#50 A VERY INDEPENDENT WOMAN
MARY (NETTERFIELD) COTTINGHAM
I have been
grateful to cousin Mary Cottingham for her early research on the Netterfield
family and for directing me to the Ballyconnell homestead. Then I discovered what an intrepid woman she was and her interesting backstory.
Mary was the middle of six children of James Netterfield (1871-1953) and Martha Anne Wilson (1870-1947). Her parents met and married (1894) in Wingham but two years later, lured by the promise of the West, James, Martha and a baby emigrated to North Dakota and took up a prairie homestead. Five more children—William, Annie, Mary, John and Angus-- were born in North Dakota. Mary Adelaide (named after her aunt and my great-grandmother) was born in Westhope, N.D. on September 18, 1902.
For a time,
the family lived in a sod shanty, the sod cut by James’ hands from the bald
prairie and roofed with poplar poles he cut and drew from the foothills miles
away. Over the poles went more sod to make the little home snug against the
bitter winter blizzards.
James
petitioned for American naturalization in 1907 but wife Martha was never happy
on the prairies and missed the trees so in 1908, the family moved back to
Canada and settled in the heavily-timbered, newly-opened area of the Rainy
River Valley in North Western Ontario. An uncle lived on the next bush
homestead. James had apparently made out well in Dakota as he brought to Canada
four horses, daughter Lillian’s pony, several thorough-bred Aberdeen Angus
cattle and all their furniture. It was a mistake to bring the cattle; James realized that he had to travel many miles to find hay for them as it was
heavily-wooded country where he filed his homestead claim. Over the years, and
following a laborious clearing of the land, he managed to feed much livestock.
It was an isolated life for the family. The closest doctor was 18 miles away. The children walked six miles each day to and from school. There was no regular church service except for two months in the summer when a student minister from the Presbyterian Church was sent to minister in the community. The railroad was seven miles distant. Roads were mostly corduroy (logs thrown across bog and earth) or gravel.
Most of the transportation was done on the Rainy River that formed the international border between Ontario and Minnesota. Mary recalled that there was a regular motor launch service on the American side to International Falls which was across the river from Fort Frances. To get a ride to “the Fort”, Canadian passengers would be rowed out to the middle of the river, transferred to the American launch, chug the 18 miles up river to the Falls, then disembark and walk across the bridge through Customs and Immigration to the Canadian side. A regular steamer service connected the settlers to the “outside”. The steamers were the Keewatin and Agwindah. Mary said, “As we lived three miles back from the river, we did not often see these boats that were hailed so heartily by the populace as they plied up and down the river. They were stern wheelers and if I were to see the most palatial of ocean liners tomorrow, they would not give me half the thrill as the sight of the Agwindah as she majestically came round a bend in the wide river, black smoke from her wood-fed steam engine boiling from her red and white smokestack and the foghorn boom of her whistling echoing for miles.” These boats brought the necessities of life—flour, feed, canned goods, dried fruits, as well as baled hay, farm machinery and livestock to the little clearings along the 75 mile stretch of the river.
Brothers
John and Angus learned to become good farmers. Sister Annie went on to more
education; Lily married. In 1916, Brother William, age 18, enlisted in World War I but was discharged as
medically unfit because of his “deficient eyesight” and "not likely to become an
efficient soldier”, and because he “complains
he cannot distinguish an officer from a private and cannot read test type at
required distance.”
Mary wed Frederick Albert Cottingham on Nov 25, 1920 in Rainy River. They had five
children—Donald, Jean, Ruth, Tom, and Richard. Husband Fred gave up farming
during the Great Depression to become a boat builder; in 1938 the Cottinghams
moved to Owen Sound where Fred landed a job with Russell Brothers Boat
Building. At some point, it seems Mary and Fred separated; he lived near Cochrane and she in Eastern Ontario and Mary, although living, was not mentioned in his obituary.
