Mother's Day Tradition

Sunday May 13th

Lois told of her mother Mae and the Mother's day tradition that Lois remembers:

Lois' mother Mae had strong religious beliefs established by her Methodist parents who came from the robust protestant tradition of Northern Ireland. It was only natural, then, that once she was married and had moved to the farm, that she would attend the Bethesda Sunday School, a tiny frame structure located 3/4 of a mile up the road from their farm on land that originally belonged to the Delabols. Mae played the organ in the Sunday School and taught one of the classes. The Sunday School which was developed as an outpost from the much larger Methodist church in St. Marys operated only in good weather. It had no minister but Mr. Proudlove and Mrs. Vanstone took turns acting as superintendent. Each Sunday Mae and her children would walk up the road past the farms of the Boyds, the Ogglesbys, and the Turners, arriving for the 2:30 service. On Mother's Day it was traditional for each person to wear a flower: white, if your mother was dead, and coloured if your mother was living. Lois remembers she, her brothers and her mother all wearing brightly coloured flowers. Mae loved Bleeding Heart flowers and had several large plants in her garden. It is likely that at least one of them wore a red Bleeding Heart flower on Mother's Day Sunday. Sadly Mae never got to wear a white flower. She died in 1933 when her children were all young, and a full five years before her own mother.

Bob here: Years later when Lois and her children, Lou, Loiey, Terry and I attended the large Methodist Church, but by then called the United Church, in St. Marys, I remember Lois following her mother's tradition. Each of us wore a flower. Lois wore a white flower and we four children wore a coloured flower.