‘She’s my mom!’: Weadick sisters touched by Hamilton Public Library’s planting of fond historic photographs
Good thing Christine Weadick waited the 15 minutes they tell you to spend close at hand after a vaccination shot. (Some people - yes, me - have been known to wait only nine or 10 then make a break for it.)
Not that anything bad happened during that time. No, the only reaction" was when, after puttering around the Barton library branch, where a makeshift clinic was administering COVID-19 boosters that day, she wandered into the children's cove after a time and let her eyes idly graze over to the attractive vinyl photo montage occupying one of the windows.
Then her heart raced a bit, but not dangerously so; just enough to let her know she was delighted.
I know that woman!" she blurted out, more or less in the direction of a nurse. She's my mom!" The nurse, a bit confused, said, Uh huh."
The woman in question was the late Marilynne Weadick (nee Lunz, daughter of Dr. Lunz) and there she sat, in the window, reading a book to a circle of children sitting on the floor of the library as part of storytime - in 1969.
It's a beautiful black-and-white shot, from the Hamilton Public Library system's Local History and Archives photography collection; part of the montage.
Is there anything more reassuring about the chain of our generations than the image of an adult lovingly reading a story to engrossed children? In it, Marilynne, a woman of striking looks, is wearing a large pendant, the fashion in the day, with a smart dark mock turtleneck and light-coloured skirt.
The picture is in the left lower corner and holds its place in the montage among other lovely, memory-stirring historical photos - of the Gore Park fountain; a horse-drawn milk truck; kids playing shinny on a frozen pond; people skating on the frozen harbour; and a smiling woman in a company cap and uniform, sitting on the hood of a Lifesavers candy car, with an oversized roll of Lifesavers mounted on the roof (Lifesavers had a plant in Hamilton).
The montage is part of a larger campaign by the Hamilton Public Library that started during the pandemic to help weave together the strands of this city and its civic life - past and present, young and old, geography and people, the isolated and the gregarious and everyone in between.
Last Christmas, for instance, the HPL launched its Postcards for Special People" series encouraging participants to write notes to those living in long-term-care homes and others who are socially isolated. Hundreds were delivered to nine homes listed on HPL's website in a matter of weeks.
The notes in that series are accompanied by images, like those in the montage, from the library's Local History and Archives collection, and such images are also used in the library's Life Is Sweet" postcard series, which encourages those engaging with the library to send Hamilton historical images to people who are in their thoughts.
The old joke is that nostalgia is not what it used to be, but nothing could be further from the truth as these campaigns show. Christine can tell you that. Being wonderfully ambushed by that image triggered a flood of memories.
Christine was so excited by her discovery that she contacted her older sister Susan Weadick, and days later they popped by the library to admire the image, take photos of it and, thanks to library staff at the Barton branch, have a picture taken of themselves looking at their mom.
We were born a year and a half apart," says Susan, eldest of six.
She was the beta model," kids the slightly younger Christine.
The two of them spin out a conversation that is delightfully as much standup comedy as dialogue. Close together as their births were, Marilynne managed to narrow the gap between her subsequent children even further, to a matter of minutes. Susan and Christine were followed by two sets of twins.
When I was about 15," says Susan, mom went back to university (University of Toronto) to get her masters of Library Science. She had a general BA from U of T (from before she started having children) and she wanted to go back to work. Someone told her she could make better salary if she got her library science degree."
Marilynne, who died in 2016 a week short of her 95th birthday, was a librarian in the Hamilton system for many years after she returned to work.
She started at the main branch but soon after helped start the newly formed Barton branch, now at 571 Barton St. E., where she soon became chief librarian.
She was a very accepting woman and she liked almost everyone," says Christine. And everyone loved her," adds Susan.
At her funeral in 2016, many people from the library system attended, even though it had been decades since she'd worked there.
Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. jmahoney@thespec.com