Monday, August 14, 2017

Susan Ioannou on Kay Tew

A woman with short brown hair and deep-set, thoughtful eyes, Kathleen Tew Marshall
lived a quiet, art-filled life in an old house in Paris, Ontario. As a child, how I loved her tall living room windows opening to beds of yellow and red tulips, and along the cedar-lined drive, a millrace that chattered as if in long conversation with the large cream and rose nudes leaning from the opposite wall, soft, dreaming women, painted in oil on canvas by Kay’s artist-husband Norm. Never before had I had seen flesh bared so openly, to be admired without snickers.

The high-ceilinged rooms felt airy by day, cosy at night, elegant compared with the plainness of my suburban home. By the millrace windows stood a Victorian settee upholstered in silk mustard and cream stripes, but my favourite seat nestled under the nudes in the front corner, a generously pillowed beige divan flanked by low shelves dense with books. Two pale, thick rugs on the glowing hardwood led my sinking, stockinged feet toward the far end of the room. There, the dark polished table always displayed a crystal vase vibrant with Kay’s flowers, and at dinner was laid with white linen and silver, a ceremony I was honoured to assist. Throughout the day and evening, Puccini, Ella Fitzgerald, or Bach revolved on the record player.

Slow-spoken, precise, Kay matched her living room, casually stylish in dress—her characteristic silk scarf draped with an interesting brooch at the neck. Kay was an exotic island I was lucky enough to visit for weekends once or twice a year, or at my parents’ house a perfume that lingered when she and Norm came to Toronto on a ballet or theatre trip. She gave me a glimpse of a new world where people took pleasure in beautiful objects, where talking was for enjoyment, not just a call to meals, chores, or bed, and like a sip of brandy, a well-turned phrase could tingle warmth through the fingertips; a world where ideas were as valued in their own right as my mother’s smooth rolling pin or my father’s sturdy lawnmower. Kay’s lovely old house, her measured speech, tasteful dress, and artfully arranged flowers showed me that order need not curb pleasure. Indeed, it had a strangely lovely appeal of its own.

Beyond my aesthetic awakening, Kay was also my role model as a writer. She earned her living as a reporter for the London Free Press, the Brantford Expositor, then the Paris Star, under the pen name “Kay Tew”. Hers was the usual small-town beat of council meetings, library events, garden shows, and the rare fire or burglary. But she also enjoyed a free hand in writing “Sitting on the Curb”, her weekly column, collected and published posthumously as a book of the same name. She explored anything that took her fancy, but most often turned her careful eye and wry humour to Ontario history, back-road travels, theatre, books, and the not-so-ordinary people she met. As a friend said of Kay, “She was as happy talking to a ditch digger as writing a ballet critique.”       

I first became aware of Kay’s writing as its occasional subject: Susie, the little girl with long, blond hair in the blue velvet dress (a gift from Kay), who at an evening performance of Swan Lake silenced the tipsy foursome in the row behind by spinning around and making the worst grimace I could muster. The fact that I appeared in her columns made writing as much a part of the real world as softball and riding my bike.

When I was seven, Kay wrote a book for me, illustrated by Norm, The End of the Street: Being the Tale of the Rabbit with Wiggly Ears and of Rosamund His Friend. Of course, I wrote stories back. Writing was just another form of play. In grade two, when I turned detective author, Kay was my first publisher and agent, reprinting “The Death of the Murdered Girl” in her column. Afterwards a friend at radio CKPC in Brantford, Ontario, read it on air. As the years went by, whenever asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, “A writer” seemed as good an answer as the expected “Teacher” or “Nurse”. 

Today when rereading Kay’s columns, I hear her voice: direct, friendly, talking about life’s small moments, or Beauty and Truth, all in the same breath. In my years writing my own column for Cross-Canada Writers’ Magazine, I wonder how much of her warm, easy style had rubbed off. I hope some did.

I began to appreciate Kay’s legacy when at nineteen and in love, I had confided my passions in a series of small, tight poems. After her long absence recovering from a stroke, at last she was finally able to take the train to Toronto. I was excited to read her my newest work. When I finished, she squeezed my hand. “Susie, now you write about your own feelings because you are still finding out who you are. But one day you will look outside yourself and write about the world. And if you write well enough, the world will look back.”

I understood. These poems were like opening the tall windows and pulling a few tulips inside for a private bouquet. I needed to focus the inside outward, to make the walls leaning down their nudes, the polished table, the striped settee, and the chattering millrace something to share with others.   
A week later Kay was dead. A second stroke. With the selfishness of youth, I felt abandoned. Later I acknowledged how much she had given already, by her love of the beautiful, her calm, her wry humour, and her devotion to words. I also learned that the writer’s journey must be made alone.


Photo of Kay Tew, circa 1940, provided by the author



Toronto writer Susan Ioannou has published poems, stories, and articles in literary magazines across Canada, plus two children’s novels, a collection of short fiction, and two non-fiction books for writers. Former Associate Editor of Cross-Canada Writers’ Magazine, she also conducted poetry workshops for the Toronto Board of Education, Ryerson, and University of Toronto. Her poetry collections include Clarity Between Clouds (Goose Lane Editions), Where the Light Waits (Ekstasis Editions), Coming Home: An Old Love Story (Leaf Press), Looking Through Stone: Poems about the Earth (Your Scrivener Press), and Looking for Light (Hidden Brook Press). Her website is: http://www3.sympatico.ca/susanio/


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