Lives Lived - Mary Boyle Hudson

Wife, mother, grandmother, community leader, cattlewoman, Scotch aficionado. Born Jan. 10, 1931, in Hamilton, Ont.; died June 29 in Lyn, Ont., of pancreatic cancer, aged 72.

For all that Mary Hudson cultivated her Scottish roots and was a keen royalist, she loved her country well. Never one for southern beach holidays, she preferred a visit to the polar bears in Churchill, Man.

Mary's father, Edward Morwick, was a Westinghouse engineer in Hamilton, Ont.; her mother, Anne Hamilton, was a Scottish émigrée. The family brought mementoes from Scotland -- a tartan rug, a travelling trunk -- which had been handed down over the generations; Mary considered herself not the owner but the custodian of these pieces, which she has since entrusted to her children.

After Hamilton's Westdale Collegiate, Mary studied home economics at Macdonald Institute at the University of Guelph. In 1956, responding to a Globe and Mail ad for a high school home economics teacher in Brockville, Ont., Mary set off in her Nash Metropolitan hardtop. Joe Hudson, a local farmer and eligible bachelor took note; his nieces always said Mary seemed like a movie star. The city girl married the country boy in 1958, and traded her hardtop for a station wagon. Then she and Joe began a life that would allow Mary to make her home in the tiny village of Lyn, and to see her country and the world.

Mary and Joe raised five children, with the best fundamentals she could offer: She taught them to remember where they came from and she encouraged them to be citizens of the world. She helped found and maintain a local library; established a swimming program; and worked with her United Church, the Fulford Home for Women and the Brockville Hospital, where she not only sat on the board of governors, she also took the wagon around to bring chocolate bars and newspapers to patients.

Mary's passions included a penchant for early morning royal weddings on the television. A founding member of the Brockville An Quaiche society, a club that appreciates the merits of good single malt scotch, she had a taste for a "wee dram."

Together, Mary and Joe built Joe's business, Burnbrae Farms, into a dynamic agricultural enterprise. In 1978, her Christmas gift from Joe started her on her herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle. In 1995, several of her cows won championship ribbons at the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.

Mary was a mother to many; privately, she lived a public life. Her door was open without the need to knock. Known as the best cook on the Lyn Road, she made jams in a copper kettle brought from Scotland. I remember Mom supervising church turkey dinners, using a three-foot masher to deal with all the potatoes.

She also produced baby quilts; the last was for Evelyn Mary Morwick Rogan, her granddaughter who was born 16 days after Mom died.

The crowd at her funeral was so large that we had to enlist the OPP to handle the traffic. After the service, we walked from the church to the cemetery, with Mary's Clydesdale horses leading the way. When Rob Miller, the self-declared piper for the clan, reached the top of the hill by the cemetery, he stopped for a moment to talk with the OPP officer, and they looked down at the hundreds of people walking in the procession. "With all this activity you'd think the Queen had died," said the officer. Rob responded, "She has."

Mary is survived by her husband, Joe, her sister, Helen Morwick, her children, Helen Anne, Mary Jean, Ted, Susan and Margaret, their spouses, and nine grandchildren. She loved them all.

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Mary Jean is Mary Hudson's daughter.