Judith Brady helped lead the charge against the Spadina Expressway and was a Michael Ondaatje academic.
Social activist Judith Brady wasn't afraid to defy the United States. After she returned to home soil from a forbidden trip, the U.S. State Department confiscated her passport. It took a year of battle, and the expense of a lawyer, before the essential document was finally returned.
Feeling hurt and betrayed by her birth country, in 1967 she headed to Canada, along with her husband, Trent Brady. The couple renounced U.S. citizenship, becoming Canadians in the early 1980s.
In Toronto, Judith Brady turned her activism toward the founding of the Annex Ratepayers Association. The group, one of many, effectively rallied against building the Spadina Expressway, a highway proposed in the mid-1960s that would have sliced the city in two from north to south. The protests resulted in the project being cancelled in 1971, with only the Allen Expressway, extending from Highway 401 south to Eglinton Avenue, having been built.
She helped to found Toronto's Karma Food Co-op to provide for the needy. She compiled the bibliography of an important Canadian writer. She was, in the words of her daughter Susannah, a "firecracker."
She died on May 5 from natural causes at the age of 82.
Born in Chicago in 1931, Judith was the only child of Charlotte Cohen, an acid-tongued librarian and teacher, and Edward Bloom, a bookkeeper, gifted pianist and lifelong member of the American Communist Party. Her father's political beliefs influenced his daughter's interest in social justice – and likely contributed to her later political problems.
After her parents' marriage ended, Judith continued to live with her mother. Charlotte (Cohen) Bloom, a heavy-handed disciplinarian, frequently laid the shame and frustration of a failed marriage on her daughter. Cash and compassion were in short supply.
Mother and daughter survived by sharing a house with Viola Spolin, founder of improvisational theatre. Ms. Spolin's innovative ideas eventually formed the basis of Chicago's Second City, the now legendary improvisational comedy cabaret that began in 1959.
Ironically, as an adult taking a women's studies course at the University of Toronto, Ms. Brady frequently found herself in conflict with another Jewish woman who came from the world of improv, comedian Gilda Radner. "They were both opinionated women who had their own ideas. Not exactly enemies – more like sparring partners," says Judith's son, Stefan Brady. "My mom was thrilled by Gilda's eventual fame and success. She always wanted the best for people and tried to bring out the best in them. That was a recurring trademark of hers."
In her early twenties, Judith Bloom married a hard-living guy named Collins. The marriage lasted only a couple of years, but it was as Judith Collins that she came to the attention of the U.S. State Department. The year was 1957. The Cold War was under way and McCarthyist paranoia about Russia was still influential.
Still, Moscow had been taken off the list of forbidden destinations and many Americans were keen to visit. It's unclear how or why Judy ended up at the Communist-sponsored World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, but it was there her troubles began.
Through the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the Chinese Young Communist League invited American attendees to a cut-rate junket for a three-week visit. Acting secretary of state Christian Herter rapidly dispatched letters to the travellers and their families.
"Dear Fellow Citizen," began his letter, "by travelling to Communist China at this time you will, in the considered view of your government, be acting as a willing tool of Communist propaganda, intended, wherever possible, to subvert the foreign policy and best interests of the U.S."
He added that Americans who went to China might eventually face criminal prosecution under a Trading with the Enemy Act. Out of almost 300 Americans at the festival, only 41 took up the Chinese offer. Jake Rosen, one of the leaders of the expedition, was summoned to the U.S. embassy in Moscow for an unexpected telephone call. President Dwight D. Eisenhower personally told Mr. Rosen he could be prosecuted for being a traitor and demanded that Americans refuse the Chinese invitation. Mr. Rosen and the group, including Judith Collins and folk singer Peggy Seeger, half-sister of popular folk singer Pete Seeger, insisted on their right to travel in the belief they were not contravening U.S. law, only U.S. policy.
The journey on the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to the Chinese capital of Peking (now Beijing ) took eight days. Peggy Seeger remembers one of the Americans hanging a U.S. flag on the outside of their compartment. She says the Russians thought they were being invaded. The flag was quickly removed.
Translators accompanying the Americans tried unsuccessfully to teach them a few words of Chinese. They eventually gave up.
When the group arrived in Peking, the Chinese thoughtfully provided enemas for everyone constipated from days without fresh vegetables. Each day they were presented with options of things they might like to see, everything from ivory carving, to dancing, to visiting an apple farm. Ms. Seeger says the Chinese were extremely organized and treated them like royalty.
A different reaction awaited the group when it landed back in the United States. Jake Rosen was called before the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security and the House Un-American Activities Committee. He lost his passport for seven years. Judith lost hers for only one year, but it was enough to disillusion her with the United States.
A firestorm erupted in the press, with senators weighing in with opinions on how the returning travellers should be treated. In an Aug. 26, 1957, Time Magazine article, Vermont senator George D. Aiken is quoted as saying, "My remedy would be a good spanking for every one of them." Stefan Brady says he wouldn't be surprised to learn that an FBI file still exists on his mother and grandfather.
After this political ruckus, and minus a passport, Judith Collins drifted back to San Francisco, where she met the man who would become her second husband. Trent Brady was a student of social science at San Francisco State University and, like Judith, was actively participating in peace marches to stop nuclear testing in the atmosphere. The two married in 1959.
Unable to conceive, the couple adopted a son, Stefan. The young family made its way to Toronto, where it adopted another child, Susannah, and began life anew. Growing up, Stefan Brady and his friends affectionately referred to his mother as "Sergeant Brady." Even though she was a petite 5 foot 2 (157.5 centimetres), he says she thought nothing of inserting herself between him and a boy he was about to fight, shaming them into peace.
The Brady house on Howland Avenue, in the Annex neighbourhood of Toronto, buzzed with activity. Judith Brady became a core figure in a Howland Avenue women's consciousness-raising group. Jane Marvy, a friend from that era, recalls Ms. Brady's warmth, enthusiasm and infectious energy upon meeting her and welcoming her into the group. She remembers Ms. Brady running her hand along the banister of her house, explaining that the paint had been stripped to expose the wood because "it feels so good."
Always a lover of literature, and with a Masters degree in library science from the University of Toronto, Ms. Brady authored an annotated bibliography of the works of Michael Ondaatje. It appears in Spider Blues: Essays on Michael Ondaatje, edited by Sam Solecki (1985). Mr. Solecki says, "Ms. Brady made a significant contribution to the book with a bibliography that was indispensable to the first generation of Ondaatje scholars."
Judith Brady worked at the Sanderson Branch of the Toronto Public Library, retiring at 60 to care for her husband after his stroke. She still, however, found time to write poetry and volunteer for Out of the Cold, a program that provides emergency care for the homeless.
Until the end of her life, Judith Brady was a firm believer in social justice. Canada may not have been her country of birth but its liberal policies made it her country of choice.