File f30 - Gibson, Rose Mary

File consists of a recording of Rose Gibson. Topics of the conversation include TAPE ONE Sad transfer to Queen's from Univ. of Western Ontario: father's inability to fund out-of-town expenses for seven children. Consciousness as doctor's daughter of Depression sufferings; government subsidy of doctor's services, doctors' sliding scale of fees for patients. Slight outsider status as Kingston resident (tendency of residence students to exclude, to group); outsider status of fellow who took insignificant jobs to finance studies; self-support of John Deutsch (studying mornings, teaching afternoons), facilitated by Queen's morning lecture system. Plenitude of bursaries, scholarships, despite want of government-supplied student grants; free tuition for students 'nominated' by donors to Queen's fund drive; generosity of individual professors and townspeople (e.g. Min Gordon) in giving or lending money. Min Gordon as Queen's 'character': unusual status as one of two female professors; odd dress, lack of concern for personal appearance; abnormal driving habits; outspoken if not aggressive personality, 'the women who asserted their rights early didn't do it with as much finesse as they can now'. Women's general disinclination to try for centre stage 'unless it happened'. Popular blame of government for Depression conditions (witness 1930s elections of new leaders);ruinous effect of Depression on students' self-confidence; irony of recent economic recession considering student blame of earlier recession on popular stupidity. Plight of farmers, sending out daughters to town convent boarding-school, paying tuition in farm produce. Availability of paying jobs for young men (service stations, grain elevators), not for young women (not even babysitting); volunteer work available in summer camps. Decision of penniless cleaning lady and husband to accept loans, gifts from friends, never to accept government welfare; couple's habit of attending movies, frowned on by many, not by Gibson. Queen's as a 'closed community' throughout Depression ;local faith in League of Nations, campus concurrence over impossibility of WWII. Childhood understanding of conscientious objection to war as 'perfectly legitimate' attitude, placement of blame for WWI on previous generation's stupidity, pride in family contribution to WWI nevertheless. 'Parochial feuding' atmosphere at Queen's (1930s): Science vs. Arts, city vs. university, Queen's vs. R.M.C., Queen's vs. Univ. of Toronto. Queen's Journal as reflection of 'ingrown' campus interests, less scholarly than in former times, less concerned with world affairs than before or since. Student community. Decline in campus intimacy with increase in size: 'working eleven years in Archives, Idon't even know everybody in the History Dept. now'. Advice given father (bright son of poor widow) to attend university by Newburg Academy professor John Matheson (later Dean of Arts,Queen's); father's self-support through Meds programme (1904) by teaching, working in cheese factories. Attendance at Queen's by five of subject's seven siblings, three nieces, three nephews. Irish maternal grandmother's convent schooling, enrolment of daughters in convent, son in Univ. of Ottawa. Queen's as a 'poor man's college' insofar as local people could afford Queen's who could not afford live-away expenses at Univ. of Toronto. University attendance as foregone conclusion in subject's family. Enjoyable years at convent high school – see Jean Kerr, Please Don't Eat the Daisies (all convent schooling is the same). Women's acceptance of limited options after highschool (university, teaching, nursing, possibly secretarial work); no recollection of resentful attitude, but 'too bad', 'a fact of life'. Father's depression (as WWI medical veteran) at recurring horror of WWII; subject's ignorance of WWII enlisted acquaintances' feelings, veterans didn't tell much (except the odd funny story); willing entrance of many who had decried stupidity of WWI into WWII. RCMP surveillance of German acquaintance during WWII; awareness of own change of heart towards German people, admittedly irrational; lesser anti-German feeling in WWII than in WWI (no posters of Kaisers eating babies). Women's exclusive choice of career or marriage after schooling (often brief spell of work preceding marriage). Attendance at Ontario College of Education (both parents having been teachers); faith in education as enjoyable road to better life. Rural teaching in Ontario, supplying books from father's library; many smart kids from good homes, despite poverty, primitive schooling conditions. Teaching in Sault Ste. Marie, Kingston, looking for better position, wages; inevitable impersonalism of larger schools, less rewarding. Frustrating experience teaching English to technological stream boys; hankering to substitute biography of Henry Ford for mandatory Shakespeare. Belief in duty of schools to impart basic skills, core of knowledge. // Disbelief in WWII even during Royal Visit to Canada, June 1939;pride in brothers' enlistment once it began; Red Cross work, nutrition