Carolyn Whalen - CW
Mary Fraser - MF

Side A

CW- This is Carolyn Whalen in conversation with Miss Mary Fraser, July 29, 1996, discussing her memories of Katharine McLennan and anything else she can think of.

MF - ... Dorothy Sutherland and so on.

CW - So Dorothy Sutherland, she is passed away.

MF - Now, there is still one family who would have known her, the Mores, they knew her quite well and as a matter of fact, she left her property at Ben Eoin to them and they're living back in Sydney.

CW - Is that Mrs. Nan More, I wasn't sure how she knew her. Mr. MacIntosh told me to get in touch with her and I've been trying, but there's no answer at her house.

MF - The More's lived in the next block, they lived a couple of doors from Miss Kendall and they were very helpful, Bob was particularly helpful doing things at the cottage for her and so on. Latterly, although they came back to Sydney before she died, I'm just trying to think if they did or not, yes, I think they were back in Sydney before she died and they would be, I think probably the only people that she was on very friendly terms. She was really quite a remarkable person and she... I first knew her just after I came here before the McConnell was built and I can recall it was the first time I encountered her, it was... Miss Wallace, who was the head at that point, was going out to see Mr. McConnell and that was the era, that was some time ago, that was the era when the libraries were, some how or another, still closely associated with the Catholic Church because they had been a driving force behind the establishment of libraries and so on. I can recall being taken along by Miss McLennan, who was on the board at that point, and Miss Wallace to see Mr. McConnell and I'm sure I was taken along as a good, not necessarily good, but as a Presbyterian and I can't remember if I was introduced as a Presbyterian, but I was certainly aware that I was there as a Presbyterian. Mr. McConnell was a very strong member of the Baptist Church as I recall and would not be interested in anything associated with the Catholic Church. So anyway, that's my first recollection of her, but after that I saw her a great deal, traveled with her occasionally. She had many, many interests and was really a delightful person and she was remarkably skillful. Her mother had... was no mean artist and she had been trained in Chicago and abroad and what Katharine McLennan's claim was I'm not sure. For instance, this was one of her mother's paintings and this was another one here, but this one immediately behind me, the lower one, was Katharine McLennan's. A sharp painting of the stained glass window and I have another one in one of the bedrooms of Katharine's also. But she would do all sorts of things, she was great with a hammer and saw among other things, but she could also do unusual things like work with gold leaf. I never had known anyone who’d worked with gold leaf where you brush your hair then brush the gold leaf..., really could do all sorts of things, really quite artistic.

CW - She was into bookbinding?

MF - Yes, she did quite a lot of bookbinding. I have some of her bookbinding. I think she was trained in Paris to do that.

CW - Yes, in her teens, late teens I think. She took painting lessons with Catharine Rhodes in Paris. But also, Hetty Kimber, her mother's friend, was she still around? I think she lived over in Petersfield when her mother was still alive. She might have been passed away by then, probably she was. I think she painted too. She used to be a governess to Katharine and she probably learned some of her painting from her too.

MF - Hetty Kimber- she was dead by the time I came here, so was her brother as I recall. Yes, Hetty was dead. I think she died some time before that. But, as I said, she could do all sorts of wonderful things, she was really quite artistic. I don't recall she played any instrument, I don't recall that she did, I never heard of it. She was very keen on photography, particularly, she did some very nice pictures of wildflowers. She was very interested in wildflowers and she did slides.

CW - So how did she get involved with the James McConnell Library, was it something she just took up or did someone ask her to help?

MF - Well, she was a member of the board at that point, well you see, she bought the land for the library. But probably was the only person who felt that personal contact would be a good thing and she carried a fair amount of influence and so on so that's probably why she, as a member of the board, went to visit Mr. McConnell. We went on a ... there had been negotiations before that, this was merely to press the matter and as I recall, he was thinking about changing his will, but he died suddenly , which was fortunate for us. I mean, if he had been intending to change his will. But I think this was just to reinforce the fact that we were not a Catholic institution. I mean, that was not stated but... Have you seen Nancy More?

CW - No.

MF - She would be one. I can't think of anyone else, you see, her housekeeper died, very curious affair. Her funeral was myself, her lawyer and the funeral director, nobody else. Nina was very well known to people who dined with Miss McLennan. She was austere and never changed over the years and she eventually got into the Cove and died there. But I was amazed that there was nobody there because she did have relatives here, she originally came from Newfoundland and she was a very phlegmatic disposition. But anyway, that would have been one person who had known Miss McLennan very well.

