Geraldine Donovan: Proud Scot. Cape Bretoner. Depression child. Mother. Born July 2, 1925, in Sydney, N.S.; died April 21, 2024, in Chester Basin, N.S., of congestive heart failure; aged 98.
Geraldine Donovan.Courtesy of family
Mary Catherine Geraldine Donovan was the eldest daughter of Malcolm J. MacLean, a Cape Breton Scot who could recite by heart, in Gaelic, his line of forefathers back to Battle-Axe Gillean, who lived and died, likely violently, in the ninth century.
Gerry’s character was formed in Sydney, where every house was packed with children. Friends stopped to gossip on the front step. There was fiddle music, movies and fancy desserts at the Isle Royale Hotel. And then came the Depression. First, her parents sold the car, then the piano. Her father finally had to retreat to the family homestead 34 kilometres away in Boisdale. A very unhappy 11-year-old Geraldine, in terrible exile from her friends, now had to weed strawberry fields and feed the pig. The occasional train trip to Sydney only reinforced the pain. But Gerry eventually came to appreciate some aspects of rural Cape Breton – her craggy, mustachioed grandfather Angus MacLean, who once built church steeples in New England, the barn cat that slept on the cow’s back in winter, going to midnight mass in a horse-drawn sleigh, its bells tingling as heated stones under the blanket kept your feet warm.
It all changed again in September, 1939. The day war was declared, her father landed a job and bought a car. Uniformed men filled the streets of Sydney and the steel mill pitched rivers of sparks into the black night. Even 16-year-old Gerry found herself called to service, teaching in a one-room schoolhouse.
The war ended and Geraldine, whose ambitions were bigger than Nova Scotia, decided to move to Vancouver. But her mother persuaded her to delay the trip west and Gerry settled temporarily in Antigonish. There she met Robert Donovan, the son of the late Michael Donovan, former publisher of the town newspaper, which he lost for espousing the then-frowned-upon cause of Irish independence. Bob was well off, well read, ruggedly handsome, had the Irish gift of the gab and was freshly returned from wartime service as a naval officer who had flown missions over Normandy – about as good a catch as Antigonish could deliver. Gerry was blessed with fabulous looks, social skills fine-tuned in the kitchens of Cape Breton and big dreams. It was a perfect match.
Except that after marrying Bob, Gerry discovered that his ambitions related to family and children and little to winning the rat race – he had battled enough in the war. A quiet middle-class life in Antigonish was just fine.
Gerry swallowed this bitter pill, iced her own ambitions and raised eight children. She may have regretted his lack of ambition, but she certainly respected his moral fibre, recounting how she was never prouder of him than the day he was the only white man in Antigonish to march in the funeral parade of a Black acquaintance.
Although Gerry was disappointed that she never managed to live the high life she witnessed on the silver screen as a child, she did not fail to impose her high expectations onto her children, who eventually made their marks on the world as lawyers, writers, film directors, CEOs and inventors.
In later life she travelled constantly and became a top-notch bridge player, putting on an inscrutable face every time she defeated a surprised master.
Gerry never sat beside someone on a bus, a boat or an airplane without exchanging addresses by the end of the trip. She was a tough but warm-hearted Scot forged in a vibrant steel town that she both revered and needed to put behind her. Gerry Donovan wasn’t perfect, just close to it. And she was loved to the end by her proud and ambitious family.
Paul Donovan is Geraldine Donovan’s son.
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