In Memoriam: Author, artist, volunteer and newspaper advertising manager Brenda Dow remembered

By SHEILA BLINOFF

It is with sadness that I tell you that my friend and colleague at this paper, Brenda Dow, died on Jan. 2. She was advertising manager from 1979 to 1994.

She came to Ward 9 Community News after many years as a homemaker raising three boys, and she liked to remind me of her interview where, she claimed, I “grilled” her intensely on her childcare plans if her youngest, then 12, were ever sick.

As well as ability, compatibility was a requirement. She would be joining Editor Joan Latimer and me in a small office at the old YMCA at 907 Kingston Rd., and facing constant interruptions and deadlines.

Being ad manager was no easy ride. The paper, in its ninth year, relied on ad revenue to cover all expenses, so there was an element of hustle to the job. Brenda sold and designed ads, and arranged them on mock-up pages (at first in pre-computer days). She helped with customers, proofread, worked the counter and phones, helped unload 30,000 newspapers from our delivery truck each issue, and prepare bundles of papers for the carriers.

Despite having this talented, calm and congenial newcomer in our midst, we still needed enthusiastic volunteers to pick up the slack. These included her husband, Brian, who assisted with newspaper delivery and handyman tasks around the office for all the years she worked at the paper, and drove her to and from work.

They both continued as volunteers for about 15 years after she retired. They used a special knot, known as Brian’s knot, for tying up the papers, which they taught to all helpers, and no bundles fell apart on their watch. (And they did watch to see that it was done correctly.) It is hard to think of one without the other.

Brenda was responsible for suggesting the name Beach Metro Community News when Ward 9 became Ward 10 and then Ward 32.

Not all readers liked the new name, and some thought that she be made to ride in the Easter Parade, sitting backwards on a donkey with her head bowed, wearing sackcloth and carrying a placard. That never happened. Instead, she marched along Queen Street East in several parades, sometimes wearing a Big Bird costume.

She also came up with the slogan for our first ever newspaper T-shirt, Word Power.

Brenda grew up in Norwich, a historic city in Norfolk, England, famous for its medieval architecture, and about 40 miles from the Sandringham Estate. Later she would set some of her historical mystery novels in her home town.

After high school she sat the civil service exams and her marks were among the highest in the U.K. for that year. She worked in social services for a short time, then continued in Norwich at the head office of the Norwich Union Insurance Company.
In her mid twenties she came to Toronto to help grow the Norwich Union in Canada. It is now part of BMO.

She lived with five other young women in a converted coach house in downtown Toronto. Then she enrolled at a YMCA to learn bridge, played her cards right and married the teacher.

With a twinkle in her eye, she liked to say, “I married a younger man!” but there were only three years between them.

Eventually they bought a house on Neville Park Boulevard, then at the foot of Blantyre Avenue, and finally at Rodeo Pathway next to the ambulance station on Kingston Road.

Brenda was the poster girl for “Still waters run deep.” She was a listener more than a talker. She spoke softly. Her thoughts were weighed.

If I had an issue, other friends would give me pragmatic advice. Not Brenda. She asked the difficult questions. By the time she had finished, one’s soul had been through the wringer – twice, but it came out clean.

Cut and dried was not her style. So, I could never fathom how she could be so good at solving cryptic crosswords.

She had cut her teeth on the Daily Telegraph ones in the U.K. Here, she completed the daily Globe and Mail cryptic in under 15 minutes while she was getting dressed for work. Sometimes she would save two “easy” clues for me, and I pondered them all day.

To encourage people like me, she wrote a book Get It! A tool for learning how to solve cryptic crosswords. Beach Metro’s Bill Suddick did the cartoons. I was one of her guinea pigs along with some literal-minded patrons of The Feathers.

There are at least a dozen different types of obscure clues, and she explained each one and provided examples for the reader to solve. As I look at the pages of my 1996 copy, I see her sense of humour coming through, and the parts where I have erased my pencilled answers and tried again.

In the 1980s Brenda began taking credit courses towards a BA degree at the University of Toronto’s Woodsworth College’s evening classes. Although she was mostly studying Ancient Greek and Roman authors, she veered off into an English creative writing course. There were only 12 spots and almost 50 applicants, but she aced her audition.

Each week she showed me the next assignment, and I had plenty of ideas of how she should tackle it. Finally, she said, “Why don’t you just take the course yourself?” So, I did the next year.

This was no sinecure. Apart from creating prose, poetry, plays and one-page novellas, each week before the next class she had to read the work of the other 11 students and be ready to lead a 15-minute critique on any piece without knowing who wrote it. What ever she said, the rest would aggressively disagree. And then her own work was discussed.

I often wondered how my gentle friend, who would never willingly hurt anyone, survived each night of the long knives.

She said she wanted to write the kind of books she liked to read. One of her favourite authors was Georgette Heyer who wrote about the Regency Period, (1811-1820) in England. (The Bridgerton era for you newcomers.) Brenda’s 2000 novel, Earl for a Season, is set in this period, and of course includes love, treachery, and intrigue.

Still writing of the Regency Era, she began her mystery trilogy. Quaker widow Ruth Bowen has a knack for solving mysteries, and for putting herself in danger. She runs afoul of an eccentric judge, and finds herself in the Norwich Castle prison on a charge of attempted murder. But, there was a small spark of awareness between these two protagonists, and an astute reader can sense which way the wind was blowing.

Brenda let me read a section of the first draft, and when I reached the part where their hands touched as he helped her over a country stile, I asked if this was going to be an X-rated novel. She snatched the pages back and said “You’ll have to wait to read the book.”

Friends and Enemies was published in 2013 and Friend at Court in 2014. The books featured the sites of early Norwich, and used only the authentic language of the day.

She was more Jane Austen than newspaper style. Although Brenda worked at a newspaper, she had no yearning to see herself in print there.

She joined a painting and drawing class at St. Aidan’s church, and with practice became a member of the Beach Guild of Fine Arts, exhibiting at its shows and selling some of her watercolours and acrylics.

Her walls at home were covered with her work, and when I moved house she invited me to choose any painting for myself except the ones of her family.

With Brian, she joined a miniaturist club. He was skilled at carving and fine carpentry, and built a large doll’s house displayed in the family room.

Brenda made the furniture and furnishing from a range of periods, but she was most proud of her breadbox-sized Regency room that sat in the living room. Everything had to be perfectly to scale, another example of her attention to detail.

She retired in 1994. Although occupied with cryptics, writing, art and miniatures, she joined Brian and travelled to every continent except Antarctic.

Their cruises and land trips took them to the Three Gorges in China, European rivers, the Baltic, Asia, South America, Scandinavia, etc…

They were passionate about their global travelling and experiencing other cultures. “And we’re spending our children’s inheritance,” they laughed.

Life treated them well until ill health caught up. Brenda had a stroke in 2016, and after 50 years they left the Beach to be closer to their family in Mississauga.

Brenda moved into a nursing home and Brian lived nearby in a senior’s residence. They were able to phone each other and visit back and forth, until his death in 2019.

On Jan. 31, family and friends were able to say goodbye to Brenda at a service and celebration of life at St. Nicholas Anglican Church, Birch Cliff, just across the road from where she had lived at Rodeo Pathway, and had formed a deep relationship with the church. Some of her books and paintings were on display for those who had no idea just how deep those still waters ran.

Brenda is survived by her three sons: Bruce (Ann Fox), Gregory (Alla Linetsky), and Stephen (Trity Parsi), and by six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Rest in Peace, Brenda. And you too, Brian.