Mabel Alberta Flint
Matriarch, dancer, cranberry-sauce maker. Born on March 8, 1916, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.; died on Sept. 6, 2014, in Mississauga, Ont.; died of natural causes, aged 98.
Mabel Carter was born in Sault Ste. Marie to a steel-working family, at the height of the First World War. Like many households, theirs didn't have a telephone. Whenever her mother went to use the neighbour's phone, little Mabel would wedge herself between the wall and the stove, hiding until her mother returned. Years later, when asked why she did this, Mabel shrugged and answered, "I guess I was afraid." No one who knew the strong, endearingly stubborn woman she became would ever describe her as afraid.
Her spark became clear when she was a teenager and toured the Great Lakes with her sister on a steam ship, spending the evenings dancing below decks with the crew. In 1931, while studying bookkeeping at the Sault Technical School, Mabel spied a handsome young man the other girls were swooning over, Eldridge Weeks. Soon after, she caught him winking at her in the reflection of a mirror at the local café. They embarked on many adventures, including flights together in his Gipsy Moth biplane and rides on his Indian motorcycle, and married in 1940.
After welcoming son Lawrence and daughter Cheryl, they moved to British Columbia to run a restaurant in White Rock. But after the death of their toddler daughter, they returned to the Soo to start over, this time operating one of several successful car dealerships. Soon, with so much love to give, they adopted a little girl, Joanne, and moved to the Toronto area.
Although Mabel married, raised a family and ran a home like most women of her day, she was more than a wonderful cook and accomplished hostess. She was also a rifle champion and a talented chalk pastel artist. She had an album of tasteful nude portraits of herself made which she showed, with a wink, to very few people.
She travelled widely, including to the Sahara, where she danced with a Bedouin chief, and to Spain, where she shared an otherwise empty restaurant with the country's king while enjoying a display of flamenco dancing. As a girl she saw a magazine photograph of people riding wicker sleds down the cobbled streets of Madeira, Portugal, and said, "I'm going to do that some day." Of course, she did. She went on a walking tour of Quebec City at the age of 95.
Mabel offered sound advice to her grandchildren: Have a dance for me; "grow taller than your grandma" (she stood 4 foot, 9); and if something isn't fun, "to heck with it." She took her own advice on that point at age 57, after Eldridge passed away. She quit driving and cooking, except for the cranberry sauce she made for every holiday dinner. She loved to dine out at restaurants, where she would invariably ask for her salad with Italian on the side – "so long as he is tall, dark and handsome." Ever adventurous, she embarked on a second, short marriage in her late 60s, taking the name Flint.
Mabel's life was an example of how to make every day count, to live with dignity, and to make your own fun wherever you go. Only in her last days was she confined to hospital, with family by her side day and night. She passed away peacefully in her sleep after a good game of Scrabble, her makeup bag on the side table, ready for the next adventure.
Gwendolyn Weeks is Mabel's granddaughter.