Rigmore Christopherson Adamson
Wife, mother, grandmother, friend, writer. Born on May 13, 1921, in Vestfossen, Norway; died on April 1, 2014, in Ottawa, of natural causes, aged 92.
Rigmore Adamson kept a notebook in which she wrote quotes she found relevant: "Old age ain't no place for sissies," attributed to Bette Davis, appeared in its final pages. As she died six weeks short of her 93rd birthday, Rigmore's lifelong aversion to being a sissy came in handy.
When she was a child, her family emigrated from Norway to Sturgeon Falls, Ont., and later moved to Toronto. Her forward-thinking mother insisted that the two girls in the family, as well as the two boys, get a university education. Rigmore was a successful student at the University of Toronto, where she contributed to the literary journal Acta Victoriana. A classmate, quoted in Robert Denham's Remembering Northrop Frye, recalled: "One of our most brilliant classmates in Eng. Lang. & Lit. was Rigmore Christopherson … She was a very strong-minded person, not inclined to discipleship, and she was also a very talented writer. Norrie respected her."
Those years were marred by the death of her brother Norman, a soldier in the Algonquin Regiment, in France in the Second World War. She was always proud of his service, and that of her brother Wilfred in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
In 1947, Rigmore married Robert Adamson, a young economist from Winnipeg, and the couple moved to Ottawa. There she was photographed by Malak Karsh for one of his famous tulip calendars. One of her stories was included in the 1952 edition of Canadian Short Stories, though with an eventual seven children – four sons and three daughters – her writing took on other forms. Over the years, she wrote poems and stories to give in lieu of greeting cards. Even her doctors were recipients.
In the 1970s, with three children still at home, Rigmore returned to school for a master's degree in library science and eventually went to work outside the home; she became another kind of writer, crafting speeches or editing, with ferocity, the work of colleagues at the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Library Association, Department of Public Works and Revenue Canada.
She had high standards in everything, and while a loving, forgiving mother and mother-figure (her door was always open to her kids' friends) she wasn't a sitcom mom who responded to a bad grade with benign platitudes.
After the death of her husband in 1995, she continued to live as independently and actively as she could. Well-read and informed, she scoured newspapers for articles she felt would be of interest to others; until just weeks before her death, she was sending envelopes full of clippings to friends and family, which came to include nine grandchildren.
At 82, Rigmore underwent heart surgery. The doctors told her the replacement valve could last up to 16 years, so she often said she expected to be around at least until her 98th birthday. But the death of her eldest son, Alan, in 2012 dealt her a great emotional blow, compounding several physical ailments.
When she died in the early hours of April 1, many remembered her wry Scandinavian humour and believed she had waited for that date as her final "wink" to life.
Rondi Adamson is Rigmore's daughter.