This sounds like an aboriginal name (cf. Dances with Wolves), but it’s not. Marjorie Dance was my Grade 5 French teacher. I went to a 4-room school house with four teachers, including the principal. A Sewing teacher and a Manual Training (now called Shops??) teacher came in on specific days, and so did the French Language teacher. She was not French from France, but from St Boniface, across the river from Winnipeg. Her accent was NOT Parisian. This might sound deprived, but the school was in a pretentious suburb of Winnipeg with a student population of 96 children who attended until it was time for them to go to private schools in the city (except me). I’m going to write a lot about it when I write my next book (Now We Are Twelve).
Years later, when I was married with four children and beginning to write, a puppet play i had written was being toured to the elementary schools by a puppet troupe run by the Junior League of Winnipeg. Marjorie Dance phoned me. She was now a high school principal in the north end of Winnipeg (not a great area) and my little play was getting a production there. She invited me to come as a guest to the performance and to say a few words to the young audience. I accepted.
I scarcely remembered Miss Dance but she made up the gap in years. She gave me a tour of her school: the Emergency Room with someone present at all times and with three or four cots made up, ready for students who had been unable to get any sleep the night before; a quick view and an introduction to each room’s teacher who showed me the bottom drawer of her desk, equipped with a choice of cereal, plus bowls, spoons, sugar and milk delivered fresh each day, ready for the children who had eaten no breakfast that morning. The children enjoyed the play, I’m happy to say. When it was finished, Miss Dance announced that she had a special treat for them, and she introduced me, the lady who had written the play, as a former student of hers, whenI was in Grade 5 ,like many of them. Her implication was that they, too, could do the same thing when they grew up.
After we left Winnipeg I kept in touch.I was on the Group Trust Board of Investors’, located in a brand new building at the corner of Portage Avenue and Memorial Boulevard, right across the street from a hi-rise apartment building where Marjorie lived in her retirement. While my visits to Winnipeg were to attend board meetings, I always took time to have coffee or lunch with her and to hear about her travels.She was mad about travelling and covered a lot of ground even before she retried—the perk of having so much time off in the summer months. Later, I managed about two letters a year,including a generic Christmas letter. Hers were precious, about her travel adventures in the previous year. I still kept writing when she moved into a retirement home and had to curtail her activities. A caregiver wrote me when Marjorie died. Mine was one of the last letters she received and she insisted that it be read to her.
I learned a lot more than French from Marjorie Dance