Mary’s
first writing was for the Sunday School newspaper. Her first salary netted her
$2.50, a small fortune for a young farm girl. By the time she was 15, Mary was
writing for the Fort Frances Times as a country correspondent, reporting
on dances and church picnics in North Western Ontario. She wrote her first story
for the Toronto Star when the paper wanted a story on a pet groundhog
living with a pioneer Finnish family in the bush. Mary said she went “45 miles
in a horrid pulp truck—there were no roads to Fort Frances then, just logging
roads and the train. We arrived at midnight, and though nobody spoke English, I
was offered a cot by the stove. When the farm family rose at 4 a.m., there he
was—a groundhog blond as baby’s hair, at the table with a little spoon strapped
to his wrist, shovelling in the porridge. When the sun came up I got a picture
of him sitting on a little sleigh of kindling wood. Everybody worked on that
farm. The family cat pulled the sleigh and the groundhog held the reins.” Mary
reported daily on Fort Frances happenings for her own paper, the Toronto Star,
the Port Arthur News Chronicle and the Winnipeg Tribune. Working
mothers were uncommon in the newspaper world of the 1920s. Married at age 18,
Mary went home every three hours to breast-feed her babies and she learned to type
at night school. By the end of the decade, she was winning awards.
Three of Mary’s children enlisted in World War II. In 1940, her son Donald, at age 18, was the youngest Sergeant in Canada; he rose to the rank of Lieutenant. Both daughters, Jean and Ruth, enlisted in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps; Jean was a recruiter for the CWAC. In January 1943, (perhaps persuaded by her daughter) Mary enlisted in the CWAC. She had already trained and graduated from the General Motors Voluntary programme. Private Cottingham was assigned to the Public relations and recruiting arm of the CWAC.
Initially, on hearing stories of CWACs being mocked by men as they learned drill, gas training, calisthenics and route marches for the first time. women were reluctant to enlist. Some critics also questioned the morality of women who wanted to assume "men's duties". But an intensive advertising campaign proved successful. It was Mary's job to encourage Canadian women to enlist and take on the many support and clerical jobs that soldiers performed, thus freeing the men for combat. "In light of the the magnificent contribution of women of England, Russia and China are you content with your civilian life?" Mary asked at a 1944 recruitment presentation. "Remember", she said "you are not asked to give your lives as these women have but you are asked to give your time, your talents and your energy. The fighting men of the Canadian Army in Italy today need the Canadian Women's Army Corps to replace more men for combat duty. That is their challenge to you."
The motto of the CWAC was " We serve that men may fight." Other slogans were "Proudly She Marches", "Shoulder to Shoulder", "This Is OUR Battle Too."
Almost 90% of the jobs Army women performed were traditional women occupations like cleaners and office workers, dental and medical technicians, telephone operators. But some women worked in signalling, vehicle maintenance, driving, ciphering and decoding, and 55 different military trades; others became photographers, pipe or brass band musicians, war artists, entertainers. Over twenty-one thousand women served in the CWAC
In the
summer of 1961, Mary went to Ireland to research the Netterfield family roots.
She met with any County Cavan oldtimers and distant Netterfield relatives who
could provide information. She visited the different Netterfield houses and
described them in detail. I am indebted to her early research on this family line.
In 1960, Mary moved to Hamilton to work as a secretary for a local lawyer. She entered a poem, "The Toast to Hamilton" in the city's 1967 Centennial music contest and won first prize ($100). She called her poem a salute to the city where she had served during World War II, a city she loved and made her home. "It's a very lovely city, " Mary said. "Very few people know how very lovely it is. But it's the people that make Hamilton. The friendly people"
Mary continued to submit stories for over 60 years, until her children, in 1985, convinced the self-proclaimed “old coot” to retire, to sell her place and move. This did not please her at all. At age 84, Mary wrote, “I sold my place…and do regret it so much; miss the trees and the chipmunks—so does my cat but for another reason, as you can imagine. But the family wanted me to be nearer medical services. I now live in an apt over the Times, the weekly for which I worked for 10 years, but can’t say I’m exactly crazy for this upstairs life. Soon, however, I will be out at the cottage; the road opens up around the 1st of May and I can hardly wait for my first visit—we all had holidays at Christmas there but it wasn’t like summer holidays at all. Now it only takes an hour to drive out there as it’s only 40 miles from here; the last 8 are a bit tricky and I’ll have to wait until it dries up before attempting to drive in. Just to hurry things, though, I put the car in for a tune-up on Monday so am all ready for the sound of that first robin.”
Mary died June 6, 1992, aged 90, and is buried in St. Pauls’ United Church Cemetery at Lake Saint Peter, Hastings County.
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