Anna’s story, at 100, one scrap at a time
Anna Elizabeth Porter's voice, song-like and still robust for all her 100 years (minus a week), has the very breath of Ireland on it, carried across the space of an ocean and seven decades, on the strength and charm of an Ulster bounce.
It was about the hardest thing she ever did, this daughter of the island, leaving behind her mother and father, her five sisters among whom she was the eldest and the one brother, finally a boy, to travel to Canada.
Harder even, I would imagine, than wrestling with COVID-19, which Anna did just before Christmas.
I thought it was the end," she says now, with a smile of retrospect.
Oh, so did we," confesses her son, John, known to many as JS Porter, the acclaimed Hamilton writer/professor, and his wife, Anna's daughter-in-law, Cheryl, in unison.
She got over it, after some terrible headaches and a dry cough. That's Anna.
She had to pull through. For one thing, there was her memoir to finish. This woman, with her fingers sore from arthritis, would handwrite pieces of her life story, 20 minutes at a time, as they'd come to her, scrawled on scraps of paper. Then she would send them to her daughter, Caroline, up in Huntsville, and Caroline would type them out.
I was confined to my room and one night the thought came to me, I should put this all down on paper."
Now there's a book: Mom's Memories."
Anna got over the COVID. She also got over leaving Ireland, kind of. It anguished her to leave, but her late beloved husband Jack had a calling and, as it turned out, the calling called them to Canada, where he took up ministry with the United Church.
I was going to say home," when I said Ireland in relation to Anna, but, no, Canada and Hamilton are home, though Belfast and Portavogie have never been never far from her heart.
I've had a wonderful life here," says Anna. I have the most wonderful children," here she looks at John, the most wonderful friends," and a wonderful husband in Jack, whom many will remember as the minister at St. James in Waterdown for 18 years before his retirement.
She still gets phone calls and cards and letters in the mail," from the congregants at St. James, John says.
Oh, yes. It's so kind of them to think of me," says Anna.
We talk at distance outside on the beautiful grounds of Villa Italia, where she lives, the sun blazing and setting off her lively blue eyes, and that unvanquishable smile. She is wearing pearls and a springlike paisley mauve top.
Her grandfather had a boat-building business in Portavogie, the fishing port where Anna was born, a place she loved dearly, even after they moved to Belfast.
I always loved the water and the beach," she tells me.
Not much chance of that when she and Jack arrived in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan, for his first job, a three-point charge, with the church.
It was an eye-opener," Anna says, a pirouette of understatement. She had never felt such cold, and they lived with no running water - they had to melt snow for laundry - and a coal stove for cooking.
But, I loved the people there. There were many of Ukrainian heritage, and some of them missed home, like I did."
They stayed a year, and after that moved to Ontario where, Anna says, people seemed more reserved. Until you got to know them. Then they were very warm as well."
Jack studied divinity while also ministering at three different churches. It was hard sometimes for him to get to all the services on time. Once he was stopped by the police and when he told them why he was speeding they gave him an escort to the church so he could make it on time."
It's all there in Anna's terrific book. Their moves to Oshawa and ultimately Hamilton. Their travels to Africa on mission work.
Of course, the pages and her descriptions devote to her youth in Northern Ireland have a special magic to them.
Her father worked doggedly to get a business going, setting up a bicycle sales and repair shop and also selling radios. In time and by dint of effort and resourcefulness, he built it up into a chain of popular bicycle shops throughout Belfast and adjoining areas.
Belfast is a city of murals, as you might know," says John, and there is a mural depicting his bicycle shop on one of the walls," says John. His shops became a kind of cultural fixture there.
Anna lived through the Second World War years, working at a first aid post. She had taken a course with St. John's ambulance. That's where she met her husband Jack, who drove an ambulance.
It was very scary at night, going out with the blackout," she writes. Belfast was a target for the Nazi bombing, as it was a big shipbuilding city.
She describes living in places like Ballymoney and how Jack, after the war, got on with the YMCA, doing youth work and giving classes. One day, playing football, he badly injured his back.
He was in bed with a full plaster for two months, flat on his back," she writes. When a minister came to visit him and asked if he was happy in the work he did, Jack answered, I always wished I could be a minister."
Not along after, the minister told him they were looking for people in Canada.
And, so, we came to claim Anna as one of our own. Are we ever lucky to have her.
Happy 100th, Mrs. Porter (on June 23), and many happy returns.
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. Reach him via email: jmahoney@thespec.com