CW - Was it Nina Bungay, was that her last name?

MF - Bungay, yes. Latterly, Mrs. Norman, who lives out on Victoria Road kept house and became a ... got along very well with Miss McLennan, very different. She had kept house for me for awhile when my mother stayed with me, she kept house for awhile. When my mother died, she moved with Miss McLennan. At that point, Nina had retired, she had been struck by a car and wasn't too well so she retired. Miss McLennan and I had one trip to Newfoundland, this was before the roads were good and she was interested in seeing the area she knew so well that had to do with Louisbourg's previous settlement in Newfoundland. So we spent a week bouncing over the roads, they were in terrible condition at that point, before the era of paving and they were just blasting through. We hired a car and were told when we left that a car had just come in and all the tires were gone. Miss McLennan was a great car fancier and she liked sporty cars. And she had, before I knew her, some car of Italian make and she knew quite a bit about the mechanics of the car. As a matter of fact, do you see that eagle there, in the glass, that was on top of one of the cars which later fell into disrepute because all of the German cars, official German cars, had an eagle on the hood. But anyway, that was Miss McLennan. His nose got stubbed on some occasion I think. It seems incredible now that you'd be dashing around with that eagle on the hood of your car and taking it today to a modern parking mall, it wouldn't last too long. But her and Miss Kendall used to go on amazing trips, they were an amazing pair to go out with. I can remember the first picnic I had with them and the weather wasn't very good, it must have been in the early spring because it was very wet. Well, Helen Kendall decided she wanted something to eat so we were driving somewhere, it must have been around Fourchu, Framboise area somewhere and they decided, well, Helen had to eat. So it was a swamp and we sat with our feet in the lake. We had occasion to find a log along the swamp area and we sat up there and the sandwiches, as I recall, were soft cooked eggs which was not my favorite thing. Miss McLennan would eat anything, it didn't ... I don't think... she did like good food, but I think she could do with very poor food too and it didn't bother her particularly. But that was my first picnic. But later, Florence Mackley, founder of the Treasure Cove over here, and Helen Kendall, Katharine and I would go off on jaunts.

CW - Would this have been the 1960's, around what year would this have been? 1960's or..

MF - Well, it was almost the time when Miss McLennan died.

CW - So she was still pretty active and going places, car trips?

MF - Yes. Helen Kendall was a remarkable person. She had extremely long legs and could cavort over the countryside with some speed. Miss McLennan had had a heart attack at some point and had to be careful, though I never found she was particularly careful. There was an occasion where the two of them were off, somewhere off the Cabot Trail, they went way in, miles down this road and the car stalled and couldn't get it started and so Helen Kendall walked out, I think some 5-6 miles through the woods. They had followed some terrible old trail. This was typical. So she walked out, she felt it was rather better for her to walk so she walked for help. It turned out to be a new car that she had to put back into park before it would start. This was the first time the car stalled and neither one was used to that particular thing. It was entirely an (?) but if you weren't aware of the new way, you couldn't get there. Now that was typical. Now what they were doing on the other end of no where down north, I wouldn't know, but it was quite typical of the pair.

CW - Did Helen Kendall drive?

MF - Oh yes. She had a little Volvo, I had never seen before or since. It was a one seater and it was just like a little bug and she was very tall, she would have been five foot nine, extremely thin and she would be holing up and getting into this tiny car. They drove Volvos latterly, both drove Volvos, but Helen Kendall's was the only one I ever saw with that type and she'd be buzzing around in that. They were inseparable, but they couldn't live together because Helen Kendall wanted the radio on all the time and latterly Miss McLennan, after Nina left, was alone and became rather nervous at night and it wasn't always easy to get someone, for instance, Mrs. Norman, when she was there, had her own household and home and so on and wouldn't want to spend all day and night there. Occasionally Mrs. Norman's daughter would stay, but it seemed to the people who didn't know them very well for the idea for Helen Kendall to move in with Miss McLennan, but in actual fact, it never would have worked because, fond as they were of one another, they had such decided ideas. Miss McLennan said she wasn't going to listen to the radio all night with Helen prowling around and so on and so forth. Miss McLennan first. Miss Kendall lasted some years after she was gone. But they were a very remarkable pair, very close, scrapping all the time, very close. But, they didn't travel together. There was an interesting article, did you see it recently, was it in the Herald or the Globe and Mail about Cataraqui, Miss Rhodes.

CW - No.

