loyalist forces to Yonge Street, to observe cannons thundering and guns firing. She reported the situation to the chief justice. On attempting to return home, Cornelia discovered that the rebel Matthews had set fire to the Don Bridge. She raced back to the city to sound the alarm. At 11:00 p.m., she tried to return home again, this time on foot.
A few days later, the short-lived rebellion was quashed. On Friday, December 8, a force of 1,000 to 1,500 loyalists confronted the die-hard rebels remaining at Montgomery’s Tavern and won. Charles Duncombe later led a small outbreak near Brantford, but the rebels were quickly dispersed; both Duncombe and Mackenzie fled to the United States. Two of the original rebels, including Peter Matthews, were executed.
Captain Philip De Grassi.
Trent University Archives 88-011/1/20
While Charlotte and Cornelia’s heroic exploits may not necessarily have changed the course of history, the New York Albion acknowledged that “all who were witnesses of the conduct of these extraordinary girls spoke of it in terms of unqualified admiration. They became the topic of conversation, and were pointed out as bright examples of loyalty and courage.”[5]
Little is known of the sisters after the 1837 Rebellion. Both Charlotte and Cornelia married Americans and moved to the United States. Unforunately, their heroism has not been widely recognized, unlike Laura Secord, who warned of an American attack in the War of 1812, and Madeleine de Verchères who defended her family’s fort.
The Globe and Mail published an article[6] on Cornelia De Grassi in 1954, and The Canadian Encyclopedia notes that Cornelia carried messages through enemy lines. Part of the original De Grassi homestead is included in the Charles Sauriol Conservation Reserve, where a plaque mentions Captain De Grassi. While the De Grassi name lives on through the popular television shows, it is unfortunate that few — if any — viewers know the story of the remarkable De Grassi sisters.
Quote:
“Amidst the general excitement and joy of the rebels my little girl had the presence of mind to urge her horse and ride off at full speed, amidst discharge of musketry. A ball went through her saddle, and another through her riding habit. Arrived in Toronto, she was taken before Sir F.B. Head, the Governor, to whom she gave valuable information as to the numbers and condition of the rebels — Thus the loyalists were encouraged, measures were taken to meet Mackenzie’s attack, and my poor child was the means of saving Toronto.…”[7]
— An account of Cornelia’s escape from the rebel camp, by Philip De Grassi.
Portrait of Demasduit by Lady Hamilton, 1819.
Library and Archives Canada, 1977-14-1
A Beothuk Captive
Demasduit
1796–1820
Captured by English settlers, this heroic woman provided invaluable information about her people. But it was too late to save the Beothuks.
Today it seems like a bad idea. To “open a friendly intercourse with the tribe,”[1] English colonists in Newfoundland decided to capture some of the Beothuk. Among them was a young woman called Demasduit.
The plan was to rele
ase the Beothuk captives once they’d been treated kindly and given presents, so they’d be keen to promote peaceful relations and trade. This cruel strategy was undertaken a number of times in an effort to curtail the violence that erupted from the competition between Natives and Europeans for fish, furs, and other resources. There were rewards for anyone who could bring a live Beothuk back to St. John’s, Newfoundland.
In 1819, John Peyton Jr., a merchant in Exploits, obtained permission from Governor Charles Hamilton to pursue the Beothuks who’d cut the moorings of one of his boats. Hamilton encouraged Peyton to take a captive.
During late winter that year, Peyton’s armed band of furriers, eager for revenge, stormed a Beothuk camp on Red Indian Lake. There were thirty-one people camped in three mamateeks (winter wigwams) on the shore. Most of the startled Natives fled to the forest, but Demasduit — who had recently given birth — was too weak to escape. The attackers surrounded the fallen woman as her husband, Chief Nonosabasut, rushed back to rescue her. Someone in Peyton’s party shot him, and a witness watched him die on the ice: “His eyes flashed fire and he uttered a yell that made the woods echo.”[2] The raiders also murdered Nonosabasut’s brother.
100 More Canadian Heroines Page 9