Sandra Steinhause.Courtesy of family
Sandra Steinhause: Free spirit. Civil servant. Mother. Craftswoman. Born Jan. 19, 1939, in Montreal; died Sept. 24, 2023, in Kingston, of lymphoma; aged 84.
One guidebook describes the ardent partygoers at Grenada’s beachfront dance clubs as “mostly local, mostly young and mostly hip.” What, then, to make of the seventysomething Canadian woman often seen gyrating to calypso, soca and reggae rhythms, her cascade of curls unrestrained?
Sandra Steinhause, who wintered in the country, was neither young nor local. But hip? That she was.
Sandra grew up in Montreal, part of a middle-class Jewish household. Her mother did the bookkeeping for her husband’s east-end furniture store. Sandra’s decision to become a nurse was conventional enough, as was her early marriage to Mark Stein in 1959. Baby Gary was born nine months later, with Eve-Lynn and Ian following in quick succession.
It’s unclear whether Sandra was pondering Is That All There Is?, Peggy Lee’s 1969 hit song. As it turned out, she had definite ideas about taking a different path in life. She knew she was bright, so, having seen her children through their early years, she enrolled in Loyola College. Eve-Lynn recalled that in 1973 her mother then made the “very difficult decision to leave her traditional marriage, despite tremendous pressure from family, friends and community.”
Taking her two youngest, Eve-Lynn, 13, and Ian, 11, with her, Sandra moved to Antigonish, N.S., for adult-education graduate studies at St. Francis Xavier University. Gary, 16, begged to stay in Montreal to finish high school. It wasn’t long before she was in Thunder Bay with a new partner, Randy Nelsen.
It was in Thunder Bay that Sandra joined the federal civil service. She started as a project officer for one of Ottawa’s job-creation programs that funded women’s centres, legal clinics, child-care research and arts initiatives. She threw herself into trailblazing efforts such as employment equity and women-in-trades partnerships with labour unions.
Sandra had a sometimes zany approach to life, readily laughing at herself. She once found herself at a meeting with a new minister responsible for her department. When the minister leaned toward her, Sandra – thinking the woman was offering a kiss-on-both-cheeks greeting – obliged. It seems that the minister just wanted to find the washroom.
“She was a fun, vibrant woman,” recalled her supervisor, Liz Huff. “She was also a hard-working, ethical public servant.”
Her short work-related move to Toronto in the late 1980s coincided with a new long-distance relationship. She met Larry King at a meeting, as Sandra’s department funded a program where Larry worked. They immediately took a shine to one another, and the couple kept up a long-distance relationship once she moved to Ottawa.
Sandra’s zany ways made for some interesting stories. She met her daughter’s boyfriend’s parents, a Mennonite couple, whose son, Allen Flaming, was dating Eve-Lynn, while wearing a button that said: “I used to be Snow White and then I drifted.”
Once, visiting her elderly father in Montreal, Sandra baked some “special” brownies to take to a lively musical event. Mrs. Lieberman, a neighbour and accomplished baker, happened by. Catching a whiff, she asked for a taste. Sandra scrambled, not wanting anyone to know that she used cannabis. She never did find out what Mrs. Lieberman did with her little taste.
A postretirement move to the straitlaced Loyalist village of Bath, Ont., saw Sandra driving around in her flashy black convertible named Maise the Mustang. The move also brought Sandra closer to Larry, and they spent a lot of time together in Grenada. During more than 30 years wintering in the Caribbean, Sandra began a sea-glass jewellery business.
Ever the party organizer, Sandra planned much of her celebration of life. She requested that all celebrations have sparkling wine and lively conversation so that people would say, “Sandra would really like this.” Eve-Lynn Stein noted that Bath residents told her that they, “had never before seen someone quite like Sandra.”
Jamie Swift was a friend of Sandra Steinhause.
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