MF - It was about a month ago and Miss McLennan would usually go off every year and visit Catharine Rhodes or sometimes they traveled. One year they were in Greece together. Very occasionally traveled together. Miss Kendall and Miss McLennan never traveled together except to Australia, they went to Australia twice together because Miss Kendall's brother had gone to Australia. The tie between the two was that Miss Kendall's father had married Miss McLennan's sister Margaret, it was his second wife. But before that the families had... Dr. Kendall and his wife and the McLennan's, they had been very close friends and they spent Christmas and so on and they would be spending their Christmas's together. But Miss Kendall had trained in the Royal Victoria and then she went overseas, so did Miss McLennan, went overseas.

CW - So they did know each other here before they went over in World War 1?

MF - They knew each other from the time they were small, small children.

CW - I wasn't sure what the connection was at the very beginning...

MF - Yes, from the time... Miss Kendall lived here on the corner, I mean her family home. It was the yellow house, is it still yellow? Yes, it's still yellow. She spent her vacations, she was at school... her mother died when she was quite young and she was away at school, she was in the fall at Toronto, but she'd be home for summer vacations and so on and she seemed, well, after her mother's death, spent her, well almost all her time with the McLennan's. Well latterly Margaret McLennan married Dr. Kendall and that was not very popular with Miss Kendall at one point because she had been his hostess for a long while and she had sailed with the Ross's, one of them had lived over here and they had a great steam yacht they would send over seas and they would join the yacht and they would sail the Mediterranean up the Nile. It sounds very Agatha Christie and it was the same period as Escape on the Nile. So there was that close... well, she had been her father's hostess and then he married this person who would be junior to Miss Kendall, she was not very pleased. But, the friendship remained with Katharine McLennan and the McLennan family. Mrs. McLennan died when Katharine was 20, 24-25? But they were delightful in latter years when it would always be the pair if they were going off somewhere, Miss Kendall, Miss McLennan. Occasionally it was Miss McLennan and me or the three and sometimes Florence Mackley. Very entertaining, never quite sure what... Miss Kendall had a stroke at one point and had her leg in a brace and I remember going in the spring with the two of them over to Boularderie. It was property that Devco owned or something or other and the snow was still in the woods and here was Miss Kendall, like an antelope, dashing through the woods with a leg in a brace and Miss McLennan and I breaking through the underbrush to follow her. But anyway, they were very, very good companions.

CW - What, how did Katharine become a member of the board, was it something she was always interested in or did...?

MF - Before my time, so I don't know how she became... she was a Conservative, were the Conservatives in? Because sometimes, I don't know if it was a government appointment or not. Because the board consisted of various members of the municipalities' participating units and each municipality would have one or more members depending on the size of the unit. In my time there were eighteen members of the board and there was always one who was a government appointment. Now Mrs. Sutherland was a very close friend of Miss McLennan, she was latterly a government appointment to the board. So whether Miss McLennan became... I have no idea because she was on the board when I came.

CW - So the fire that took place, was that in the old library, I read that there was an old library in the basement of the courthouse. So was that the first library around here and was she involved with that?

MF - She certainly was, unfortunately, because she had given a lot of her father's Louisbourg collection to the library and it was lost.

CW - I had seen a lot of receipts and things where she had tried to replace the books and things, but it was very hard.

MF - She tried, yes and not only that but Louisbourg was amassing its own library shortly thereafter and so there was no point in duplicating books. She started replacing, but it was hard, for instance, there were a complete collection of the Champlain Society and there was a large case filled, you see, that was shortly after... I really didn't know the collection to any extent at that point, except for the Champlain Society collections. So she started, but with the Fortress as I say, there was no point duplicating all that material.

CW - I was talking to someone in Ingonish who used to speak with Katharine and she said she spoke of some room that she hoped the library would have that would be fire-safe, that if any fire or anything happened, that no water or fire could get into this part of the building. Is there such a room at the James McConnell now?

MF - There's a room that the committee... no, not to my knowledge, there isn't. That didn't go into the planning when I was there. I don't recall her saying that, who told you that?

CW - Her name was Ann Donovan at the time and now she's Ann Hussey and she used to do some housekeeping, she was only a teenager at the time in Ingonish. She remembered Katharine speaking of the library, some room she hoped the library would build that would be fire-proof. But she never said it came to be... maybe it was just talk.

MF - I don't recall that coming up and I was very aware of the planning of the library. She consulted very closely with the architect and made a number of changes. The only thing I was interested in at the time was the floor, the weight on the floor was a tricky thing. There was very heavy underpinnings, the steel structure was very heavy. But I don't recall the other.

