below her photograph in the 1921 yearbook read:
J.G. (“True”) Davidson
“Laughter, Love and Tears”
Weaknesses —Class, Dramatic, “Y”, Presidency of Literature
Strong Points—consuming chocolate bars, composing rhythmical nonsense
Glory—Debates, oration contests
Shame—Last month’s essay unwritten
Extraordinary—Passion, vitality, energy, nerve
Ordinary—Her “bete noir”
Past—Ubiquitous, various, rainbow-hued
Present—Flaming, intense, moody, alive
Future—Inky black or rosy gold.48
There were very few men at university in her first years there. As she later said, “We came in the fall of 1917 and the war wasn’t over until the next year. In our third year there was a flood of returned men. The whole college changed and it was quite an experience. A sort of traumatic experience.”49 It is this reminder of her age during World War I that eliminates the persistent rumour that True never married because the man she loved had been killed in battle. She was 13 when the war began and only 17 when it ended. It is highly unlikely that she would have formed such a lifealtering attachment at that young age. What is perhaps more interesting is the need so many people have felt to invent a romantic reason for her not marrying.
This photograph shows True, aged 16, wearing her C.G.I.T. uniform in 1917. Courtesy David Cobden
In many ways, True was Victorian in her attitudes. She was too Victorian to discuss the details of any romances and somewhat surprised that anyone would have the bad taste to ask, but occasionally, in a naughty mood, she would acknowledge that she had her opportunities. Clara Thomas remembered her class “discussing Sarah Jeannette Duncan’s The Imperialist. “To the ears of the young in 1975 the dialogue sounds pretty stilted and one young man remarked that he simply couldn’t believe that young people ever talked as Duncan wrote them.”
“Indeed we did,” said True. “When I first went to Victoria, we weren’t allowed to have dances. We had Conversats, and we marched around the Great Hall to music. Then the veterans began to come back after the war, and they used to walk us right out of the room and upstairs to dark classrooms. And soon, we were allowed to have dances in the Great Hall—better to have dances in the light than students upstairs in the dark!”50
Agnes MacPhail recalled a similar entertainment at her high school where, once a year, “the young people walked around the auditorium in couples. When the music ended, the boy escorted the girl back to her seat and chose another partner for the next “promenade.” At the last promenade the partners enjoyed a dish of ice cream together.”51
True later told an interviewer that she had her romances, but that they were pretty tame.
I was pretty innocent and unsophisticated and I thought if I were attracted to a man I must want to marry him and when ...I found out about what went on between young men and young women...I think it turned me against the whole thing. If I wanted a man to kiss me I thought I ought to want to marry him and when I came back to Toronto in the Roaring Twenties, when people were lying down in swathes on the floor in darkened rooms and drinking themselves into stupors, it seemed to me all so sort of messy. I guess I’m a romantic. Any man I could talk to I would talk to. The only time we exchanged passes was if we couldn’t think of anything to talk about. The result was that the men I had little affairs with, I don’t think would have been happy with me any more than I would have been happy with them. I would have driven them crazy. They had a narrow escape. I think they realized they were well out of it. This is a sad fact of life. Women want men who are stronger than themselves, men they can look up to. I wouldn’t have wanted to marry if I couldn’t have made the man’s interests mine... I grew up thinking I would find a man who was so strong and great and wonderful that I would be glad to spend the rest of my life looking after him and my children. And I just never found any such person.52
True learned to turn such questions into a joke. Many years later she told a student who asked why she never married that “....in my twenties I realized that I talked too much for any man, and I certainly didn’t plan to give up talking.”53 Emily Smith told me that “with the right person she would have had a very much happier time. She didn’t have that support system. She talked to me a lot but it wasn’t like having a family.”
Although True never found the person to whom she could give the complete dedication she felt essential for marriage, the thought that such a person might come along did not die right after university. Among her clippings from the early 1930s was one headed “Why I Asked Her to Marry Me. Ten Men Give Their Reasons.”54
In 1922 True graduated from the Regina Normal School with her teaching certificate and immediately began work as a teacher/principal in Strasbourg, Saskatchewan. There she “taught English, History, Science and Art in all collegiate grades and was principal of a 3-room High School and a 5-room Public School.”55 What a killing task! She also won a magazine prize for the “Best CANADA Poem.”56
The following year she moved to Brandon, Manitoba where she taught English at Brandon Collegiate, earning the money she needed to return to Victoria College to take her M.A. Once again, she excelled academically. Upon graduation she was offered a $350 scholarship from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania to do post-graduate work there. She evidently declined on financial grounds, because they then wrote back with the offer of another half-scholarship,57 but she was still unable to accept the offer.
It must have been a considerable disappointment to her to have to decline such an honour. Doris Tucker wondered whether it was a matter of finances, noting that “Bryn Mawr was a pretty toney place. She probably couldn’t afford the clothes.” Emily Smith felt that True wouldn’t have liked going to teach in the United States because she was so attached to Canada. Clara Thomas suspects that True recognized the impossibility of a successful academic career for a woman in those days and knew that she should a better chance in business. It also may have been a matter of family obligations. Her father’s eyesight began to fail him in 1925 and he returned to Ontario.58 A later successful operation for cataract, then a very difficult medical procedure, restored his sight and he returned to work for a couple of years in 1938, but until then her parents were living in Toronto and needed her help. True returned to teaching, obtaining a post at Havergal Ladies’ Academy where she taught History until 1926. That year, she began her next career, joining the staff at J.M. Dent and Sons Limited, Publishers, as the first female publishing sales representative in Canada.
2
THE DENT YEARS
1926–1930
“Twenty Years a Warrior, Twenty Years a Chief, and Twenty Years an Elder of the Tribe”
Clara Thomas recalled hearing True use the above quotation in conversation with a young woman who was sitting next to her on a flight back to Toronto from Ottawa. With minor variations in wording, it became True’s favourite way of describing her lifetime of experiences.
True’s decision not to accept the scholarships from Bryn Mawr marked the beginning of her years as a warrior. They were to prove to be years of triumph, hard times, disappointment, inspiration and personal loss.
Although she taught at several periods in her career, had definite opinions about teaching and derived considerable satisfaction from inspiring her students, True never regarded herself as a teacher. Teaching was only a marketable skill that she used when unable to earn a living as a writer.1 Clara Thomas never heard her talk about teaching and noted that “I don’t even know how long she taught...” She continued, however, that she knew “she had been at Dents for awhile.” Doris Tucker similarly remembered