By Karmen Dowling
March 2010
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| The late Margaret Chase Gibson (BA'28). |
After 82 years, a small memento from the time Margaret Chase Gibson (BA’28) spent at Western has made its way back to the university.
The 104-year-old former teacher died in Grimsby on January 19, 2010 and Gibson’s son, Robert, found his mother’s 1928 Western graduation pin in her “treasure drawer” and wanted to donate it to Western. It will now be preserved for future generations in the Archives and Research Collections Centre.
“Western was very important to her,” says Robert. “The pin was in a drawer, along with a gymnastics pin from that period and a few other pins. She moved quite a few times but it obviously meant a lot to her for her to be able to hang onto it.”
Before she died, Margaret wrote about some of her experiences throughout her life. One of those experiences included a time in 1922 when she and her parents were invited by her uncle Colonel Walter J. Brown, Executive Secretary of the Board of Governors at Western, to see the projected site for the University’s new campus on the outskirts of London.
“It was May 24th and the great beech trees were just coming into leaf,” wrote Margaret, who loved nature and, in particular, trees. “The ground where the Tower (University College) now stands was carpeted with mayflowers and trillium. I resolved that this beautiful place would be my university. I registered in 1924, when the new buildings were in place and tried a lot of fascinating courses for a term or two but really majored in English, basketball, glee club and drama.”
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| Margaret's graduation picture from Western. |
After university, Margaret attended Teachers’ College in Toronto and became a teacher. In 1939 she enrolled in a six-week course at a university in Sweden to upgrade her qualifications, but when the war became imminent at their eastern border, the students were hurried to get back home. Margaret told her mother that she would be leaving September 2 aboard the SS Athenia. On September 3, the Athenia was torpedoed in the Atlantic by a German U boat, killing 122 people. Thankfully, Margaret’s travel plans had been changed prior to her boarding the Athenia to the Empress of Australia, which made a safe crossing. Margaret’s mother was stunned to hear her daughter’s voice on the telephone announcing her safe arrival in Halifax on September 9.
Wanting to help with the war effort, Margaret enlisted in the Women’s Division of the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940 where she remained until 1946. She went onto marry Robert Gibson and they had their son Robert. In 1960, she returned to teaching as Head of the English Department in Grimsby High School where she remained until her retirement in 1971. She wrote a book about the history of the Grimsby High School and of Grimsby.
In recent years, Margaret lived in her own condo and continued to be interested in the world around her, often watching CNN or CBC news on TV, and until this past winter, was still getting out to a restaurant with her son each week.
Robert notes that his mother had donated to Western throughout the years, contributing more than $3,000 through her regular annual gifts, and says she would have been amazed and happy that her last donation to the university would be her special pin.
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| The the dimensions of Margaret's Western pin are 9 mm wide by 5 mm high. For a visual scale of the size, it is shown beside a dime. |
Western’s University Archivist, Robin Keirstead, says while Western Archives does not normally accept donations of artifacts or memorabilia, focusing instead on acquiring records and papers of organizations and individuals, there are always exceptions to be made. In this case, Margaret’s special pin is a tangible link to a much earlier era on campus and as Archivist Tom
Belton has discovered, it also serves as an interesting complement to several letters that Margaret received from her uncle (Col. Brown) during his time overseas in World War One and that are preserved among the Brown family papers in the Archives.
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