Side B

MF - There'd be really big things such as that wonderful atlas in commemoration of the Great Henry the Navigator, which was a very expensive thing. Occasionally she would make a large donation of books.

CW - I was flipping through some of the books in the Nova Scotia Room, the books behind the cages and I'd flip through and some would have her name in them. But I don't think there is an actual inventory of... but all the stuff in the Louisbourg collection is inventoried though, like her father's research material and all the stuff she donated when he died, the files. Was it when she died it was donated, or when he died?

MF - No, you mean that was given to the library, no, he died years before . He died...

CW - In 1939.

MF - Yes.

CW - So it was her then.

MF - Yes. He died before I came here, but I should remember quite clearly when he died because I was at Dalhousie and had the job of cataloguing his stuff that came to Dalhousie.

CW - Yes, that's right.

MF - And I had the job of cataloguing the McLennan library because my background was in classics and he had a very fine, he was a classical scholar. And he had some very fine, beautiful editions that I still remember. Something with Miss McLennan, never say... I can recall saying that he had some beautiful Baskervilles and I can recall saying on some occasion how beautiful the Baskervilles were, quite enamored of them and the result was that she gave me at some point a Baskerville Milton and I learned then not to mention it. One thing for instance, Mary "Scotchy" MacDonald walked into her living room and recognized a picture on the wall, I think it was an A.Y. Jackson as I recall and Mary said, "Oh! that's a nice A.Y. Jackson!" So Miss McLennan called her up later and said, "Would you like to have it?" Mary was just struck... so she learned early never to mention anything or you might... I suppose we have many possessions and we'd want to know they'd go to someone who wanted them. She was very generous. She was an extremely generous woman with people who could take advantage of her. Mrs. Norman, when she was keeping house, she was like a little watchdog which was a good thing. For instance, one character had... he was doing some work around the place and he got drunk on some occasion, I hope he was drunk, stole the car and smashed the car. But unfortunately when she died she willed her tools, he had the same name as someone who did a lot of work for her here, and the tools went to this man and I know perfectly well they should have gone to the man who was working out there and not to the man who had wrecked the car, although he was a very ingratiating character and he could get away with a great deal. But she didn't pursue the matter at all, I don't think he got a slap on the wrist as I recall for taking the car and smashing it. Miss Kendall had the same thing happen to her as I recall, the last car she had. Someone took the keys and wrecked the car. Miss Kendall was more suspicious of human nature than Miss McLennan.

CW - Did Katharine speak much of Louisbourg and the restoration?

MF - Of the...?

CW - Of the restoration of Louisbourg and the museum, a bit or...?

MF - Of course, it was very much in her mind. She entertained a great deal for dinner and so on the men coming and became quite good friends with the men involved. The years now, I can't think of the various ones. Pallerdy was one, he was the authority on furniture and he'd done great work on furniture. She became very good friends with Pallerdy and when these men would be coming, these experts in the fields, she would have entertainment, dinner and so on. When the restoration was going on, she kept in constant contact with it and she knew and made it her business to know all these men, knew them personally and entertained them and could talk with them. Realize she had worked with her father, you see, in Paris when he was working on that book and she seemed to have an intuition about... I don't know if she said it or inferred it, but the French would have these wonderful plans, but she felt quite a few things could happen between Paris and Louisbourg and these would be on paper, but might not be necessarily so around here. And with the excavation they could verify whether or not, but she seemed to have... when she was talking about Louisbourg you felt she had lived there, had been there in the eighteenth century, which was quite different. So she could talk with all these experts on their own terms. It wasn't just a person like myself where Louisbourg was just a name. She was really learned in that field, you see. She was extremely interested in furniture, she knew a great deal about furniture and so on. As well the history of the time, the individuals and so on. But she had... it seemed she had lived there and knew the place well. She was always on very good terms with the men from (Lenlon?) and they had a very interesting group, they were great, a few Americans, both English and Americans because they weren't training in Canada in that field at that point and there was so much, a lot of restoration work being done in the American southwest and so on. So there was a lot of changes in the staff at Louisbourg. Men woud come in who were experts in a certain area at a certain time. She would know all these men and was in constant touch with them.

CW - Could she go out to Louisbourg and direct them or did they kind of do their own thing and she would just observe?

