Tribute to Olga McRobbie, September 20, 2014 Good afternoon. My name is Patty Milligan. I am one of Olga McRobbie’s fifteen grandchildren. Fourteen of us are here today. Can you please stand? She also has 27 great-grand-children, some of whom are also here today. Can you please stand? She also has 3 great-great grand-children. Mersades, Parkes, and Aria—can you stand and wave? We are here today to grieve with her three surviving children: Rena Bland, and her husband Gary. Rita Millgan and her husband Joe. Bob McRobbie and his wife Shona who was unable to be here today. Her foster-son Dennis Korop and his wife Judy. Her daughter Ruth McRobbie passed away on December 26, 2012. While we think of Aunt Ruth every day, we remember her particularly strongly today. We mourn Olga and celebrate her today with all of you—her friends, neighbours, co-workers, extended family. We will walk out of here today together with her memory glowing even more brightly in our hearts. We are almost at the first day of fall. It’s a shift in season. It may make us sad. But it’s also a natural part of the cycle of life. Winter is not only cold and dark; it’s a time of rest and renewal after the hard work of spring, summer, and fall. Our grandmother’s passing is a loss and it’s also a signal to us of a shift. It makes me acutely aware of two things. First, that another generation is gone and we all move over a step. The middle become the elders, the young (yes, I still like to think of myself as young) become the middle. Second, I now see my mom, her siblings, and even the rest of you who are the same generation, in a different way—as children and as orphans. It makes me think of my parents’ generation in a different way. It’s sad; it can be a shock; but it’s also the natural cycle of life. Olga was the last member of her generation in her family. Her sister Emma passed away a few months before her, in February of this year. She and her sister Emma were closest in age and shared a bit of a rivalry their entire lives. Grandma, congratulations. You won. Olga passed away peacefully in the early morning hours of September 11, 2014. She was warm, loved. She lived at Miller Crossing Care Centre for the last three and a half years. Until a year or so ago, her quality of life was still high there—she could enjoy the music, the visits from family; she could remember names; she could play dominos or draw pictures. Over the past year, she drifted away—her mind often went back to the hard work of the past; picking potatoes, working on the shelterbelt crew, or feeding a full table of people. Gradually, she closed down and became quiet, but still with a peaceful sense of calm. Until December 2010, Olga had spent sixteen years in her little apartment in Bon Accord, immediately recognizable by its flamboyant garden. Her life was active; she participated in the Golden Gems Senior’s Society; she was a member of the Bon Accord United Church; she sang at Aspen House; read to kids at Oak Hill Boys Ranch; played shuffleboard with the seniors at Spruceview Manor in Gibbons; she drove until she was over 90. She was resilient and active. She was also SHINY. As you can imagine, when she joined up with the Red Hat ladies—their bright attire tickled her pink. Let’s just start with the obvious. We all remember Olga because she dressed to the nines--her clothes and her jewellery were stunning. Close your eyes and imagine her for a moment. What is she wearing? A baby blue suit? The rare purple sweat pants? Sequins? A shiny brooch? A white fake fur coat? High heels? A housedress? Dazzling rings and pearls? She always looked elegant and classy—from her painted nails (they were NOT fake) to her pierced ears (she had them done in her 60s—two holes at once so she could wear more earrings.) You might think she was a member of some lost branch of the royal family. Sean Cooper said it best: “When she walked into a room, you wanted to stand up and applaud. Give that lady an award!” We can all imagine her with a sash across her chest, the winner of a beauty pageant for old ladies, stepping up to receive her tiara and bouquet of roses. She took great pride in looking fabulous. And she wanted people around her to look fabulous too. Her daughters suffered the painstaking French braids (two hours each Saturday morning) or the ringlets ( which involved sleeping with rags tied in over night). Rena remembers the identical dresses that her mom sewed so all three daughters and she would match. Bob and Granddad cut dashing figures too. Her granddaughters always wore long dresses to family gatherings. And for the boys—formal shirts and ties were very important. Grandma loved it when the people around her dressed up too. No wonder it drove her crazy when on summer days at the sand pit, all the little grandkids would strip off and run around naked. Her grandson Clyde vividly remembers being chased by her, “You kids! You kids! You put your clothes back on!” She loved floral prints—especially roses. And on a summer day, you might not notice her in her garden, she blended in so well. She loved flowers as much as she loved fashion. On the farm she grew gorgeous peonies as well as her sweet peas and gladiolas. In Bon Accord, her little yard boomed with blooms both front and back—sweet peas, roses, geraniums and begonias. She was rewarded for her efforts with several awards from Communities in Bloom over the years. We are very excited that memorial contributions in Olga’s name will be directed to Bon Accord Communities in Bloom. The plants didn’t stop at her yard though. Inside, her house