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Profile 2 - Joyce Waddell-Townsend
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By Chrisitne Hamelin with photography by Wayne Hiebert
 Energetic
and adventurous, Joyce Waddell-Townsend believes in living life
to the fullest. As she wrote under her high school yearbook picture,
“Life is far too short for us to bore ourselves.” And
it’s hard to imagine Joyce ever having been bored. If she’s
interested in something, she pursues it; if she sees a need in the
community, she offers herself, happy to share her lifetime of experience.
Joyce Waddell was born in Montreal in 1927. Her mother, Nell, was
raised near London, England, and her family had come to Canada in
the early 1900s; Joyce’s father, James, had emigrated from
Glasgow in the 1920s, after serving in the First World War. Joyce,
who had two younger brothers, grew up convinced that there was nothing
she couldn’t do as a girl — though there were some differences.
While the boys were excused from kitchen chores, “I was supposed
to dry the dishes,” says Joyce, a chic, elegant woman who
can still hear her mother calling her to the kitchen when she was
around the corner reading.
When she was eight, the family moved to Sainte-Rose, a French-Catholic
village north of Montreal. It was a convenient location for James,
a Bell Canada technician. There was no Protestant school in Ste-Rose,
but “Mrs. MacDermott, who lived up the street, had started
a private school. She had taught her two daughters, and her son
was my age, so she took us through Grade 4.” After that, “my
father, who was a bit of an activist — where do I get it from!
— got a one-room English-Protestant school recognized, with
a newly graduated teacher.” He went on to create a school
board in Ste-Rose, a three-room school and a high school. This work
had a considerable impact on Joyce, who saw how citizens could shape
and strengthen their community. The same lesson was modelled by
her mother, who did fundraising for the church. . . .
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Profile Kingston and Summer in the City are divisions
of Riverview Publishing Inc.
© 2010 Profile Kingston/Summer in the City/Riverview Publishing
Inc. No reproduction or republication in whole or part without written
permission.
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