A Victoria multidisciplinary artist will devote a month-long artist residency to telling the story of her grandmother’s teenage years in Nelson — and her secret attempt to become a pilot.
Joyce Smith came to Nelson in 1946 at age 16 when her parents, Michael and Mabel Smith, bought the Golden Gate Cafe in the 500 block of Baker Street. (The same space would later become the Diamond Grill, immortalized in poet Fred Wah’s book of the same name.)
The family lived in an apartment at rear of the restaurant, which was once the annex to the Nelson House hotel. The restaurant had the marketing tag line: “There are two good places to eat: home and here.”
Joyce and her father were avid hockey fans, who would attend Nelson Maple Leafs games at the Civic Centre, but leave each game a few minutes early so they could run back to the restaurant, fire up the ice cream machine and soda fountain, and reopen to serve the after-game throngs.
But Joyce was hiding something from her parents. Without their knowledge, she had joined the Nelson Flying Club and started learning to fly a plane.
The club was short-lived but had over 100 members. It was led by a former RCAF officer, who provided flying expertise, and his wife, who headed up fundraising. The club put on dances to raise money and was involved with lobbying efforts to get an emergency airstrip in Nelson. Smith wasn’t the only girl involved — some of her friends were also aspiring pilots. Their flying lessons were held in Castlegar, which had the nearest airstrip.
Eventually, however, Smith’s parents found out, and she gave up her aviation dream without earning her license. In 1951, the family moved to Calgary. Decades later, Joyce’s granddaughter Rebecca Cory was enthralled to learn her grandmother had once taken flying lessons.
“This person who was baking me cookies and pie and babysitting me, also at some time in her life, when she was maybe my age, had learned to pilot a plane,” Cory said. “I don’t even know anyone right now who knows how to pilot a plane, let alone in the late 1940s. So it just seemed magical or mysterious, this whole unknown part of her.”
As she got older, Cory would ask to hear the story again, but her grandmother grew sheepish. “She would say ‘Oh, I can’t believe I ever told you that story.’ I would tell her ‘It’s my favourite story of yours. Please tell me again.’”
Now Cory is turning that tale into a graphic novel. Cory explains she took some classes through Emily Carr University’s continuing studies program, including one on graphic novels. An early assignment was to produce a four-page story and her grandmother’s flying lessons jumped to mind.
“I think because there are so many graphic elements, imagining these old planes. She’s pretty sure she flew in a Piper Cub, which was a very popular plane after World War II for private pilots to own and fly.”
Cory had been to Nelson once many years ago, long before she considered drawing her grandmother’s story, but returned recently to gather reference materials by taking photos and visiting the archives. She was able to identify many buildings in her grandmother’s old photos and found a menu from the Golden Gate Cafe.
“The archivists helped me find photos of the time period to use as reference materials, for the cars and other businesses operating at the time and to just get a feel for the time period,” she said.
Over a year ago, Cory did an artist residency where she drafted most of the script, but she hasn’t had much time to work on it since. This month she is taking part in the Similkameen Artist Residency in Keremeos, where she will focus on storyboarding and drawing.
While she hasn’t thought too far ahead about where and how her comic will be presented, she said she would like to publish it or share it online.
Her grandmother, now 95, lives in Victoria. “Her joke is WTB: walking, talking, breathing,” Cory says. “She’s still a firecracker and still is cracking jokes all the time. And a very, very joyful, living-out-loud kind of person.”
But what does she think of her story being turned into a graphic novel?
“Oh, she’s pretty embarrassed about it. I think now she feels bad that she did not tell her parents [about being in the flying club]. Having raised five kids, she was like, ‘if my kids ever did that, I would probably kill them.’ She can now see it from [her parents’] point of view.”
Even at the time, her grandmother understood her parents were worried about her safety, Cory says, because while she snuck off to take lessons, once caught, she didn’t go back.
Cory would like to hear from anyone who was involved in the Nelson Flying Club or ever ate at the Golden Gate Cafe.
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