looked like a jungle. She loved African violets, her Christmas cactus, you name it. She would steal slips from plants wherever she went. She even (illegally) brought back plants from a visit to Germany. Alongside the houseplants, you’d see her numerous collections—the souvenir spoons, the fridge magnets, the salt & pepper shakers, the dolls, and the stuffed toys. She could have been a curator at a museum. Barb remembers going through all of her teacups and her spoons. For a small child this world was both magical and dangerous—the allure of all the pretty things was offset by the possibility of being scolded for breaking something or leaving a fingerprint. She loved her China. Christine says they used to wash it every time she stayed over. Grandma washed, while Christine dried. Grandma reveled in formalities. For instance, Gwendolyn remembers getting woken up to come and properly greet Grandma and Granddad when they stopped by for a Sunday evening visit. When you visited her--tea was always served in a fancy teacup—her finest Royal Albert China, no less; you felt you were having tea with the Queen of England. It didn’t matter if her grandson Rod’s large fingers couldn’t fit into the delicate handle. A regular cup would have done fine but she wouldn’t have it. “If you got ‘em why not use ‘em?” Like all of us, Grandma was a bundle of contradictions. Because while you were having tea in a PROPER teacup—the TEA that you were drinking very well could have come from a teabag she smuggled home in her purse from some buffet line. That never left a restaurant or an event without a few goodies stuffed into her purse—a bun, pats of butter, packets of sugar (later Sweet n Lo) or a chicken leg. Today at the reception, if you have the sudden urge to swipe a teabag or to wrap a sandwich in a napkin and stuff it in your purse or pocket, feel free. We won’t judge you. Olga was a child born a the end of “The Great War” into a family who had lost everything; a girl who came of age during the Great Depression; a woman who started her family while WWII was being waged in Europe. She did not grow up with a shiny life. In fact, she had a few hard knocks. That taught her to be resourceful, thrifty, hard working, and ingenious. Her foster-son Dennis said that once at a party, they had a scavenger hunt. Their team found every item on the list….IN Grandma’s purse. That woman was prepared. She was born Olga Zimmer on May 28, 1918 in Wolgast, Germany, the youngest child of Emil Zimmer and Emilie Stuike. As “The Great War” waged through Europe, her family—German-Russian farmers--fled the war front in Russia, making their way by train to a refugee centre in Germany with the help of German soldiers. They left behind their farm in the village of Svitvasskoye which included their one-story, wooden-frame house; the fertile land where they grew oats, barley, rye and flax; an orchard with apple, cherry, pear and plum trees; their livestock--chickens, three cows, pigs, and sheep. Emilie’s looms where she used flax, hemp, and wool to make her family’s clothing. They made a new life in Germany, with shared accommodation and jobs. They had two more children: Emma and Olga—their only two children actually born in Germany. And they lost one child, their daughter Amanda on Grandma’s 3rd birthday, May 28, 1921—an event that Olga remembered even at her young age. With a loan from Emil’s brother in Canada, the Zimmer family left Hamburg in August 1921 on the White Starline. In the first picture ever taken of Olga, she is three—peeping over the heads of her parents—their passport photo taken just for the journey. They had a three-week stopover in Liverpool where Emil—who couldn’t write—practiced signing his own name. Despite her young age, Olga vividly remembered the ocean crossing. The highlight was the memory of her father carrying her off the ship when they arrived in Quebec City on September 18, 1921. From Quebec City, the Zimmers took a train to Winnipeg, and then they travelled on to Inglis where they started out in a small house on Emil’s brother’s farm. Emil and the older sons worked on the farm to repay the money. They survived their first winter with donations of vegetables from Emil’s family and by shooting prairie chickens for meat. In three years they paid back their loan and bought their own small farm. Emil’s brother gave them a cow and they started a small herd for milking. There was plenty of hard work in Olga’s life from the get-go. After all, she was the daughter of farmers who were first refugees and then immigrants trying to establish themselves in a new land. Even as a toddler, she remembered being out in the field during the harvest, her little legs cut up from the stubble. Her mother, known as a healer and a midwife, made a soothing balm for her youngest daughter’s legs by boiling cream pouring off the fat. Olga often went with her mom to gather plants in the fields, which she then dried and stored in dresser drawers in the kitchen. As an older girl, Grandma learned to work with the horses. She could hitch up a team like nobody’s business. She grew to prefer the barn to the house; it didn’t feel like work because she enjoyed it. There were light moments too. Grandma remembered her dad spoiling her--bringing candies when he came home from town and offering her first pick. He would help her find a good hiding spot when she played hide and seek with the older kids. Grandma told the story of once finding some garter snakes and playing with them all day, making them a “home” in a washtub. Once her mom caught a hummingbird with a tea