The Bluestocking 2022-23

Freya Stewart | Grade 12 Similarities

We always had so much in common. Of course, I don’t just mean that I am her name sake, but rather real, tangible similarities that have meant I always looked at her in a way that was different. My other elderly relatives are great, of course they are! I love them with everything I’ve got, but none of them share the deep connection I feel with my great grandmother. That’s different, on a whole other level. In a totally different era, Marjorie Freya McPhillips was born an orphan during World War I, in London. Left on the steps of the church, she was absorbed into that church community, given a family, and a true sense of belonging. She grew up in a Methodist family in the East End, with two siblings, none of whom shared her second name or indeed that of each other. They were all war babies, given sanctuary within the church. About this stage in her life, we know little else as apparently it was painful to discuss, and impossible to research given the lack of documentation during those times of war. While I am not an orphan, nor do I belong to that long ago era, I completely under stand what it means to be absorbed, and accepted into a community. At nine years old, I moved from London to Toronto, and had to find where I belonged. I found my sanctuary at Havergal College, my school, my family, having left all that I knew behind me in London. Marjorie was educated in London, and it was at work where she met my grandfather, an Irish Republican. To marry my grandfather at the time, she had to not only convert to Catholicism, but she had to move to southern Ireland. With her cockney accent, she followed her heart, and arrived in Cork with the expectation that she would have to work hard to be accepted. And so it was for me, a kid, with a British accent, who didn’t know who or what Tim Hortons was, had never heard of recess, and as for a toonie…….. well, what was that? Marjorie quickly learned to listen and learn, and to assimilate the ways of the south and to do what was expected. Me, too! Wear Roots socks in winter, but where is Collingwood? Ice capps in the summer, but where and what is Muskoka? To thrive for us both was to be accepted by our new home. Yet despite all this upheaval, emotion, and tough times, Marjorie Freya McPhillips became more Irish than the Irish themselves. With the passing of the years, she never lost her accent, she never got an Irish passport, and yet she described herself as Irish. Me? Well, I, too, have retained my accent, and in the few short years of living here, am starting to class myself as more and more Canadian. At the very least, I’m half and half!

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