100 years old and hungry for more

Jeff Green | Nov 18, 2020

Marjory Shannon, of Battersea has been feeling a bit isolated during the pandemic. She hasn't been able to leave the house that she shares with her son Roger, hasn't been able to go shopping once a week, the way she used to, and she hasn't been able to visit with family except sparingly, and at a distance.

Although she is elderly, she is in very good health, and her mind is clear and precise. She turned 100 yesterday, on November 18.

She has known other hard times during her life, growing up in Saskatchewan during the worst of the depression years, living through the shortages during WWII while raising a family on a farm, and losing her husband when she was just 55. 

Her attitude towards the pandemic is likely the same one that has stood her in good stead over her long life.

“We have no choice in this,” she said, “so we do what we have to do to get by.” 

She was born only a year or so after the Spanish flu pandemic, when she was young, she heard more about an outbreak of scarlet fever in Saskatchewan than about the flu. Her mother caught scarlet fever, likely in 1905 or '06, and her auburn hair fell out. When it grew back, it was brown, all of the red was gone.

Marjory’s parents moved to Saskatchewan in the 1900’s from Sunbury. Her father was William MacEvoy and her mother was Alice (nee Patterson). She was born in Alsask, a town on the border with Alberta, but her family moved to Kinistino, a town near Prince Albert, when she was 1, in 1921. Although they moved back east in 1933, she retains fond, distinct memories from her years in Kinistino. Her father was a carpenter by trade, but along with William Stoness, who also came from Sunbury, he did a lot of survey work in Saskatoon during the 1920’s. 

The family took a trip to Fargo, North Dakota, one time to see a monument marking the centre of North America in a ‘28 Chevrolet, with Marjory’s parents, her brother and sister, and “for some reason we brought our little dog as well.”

She also recalls playing hockey as a young girl and traveling to other towns, on the train, for games.

The depression hit Kinistino hard, and William McEvoy lost all of his employment. Since the family lived in a railroad town, Marjory remembers the hobos travelling through on the trains.

“We always had lots of food because we had a big garden, so we fed people who came by asking for something to eat. But times were very hard and we had to move, so my father could find work.”

They moved back to the Battersea area in 1933.

Part of the trip involved taking a boat across Lake Michigan, from Detroit to Sarnia, in the midst of a nighttime storm that was so strong the lights of Sarnia kept coming in and out of view because the boat was listing so much.

Although there was work for her father back in the Battersea area, Marjory did not find the people as friendly as they had been in Saskatchewan. 

In 1935 or 1936, her family took another trip back to Saskatchewan so her father could sell their house and settle all of his business interests. By this time the Trans Canada Highway was being built, and they drove out and back.  On the way back, Marjory recalls them stopping at a farmhouse late one night, in the Sudbury area. 

“We asked if there were any cabins for rent around, and there weren’t. The couple who lived there said we could stay in their house, which was very small, only one large room. They gave my mother, my sister, and me their bed and put a sheet up for privacy, and they slept on the couch. My father and brother slept in the barn,” she recalls. “I’m not sure if that kind of hospitality still exists.”

Back in Battersea, Marjory met Clifton Shannon at a dance at the Orange Hall. She had met him years before, through a relative, but this time it was different.

In 1939, Marjory and Clifton were married and they moved to the Shannon family farm on Round Lake Road, where they ran a dairy farm and raised 4 sons.

“My sister liked farmers and farm life when we were young but I didn't. I guess I thought I was too sophisticated, but then I ended up living on a farm.” On the farm she learned to drive a tractor, run a house, and fully developed the cooking skills that have stood her in good stead to this day.

When her husband died in 1975, Marjory moved into a house in Battersea. She worked for years as a cook at Loughborough Lodge and the Queen's University Daycare before she retired. In 2005 she moved in with her son in Battersea, where they still live. 

She still bakes and cooks. Although she said that she no longer bakes bread, she still makes pies and cookies for her family and friends.

“Apple pie is probably my favourite pie to make,” she said, “and I make donuts.”

All that she really wanted, to mark her 100th  birthday, was to see family, and she was planning to see her eldest son, who lives near Hamilton, but with COVID cases on the rise again and his health compromised, the trip did not happen.

A socially distanced meal, with 12 people attending, including 4 generations, was planned for last Sunday afternoon at the Creekside Bar and Grill.

They arrived at around 2:30, just as the power went out from Sunday’s wind storm. They waited and waited until 5pm, then gave up and went home. The birthday meal had been thwarted.

The Creekside is closed from Monday to Wednesday so the meal would have had to be put off until after Marjory's birthday.

Kyle Gordon, the owner of the bar and grill, did not let that happen, however. He opened on Monday to host the Shannon family.

“I had fish and chips. Kyle makes the best fish and chips,” Marjory said over the phone when she got back home on Monday night.

She was also looking forward to her birthday meal on Wednesday, pizza and cake, socially distanced, with her granddaughter.

There will be no drive by greetings, which some people have been doing during COVID.

“It's too cold to sit outside,” said Marjory, “besides, I am seeing the people who really matter most to me.”

Before her birthday there was one other thing that had to happen. 

She headed to her hairdresser on Perth Road, something that was a normal part of life before COVID, that has now become a special occasion.

But you only turn 100 once, after all.

(Reporters note - As she was about to go to the hairdresser on Tuesday morning, Marjory wanted to talk again to straighten out a few details about her life story, so I gave her a call. When we were done, she said it had been pretty hectic over the last few days and weeks getting ready for her birthday. 

“I’ll be glad when it's over because it is infringing on my solitude,” she said as we were saying goodbye.