towel and Grandma got to hold it in her hand. They spoke German at home so when Olga started school, she didn’t know any English. She went through to Grade 7, walking four and a half miles across the fields even in winter--wearing pants made out of flour sacks under her skirt and woolen socks knitted by her mom to guard against the cold. Her dad died when she was ten. Her brother Charlie took over the farm where she continued to work alongside her mom. Along with farm work, she would also go and help her sisters and brothers in their own houses, often looking after the cooking, cleaning, and childcare when a new baby was born. Grandma told an amazing story about a winter’s day when she was about fourteen. She was at home at the farm looking after a couple of young nieces while the rest of the family had gone out visiting. She decided to go visiting too and she hitched up the sled, wrapped up the children in warm clothes and blankets, heated up rocks to put in the bottom of the sleigh and off they went to her brother’s farm a few miles away. About a mile from his house, the horse and sleigh got stuck in the deep snow. Unable to go backwards or forwards, she decided to walk the rest of the way to get help. She left the kids in the sleigh with strict instructions not to move. At her brother’s house, no one was home, so she turned around and walked back to the sleigh. Was she stymied? No. She proceeded to stamp out—with her own legs—a large enough area in the deep snow that finally the horse could turn around and they headed back to their home. During her teenage years, she worked hard on the farm—like a man. That’s what she was doing in 1938, age 20, when a threshing crew came to her brother’s farm to bring in the harvest. She was driving a wagon laden with stooks of grain from the field into the threshing machine. George McRobbie was on that crew. She met him in September at the beginning of the harvest and she married him at the end of the harvest. She says he was clean, he worked hard, and he didn’t swear. They had one date: a movie. The first minister they asked to perform the wedding wouldn’t do it because he didn’t feel that they knew each other long enough. Little did he know they would be together for fifty-five years, until George’s death on Rita’s 50th birthday on January 16, 1994. On October 31, they were married in Virden, Manitoba. They had a mission: to establish themselves financially with a small farm, and to raise a family. For a year, they stayed in Manitoba—hiring themselves out to a farmer. Grandma worked inside the house, Grandad worked outside. The conditions weren’t great—one morning they woke up to snow drifting across their covers through the broken windowpane. And they weren’t always paid. In October of 1939, they made their way to Edmonton. Over the next years, they worked both worked hard to make ends meet. George started at Dominion Bridge in Edmonton, establishing career as a crane operator. Work characterized their lives. Think of all of Grandma’s jobs: She cleaned and cooked for families. She took in boarders. She raised bull dogs. She was a school janitor. She butchered chickens. She worked for many years at the provincial tree nursery—where a few of her grandchildren spent time with her, sorting or planting trees. Brad worked with her for a whole summer. In 1942, Bob, their first child was born. Next came three daughters: Rita, Ruth, and Rena. George and Olga had four children in four years. The family also welcomed three foster brothers: Chris and Ray Loo, and Dennis Korup. Seven kids all together. Olga’s life was busy. The family moved to Mercoal where Granddad headed maintenance for the coal mine, then back to Jasper Place where they also kept pigs and chickens, out to Fultonvale where cows were added to the mix, and eventually to Bon Accord in 1958—where they realized their dream of buying land and started growing grain too. George was away for broad stretches working in the North. Olga managed the farm and the family. Granddad wasn’t the only thing she had to survive without. She didn’t have running water or a driver’s license either. She would hitchhike into town to get groceries. Bob says, “She worked like you wouldn’t believe. Day and night. She was a stronghold.” She milked the cows and sold the cream. Even with a milking machine, Grandma had to go and strip the last milk, because that’s where the cream was. She got every last drop. She worked to stretch the money. She’d come home and sit down to add up every cent that she spent in town on an old envelope. The kids took on outside and inside chores. Everyone weeded the garden. Everyone picked berries. She was strict, though loving. If the kids stepped out of line, she took out her little leather strap. There was fun to be had too. Water fights. Bingo. Oatmeal as a snack or a sip of syrup left over from a jar of fruit. One year, she wrapped up a pig’s tail as a joke and gave it to Rita and Ruth at their shared birthday party. She eventually learned to drive. Bob took her to her test though he himself didn’t actually have a license at the time. Driving with Grandma was an adventure as she bombed along the gravel roads not watching where she was going. In later life, George and Olga enjoyed travelling across the Prairies in their big red boogie van, pulling their trailer, which was packed with enough supplies to last three years in the wilderness. Olga was his co-pilot, leaning forward at stop signs to tell him if it was clear from her direction. Once, when Olga was 65, they stopped at Yorkton’s Threshermen’s Festival