The Surprise of My Life

Claire Drainie Taylor

Description

“It’s an autobiography! If I tell you what’s in it you won’t read the book.” — Claire Drainie Taylor

Or would you? Maybe you’d be intrigued by the progression of a life begun as an unexceptional little girl born to a middle-class Jewish Canadian couple in a small prairie town who, at age sixteen, married a refined Englishman, and survived the Great Depression, partly alone in a shack in the woods of Vancouver Island. Or how, only a few months after returning to Vancouver, with no training and minimal education, this same young woman walked on stage at one of Canada’s finest old theatres, and went on to a successful thirty-year career as an actress and radio dialogue writer.

Having been compelled by her family to write her memoir, it wasn’t until she’d finished and reread her manuscript that Claire Drainie Taylor realized what an extraordinary life she’d led. Her descriptions of the many fascinating incidents that make up her story, and how she dealt with them, revealed herself to herself in a way that illuminates what she calls “The Surprise of My Life.”

Sujets

• Life writing

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 30 octobre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554586721
• Langue: English

Extrait

Life Writing Series / 5
Life Writing Series
In the Life Writing Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism in order to promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary or philosophical purposes are central to their lives. Life Writing features the accounts of ordinary people, written in English, or translated into English from French or the languages of the First Nations or from any of the languages of immigration to Canada. Life Writing will also publish original theoretical investigations about life writing, as long as they are not limited to one author or text.
Priority is given to manuscripts that provide access to those voices that have not traditionally had access to the publication process.
Manuscripts of social, cultural and historical interest that are considered for the series, but are not published, are maintained in the Life Writing Archive of Wilfrid Laurier University Library.
Series Editor
Marlene Kadar
Humanities Division, York University
The Surprise of My Life An Autobiography
C LAIRE D RAINIE T AYLOR

with a Foreword by Marlene Kadar

Wilfrid Laurier University Press
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Taylor, Claire Drainie, 1917-
The surprise of my life : an autobiography
(Life writing; v. 5)
ISBN 0-88920-302-4
1. Taylor, Claire Drainie, 1917- . 2. Actresses -Canada - Biography. 3. Radio writers - Canada -Biography. I. Title. II. Series.
PN2308.T39A3 1998 791 .092 C98-930839-1
Copyright 1998 WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5
Cover design by Leslie Macredie

Printed in Canada
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means- graphic, electronic, or mechanical-without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or reproducing in information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 214 King Street West, Suite 312, Toronto, Ontario M5H 3S6.
For my very dear children who encouraged me to keep writing and for my cherished grandchildren
Emily Pastor (In memory)
Angela Pastor
Michael Pastor
Gabriel Martin
Samuel Martin
Lauren Drainie
Alison Drainie
Alexandria Drainie Taylor and their children
and
their children
and
their children
and
their children
and
their children
and
their children
and
their children
and
their children
etc.
Contents
Foreword by Marlene Kadar
Acknowledgements
Author s Note
The Beginning
Swift Current
And All the Other Places
Vancouver-First Marriage
Rock Bay
John Drainie Makes an Entrance
Life with John
And the Children Came . . . and Came . . . and Came . . .
Interlude
The Final Stretch