MF - She wouldn't be directing them. It would be a matter of one expert talking to another, or one person talking to another who knew what they were talking about. Realize the museum, her connection to the museum out there, that she had done a tremendous amount of work connected with that museum and the personages of the era of Louisbourg were as familiar to her, or more familiar to her, than a lot of the people in Sydney of her time in government, or people running the province. I mean, these were household names to her. I think she thoroughly enjoyed, I know she enjoyed... and she was very good with men because she was highly intelligent and knew what the heck she was talking about and if she didn't, she'd say so, she was very forthright. I think the whole McLennan family... I remember Isabel, her older sister, coming here one time and she would visit Miss McLennan, the spring I think it was. Isabel married this Farley and he was a Boston blueblood, I think he was an overseer of Harvard. Isabel was herself later on a trustee of the Boston Symphony and so on. They moved in that circle. Senator McLennan had moved in that circle and it was rather interesting, Helen Howe had wrote a book about Boston of that period and Senator McLennan and it was quite interesting. You should take a look into it because it gives a picture of the milieu the McLennan's moved in, the circle of society, really, in which they moved. They were accepted in Boston with the Lowell's and the Cabot's and when Isabel married, she married into that social group. They had a very beautiful place, her and John. I remember when Isabel was here, Miss McLennan would go for a visit to Isabel's, she would also hear... Isabel would always tell her she had no decent clothes because Miss McLennan was always casual, not... she didn't care. Isabel was small and dainty and very nicely turned out. But I remember coming with Miss McLennan from the library one time and this may have been her first visit and I don't remember if she made any favorable comment, I don't recall, but I remember she looked at the grass and said, "Your janitor needs to have his blades sharpened on the lawn mower, it's very uneven." So that was Isabel. I can imagine when Miss McLennan arrived in Cambridge she would have mentioned that she could garb herself a little more...

CW - The woman I was talking to in Ingonish, she kind of thought Katharine wore Helen's hand-me-downs. Like, Katharine would have on these really long skirts that were too long for her. It looked like Helen would have worn them because she was so much taller. Maybe that was just kicking around Ingonish clothes or something, I can't imagine around here...

MF - No, I can't either. I'm just trying to think...

CW - Well, I guess they spent a lot of time gardening in Ingonish so I guess they wouldn't bother. She said they wore a lot of denim skirts, long denim skirts in Ingonish.

MF - I can only say she was always appropriately dressed, but she didn't care to be fashionable. I mean there was never anything extreme... Miss Kendall had a sense of style though, no matter what Ingonish thought. They were quite a pair, that's all I can say.

CW - Did Helen Kendall have her own money?

MF - Now that was one thing, she was a nurse in the Royal Victoria operating room and then her father, you see, married Margaret and moved elsewhere and it turned out latterly that Miss Kendall was very comfortable, but it never really meant anything to her, that was the sad thing because she... but she was not the kind who would accept Katharine's, she would not accept anything. She must have had fairly slim... but she always drove a good car though. But her brother became very wealthy, he founded steel mills in Australia. He moved out with a suit and a pair of pajamas. He and Katharine McLennan's brother Hugh were very close friends and they had, as young men, had worked over at the steel plant in summers and then Hugh was killed. Anyway, Jim- James Kendall- decided he'd see the world so he took a tramp steamer. He found himself in Cape Town and he didn't have any money and he wore his pajamas on the boat, that was his garment on the boat because he was saving his suit for the land. Anyway, he put on the suit and hitched a ride, he wanted to see the diamond fields in South Africa because the tramp steamer was going to be in for a few days so he had a two or three days off so he got on this train and this was quite an offense in South Africa and he got put in jail and he was desperate because he had to get back on the boat, but he got out and on to the boat and went to Australia. And it just happened that he had enough experience with the steel plant to at least talk about steel and he became extremely wealthy and he married a Baroness or something or other, a great socialite in Sydney, Australia and they had one son anyway. But when he died, rather when he died I don't think money came to Miss Kendall, she may have got some at that point, but when the wife died, quite a nice income came from Australia, but by then Katharine was dead and the money was just going into the bank. Miss Kendall had plenty around for her care, but she would have enjoyed the money so much more if she'd had it back then. But the two of them had two trips to Australia, I think two years in succession or maybe a year in between and that would have been when they were well up in their... well, they must have been eighty. I don't know if there was a year in between the trips or not, but the first one was so successful, they took a second one. They did quite a bit of sightseeing in Australia. But it was a very close relationship between them, they fought, they disagreed on things, but were very fond of one another.

CW - I heard they disagreed on little things, like how to cook a meal or just little things like that.