instruction, no thought of herself enlisting. Acquaintance with alternative service enlister (despite lack of qualifications) in Medical Corps. Value of WWII in ending financial depression, providing people with purpose, unity. Unquestioning support of entrance into war, albeit European war; conception of Europe as centre of western world (heartbroken sentiment at fall of France, though never having seen it); expectation that USA would indeed enter war, after pattern of late entrance set in WWI. Hiroshima as dreadful blot on Western conscience ('I didn't know how Mr. Truman could sleep'); misleading media coverage, 'dreadful but necessary' tone adopted later; censorship of news reports and soldiers' letters; lying nature of media in general (from varying motives), craziness of using newspapers as primary sources of historical truth. Uncensorious attitude to French-Canadian war-resisters. Mackenzie King's tenacity, achievements, despite unpopularity. Sense of depression over Cold War, personal uneasiness at political developments not felt now (1979). Divided Canadian response to McCarthy: dread of Communist infiltration, akin to dread of typhus epidemic; irrational argument over McCarthyism ending in shouting matches; subject's anti-McCarthy stand, interest in recent T.V. documentary. Changes in Kingston (1958) after twenty years' absence: larger, more varied social groups, new multiculturalism (more homogeneous in 1938, more interesting in 1958); thrill of first multicultural exposure (Sault Ste. Marie). Nephew's distraught report of Pres. Kennedy's assassination; personal dismay at senselessness of murder by reported 'crackpot' assassin. Transatlantic shift (1960s) in centre of Western awareness from Europe to USA. Resignation of teaching career after stress-induced illness; attendance University of Ottawa library school,1967;bilingual policy as Univ. of Ottawa's unique value, successful at one-to-one level, constrained at level of public meetings. Employment in Queen's University Archives, 1968, acquaintance with scholarly, post-graduate sector of student population. Horror at wasted time, energy, of Charles Edwards Inquiry into Student Unrest (1960s); unnerving student compulsion to question everything, suffered with difficulty by lecturer Hilda Neatby(?). Condonation (shared by friends) of us draft-dodgers during Viet Nam war. Expansion of student interest in world affairs (1960s) as result of expanded opportunities, world-wide horizons, easy money available to students throughout 1960s; attitude of 1960s graduates (foreign to subject's outlook) that universities owed them employment. TAPE TWO 'Clear road ahead' for students in 1960s, realistic expectation of pursuing chosen career; pursuit of less desired routes in 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, selection of university major with view to employment options; greater flexibility of recent graduates, 'what I do will depend on circumstances'. Admiration for Trent University, belief that small universities have much to offer; certainty that small universities will suffer as students opt for universities better known to employers. Community colleges as excellent but overbuilt phenomena, financially endangered. Expectation of forced curtaiIment of educational curricula, not necessarily a pity: 'the worst days were the days when we had too much, when everything seemed too easy.' Family, education, books, some friends, as greatest influences in life; life as a matter of 'outside influences and inside drive, how you can mesh them together'. Impact of physical environment on individuality: subject's dependence on nearby lake for happiness, brother's homesickness (Saskatchewan) for trees. Self-exclusion from women's rights pioneering, feeling that leaders went (too raucously) too far; conditioned acceptance as female schoolteacher of inequality of career expectations (not of wages); critical response to women's indiscriminate entrance into new fields (why would any woman choose to drive taxi?), belief that job spectrum is artificial now as formerly. Approval of social progress toward considering people as people, not as men or women; probable existence of unfelt discrimination in subject's past (father, though encouraging her to attend university, would likely not have encouraged Med School). Surprised presidency of newly-opened branch of Ontario Genealogical Society; genealogy as today's 'most fashionable hobby'; contempt of historians for genealogical branch of history, undeserved: value of time consuming genealogical study in encouraging local history, providing sense of identity, stability, community with past, in times of change; belief that people are coming to see that minor areas of study are as valuable as major ones. Historians' similar contempt for oral history, failure to conceive of history (like Medicine) as not only objective science ,but subjective art. Value to subject of Hidden Voices interview in reestablishing sense of continuity with the past; future value to young auditors in establishing sense of belonging, 'we're all connected in some way'.