Foreword
by Marlene Kadar
C laire Drainie Taylor s memoir, The Surprise of My Life: An Autobiography, is a moving, intelligent and often humorous account of a life lived to the fullest, a life reflected upon by a narrator whose honesty and sensitivity draws the reader into her story, a narrator whose memory for the details of her childhood, her childbearing years, her children s lives is remarkable. With her own busy career as a radio and television actor, she has remained a loving mother, wife and grandmother, devoted to the preservation of the family s legacy and the stories they have yet to tell. Although married now to the Canadian film entrepreneur Nat Taylor, The Surprise of My Life tells an earlier story, the story of her exciting life with John Drainie, the celebrated Canadian actor with whom she raised six children.
The memoir begins in Claire s childhood: born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, of Jewish parents, Claire remembers the joy and chaos of life in her first family, a family which, though always living on the edge, and despite setbacks, managed to survive. She recalls that her first love, Jack Harrison Murray, with whom she eloped in 1934, was attracted to this warmth and wanted it for himself.
What is interesting about our narrator s perspective is that she addresses her children, all of her children and grandchildren, and does not spare them any of the details of her life because, for her, all the details are part of the story they must inherit. Claire Drainie Taylor is a truthful and disclosing narrator, unafraid to tell the whole story. She admits that the story is very personal and may actually reveal more than we need to know about Drainies, Wodlingers and Epsteins. But it is precisely Claire s attachment to the personal details of her life that sets this memoir apart: the details of love, in particular, run through the book like a silver thread, linking lovers, children and families, blending traditions as disparate as Russian and Lithuanian Jewish with the upright Anglicanism of the Drainie clan.
Claire Drainie Taylor remembers with exquisite emotion and courage the kinds of contracts she has made with her world and treats them with special respect. One of these contracts goes like this: every time John Drainie bought himself a new record album, he bought his wife a gift of flowers as a kind of peace offering. The flowers became code for the fact that Drainie bought himself a gift, and also for the more intricate fact that John Drainie s perfectionism could make him unhappy and difficult as a husband. Claire relates the story of the coded gift in a way that makes the reader understand its layers of meaning, but also in a way that illuminates both actors in this particular and riddling family play. Claire and John Drainie were equal in their passions, passions which, despite the affection between them, were not always resolved. It is the open-endedness about their love and passion that draws the reader to the narrator and her story, and makes that story the surprise that Claire Drainie Taylor acknowledges in the title. Without pretense, Claire Drainie Taylor tells us the story of what she initially perceives as an unexceptional life, but a life that, on reflection and to her surprise, illuminates an exceptional history, an uncommon career and a complicated love and family life.
Acknowledgements
N ow let me see. Isn t this the space where the author is expected to pay tribute to those whose encouragement and support have kept the project alive and seen it N through to fruition? I think that s what I m supposed to be doing here.
But honestly, except for my daughters Jocelyn and Kathryn who deserve special kudos for their practical assistance, wouldn t I be gilding the lily if I acknowledged the inspiration of the rest of my family and friends? After all, their contribution is self-evident throughout the text. How much more attention do they want?
Naturally, the lion s share of the credit (and blame) goes to me. Things happened. I remembered. I wrote them down.
On a more serious note, my genuine thanks go to Sandra Woolfrey and her capable staff at Wilfrid Laurier University Press, and to Marlene Kadar whose insightful Foreword almost encourages me to continue my search for other surprises.
Author s Note
I was taller than all my grandparents, said my mother, Rose Epstein Wodlinger, who was five feet tall in a stretch. That, and the brief, chilling incident that opens this narrative, plus the fact that they were all born in European countries- Russia, Germany, Lithuania for sure-and one, more exotic great-grandmother, in Sophia (whether under Turkish or Greek domination at the time is unclear), represents all I know about my ancestors. One other fact: Baba Rosen (see picture) and Zada Rosen (no picture, but I remember him from my childhood) both died in Winnipeg and were survived by six daughters and two sons. What happened in their lives from birth to death (aside from successful coupling!) I ll never know; there s no one left to tell me; no written record, nothing. Of the others, I know even less.
Not wanting you, my heirs, to be deprived of a past history, I ve assembled this collection of family memories for your edification. It s all very personal and may tell you more than you care to know about Drainies and Wodlingers and Epsteins (if I ve left anything dangling consult your parents)-but I ve written truthfully, and with affection. I offer it to you as a gift-not with humility, but with pride: pride in your interest in reading it several generations removed-and pride in myself for making the effort to write and complete it: I never thought I would!
The Beginning
T he place: a small farm a few kilometres outside a village in southern Russia. The year: around 1870. The doctor fills out the death certificate for Anne Rosen-three-year-old victim of the current plague. As he drives off in his horse-drawn buggy, he assures the bereaved young parents that Jewish tradition will be observed: he will send the deathwagon for the child s body in time to have her buried before sundown of the following day. He disappears in the falling snow which develops into a raging blizzard before he reaches the village. Three days pass before the hearse can make its way through the windswept snowdrifts to the farm. On the morning of the second day the child, Anne, wakens and