where Olga won the stooking competition. She was 65. Thresher MAN indeed. Olga would never have wanted to be called a ThresherWOMAN. She would have preferred Thresher LADY. They both LOVED to dress up. Klondike Days especially was a favourite time of year for them. They spent their time visiting family, flea markets, and auction sales, augmenting their various collections. As grandkids, we all spent time with them at their house, even if we may have been freaked out by the worms Granddad raised in the basement, the chamber pot under the bed with the big Sears Catalogue on top, the wool blankets Grandma kept on the beds upstairs that were so heavy you could hardly breathe. We enjoyed ourselves whether we were • Watching Stampede Wrestling on Saturdays while Grandma cheered on the Butcher or the Stomper. • Going with Grandma and Granddad to the Morinville Auction on Wednesdays where Jackie remembers granddad holding her up to make a bid • Driving around and around the farm in her old brown station wagon • Riding their horse Buckshot to go and get the cows • Going with them to the exhibition and it pouring buckets. • Feeding us sauerkraut and spare ribs. • Going with her to work at the tree nursery, sorting trees or planting trees. Brad worked with her there for a whole summer. From her we learned to knit, to French braid, to drive (or maybe not, as Tracy can attest to putting Grandma’s car into the ditch once when she let her drive). We learned that • a cast iron frying pan, a pressure cooker, and a little tin to cut up fried potatoes are all essential to the kitchen. • Cabbage rolls are best made with sour cabbage • When you glean potatoes at the neighbour’s farm you ONLY take the potatoes that are on top of the ground. • If you pin all of your blankets and sheets together, it’s easier to make the bed. She gave most of us her obsession with jewelery. We’re like magpies. She also passed on her spirit, her tenacity. She was strong, both mentally and physically. She had to be. Even into her 80s—for instance when after a marathon her grandson-in-law Darren ended up with a broken pelvic bone, she practically carried him to the car. Though she could be tough, her gentleness came through, especially around little kids and babies. She had lots of practical advice to offer new mom’s. And some was not so practical; both of Kathleen’s girls tasted sugar for the first time when Grandma started spooning jam dipped in sugar into their mouths. They LOVED it. There was a second garden at the farm just for the grandkids where they got to plant whatever they wanted. She enjoyed kids—when Caitlin and Lee came home from the hospital, she sat with her arms full of twins. She may not have “known” her great-great grandkids, but when they spoke to her, she gave them her attention. When Olga lost George in 1994, she moved to Bon Accord. Her social life opened up. She found a new main squeeze—Tommy the cat, whom she loved dearly. She started to drink tea with sugar in it—something she’d given up when she got married because Granddad didn’t like sugar in his tea and “I didn’t want him to have to see me drink my tea with sugar in it.” She travelled the world—to Mexico, Japan, China, and most importantly, her homeland Germany. As grandkids, it was amazing to hear her speak German; we’d rarely heard her before. Her fearlessness manifested itself in other ways—she eagerly held her grandson Rob’s tarantula. She knelt down and petted his 15-foot python like it was a dog. She drove a quad with Rena and Gary, and a sea-doo. She climbed to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico with Rita and Joe. In Germany she took a spin on the back of a young cousin’s motorcycle. She was a bit of a daredevil. To pass the quiet time at home, she knit mittens and covered coat hangers. She listened to the hockey games always cheering (loudly) for her beloved Oilers. She used to say things like • Don’t be lazy. • If her kids referred to her in the third-person as “she”: Grandma would say “Who? The cat’s mother?” • When you sneezed: Bless your pointy head. • When souls needed soothing: S’alright. • When she wanted to tell you that she loved you but she somehow felt that it would be unfair to the REST of her family if she just singled you out: I love you ALL. Like many of us, she found it hard to say thank you or to openly express appreciation. While she was very rigid about some things—how you did the dishes, for example—she was very open-minded about others. She travelled many places in her later life—People also came to her--she met people and made friends from all walks of life, races, and cultures. She was open and accepting. She had many lessons to teach us. The fake jewels are as much worth loving as the real ones. Remember, her tastes were egalitarian. She loved the cheap baubles as much as she loved her expensive diamonds. Her jewelery was not a silly extravagance; to her it was the reward that she earned after of years of hard work. Though we loved her for her jewelery and fabulous clothes, we also would have loved her without them. The biggest gift she gave us was herself. She WAS a jewel. She was sparkly and beautiful. She was also resilient and tough. Jewels do not shatter easily. They do not wear out. They do not lose their sparkle. She was enough. And we’re enough too. The true jewels that she has passed on to us are already inside us. We’re strong. We’re shiny. And that’s how we’ll live out her legacy.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 00:05:00 +0000
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