MF - Miss Kendall was a very good cook as a matter of fact. The only thing I recall Miss McLennan cooking, you see, usually if I was there in the early evening, Nina would have been gone by that time, latterly would have been gone, but a meal would have been prepared. Or if I was just there for lunch, Nina would have done it. But the only thing I can ever recall Miss McLennan actually cooking was mushrooms and toast and if there's anything I can't stand it's mushrooms and I can remember she disappeared and I hastily, I had a paper napkin and I hastily put them in there and hoped they wouldn't come through while she was in the kitchen. But, in general, it would be something Nina had cooked. If she was just cooking for herself it would be very spartan, she would eat practically anything, but Miss Kendall was a good cook, excellent cook as a matter of fact and they ate together a great deal. I think Miss Kendall would be over there every day for dinner at noon. I can remember Mrs. Norman complaining about something Miss Kendall didn't like.

CW - Did Helen take care of matters for Katharine, like do her shopping or whatever, stuff like that?

MF - No, they each had... they each would go out in their own vehicles. No, they each had their own separate lives. They were very much like sisters because, of course, from the time they were small they'd been together. After Miss Kendall's mother's death, I think they... I think she spent her holidays with them while she was training, she would spend her holidays with the McLennan's. But latterly, each one would drift downtown to do her shopping. Latterly Miss McLennan had a bad habit of parking her car and forgetting where she parked it and everybody would be out looking for it. Miss Kendall was quite, on the whole, clued about parking, where she was parking and so on and so forth.

CW - I've heard them described as Katharine shy and not wanting to talk, kind of withdrawn and Helen would be the one to talk, to engage in conversation and to be more outgoing. That's what I heard from the people in Ingonish anyway. Did you find that around here?

MF - Well, Helen Kendall was good at small talk, Katharine McLennan wasn't particularly good at small talk. But Helen Kendall was very good at that sort of thing. Helen was a frightful snob in certain ways. Katharine McLennan wasn't. Helen was rather... her and Florence Mackley would be with Katharine and myself going somewhere in the car and the two would be sparring. Helen would say, "Look at those little houses there, who lives in those little houses?" And Florence would get furious because she felt that only someone in a big house was worth knowing or something and they agreed to disagree in that. Now Mrs. Archibald of North Sydney was very good friends with Miss McLennan... I was just trying to think who her friends were here, people who were really close, people she knew and visited. But I'm just trying to think who else there'd be. You see, she was away a great deal and when she was here, she was out Ingonish or at the camp and so on and so forth.

CW - How did she get involved with Girl Guides, with Girl Guiding and the camp?

MF - I have no idea.

CW - I just saw these references...

MF - Oh yes, the place in Ingonish, the camp made me think of another person who would have known her... Denne Burchell's mother, Mrs. Burchell, was a friend of their's. Denne is... is he out East Bay now? He was a judge, he lived here a long time and he was an executor of the will and as a matter of fact, the Ingonish place was left to him. But his mother was a close friend. It was a small group. Mrs. Burchell and Mrs. Sutherland and I can't think of any others.

CW - It did seem like the same names keep popping up and they're all in the will sort of and I was just trying to figure out who everybody was and how close they were to Katharine.

MF - Now the Boyce's next door, she always liked the Boyce's very much. They're still here and were very good neighbours. The Boyce's and the More's and I don't know, she always saw Dr. Bruce. I can't think of anybody else.

CW - How did she become involved with the Jewish group here, was it because of living next door to the synagogue or... I saw different references.

MF - Oh yes, the Rosenblum's were friends. Owen and Mrs. Rosenblum. Now she's alive, but she's not at all well, mentally I don't think she's too good. Of course, she and Mrs. Cohen, she'd dead now, isn't she?

CW - I don't know.

MF - They moved away from here, she moved away. She was head of Hadassah. I think she was head of Canadian Hadassah at one point and then she was so busy with the Miner's Museum. Miss McLennan knew her well. And the whole group, she belonged to the Louisbourg Chapter of the IODE and if there was a list of members at that time, it would be hard to recall. This Jewish business, I don't think it was because of the synagogue, it was just because she knew these... Mrs. Harry Cohen was a great community worker and immersed herself in a number of causes, well, she was just Miss McLennan's cup of tea. She went, I don't know where, either Montreal or Toronto, but she used to be back every summer. I saw her... she stayed at Paul's Hotel when she'd come. And I can't recall when I last saw her, but now she and Miss McLennan, I don't know if they saw eye to eye, but they were both interested in causes and knew one another well.

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