Lady in Red

The press labeled my mother the Lady in Red. It sounds notorious but she was not a spy or a lady of the night. She was born Marion Cecil Borden in 1919 and she would grow up to be a track & field star.

And she wore a red tracksuit.

The newspapers also called her Queen of the Cinder Track, Speed Demon and the Speed Queen. And they declared: “She will be Canada’s No. 1 sprinter when the Olympic Trials roll round…” But that year, the trials never took place. The Olympics were cancelled because WW2 broke out.

Years later, when the story of her kiboshed shot at international fame was legend in our household, the only Speed Queen around was the washing machine on our porch, where she did the laundry for her husband and four children.

And then there was everything else she did for us. When I was little, she was at home all the time, as good women were expected to be in the 1950s. Cleaning, childrearing, shopping, nursing, chauffeuring, cooking, etc.

Oh, and baking: I still remember running home after school (a mini Speed Demon) so that I could sink my teeth into a cinnamon bun, hot out of the oven.

As the world pushed into the revolutionary 1960s, my parents divorced. Not long after, I (the youngest) became old enough to take care of myself, so my mom got her real estate licence and went to work.

She worked hard to list then show then sell houses; winning the bread, as well as baking the bread at home - also preparing meals and keeping house.

She remained the Lady in Red, often favouring the colour in her clothing - a scarlet cardigan or crimson pencil skirt - and her lipstick was a velvety shade of Cherries in the Snow. With jet black hair, Mom rocked the red lip. 

That she found time to apply it amazes me now.

I have raised three of my own children, and so I know that among the joys of motherhood, are busy days and sleepless nights, overwhelming worry and staggering responsibility, constant vigilance and endless duties.

But remember, we’re talking Olympic material here.

My mom was an Olympic Mother. If they handed out gold medals for mothering, she’d have been shining all over with medallions.

Raised during the depression on a small island called Cortes off the coast of British Columbia, she once said of her childhood: “We ran everywhere. We ran to school or ran to a neighbour’s. It’s just what we did.”

When she was a teen her family moved down coast to Powell River, where her talent for running was recognized and encouraged. With proper coaching, she bloomed as a competitive racer. Here's Lew Griffiths writing in the Powell River Digester (1936):

Bewildered, still a little shy at being an entrant in a real championship meet, Marion Borden, trim little sixteen-year-old Powell River school girl, with only scant months’ experience on the cinders, awaits the running of the junior 75 yard dash.

It is announced, and with awed eyes, and a vague, breathless feeling, she lines up in a field that represents the cream of the young provincial sprint queens.

The gun – and Marion is left in her holes.

But not for long. With the entire field breaking away from her, Marion remembers she can run. She does run. And at the tape, a white sweater with the red triangle of Powell River flashes in front of the field.

She wins!

“First, Marion Borden, Powell River,” chants the voice of the announcer. “Time, eleven seconds flat, a new Provincial record!”

The reporter got it wrong though! Marion did not create a new Provincial record at "eleven seconds flat". She created a new Provincial record at 8.6 seconds flat! And she would go on to hold the Canadian record in the 100 yard and 75 yard dashes.

A 1939 report from The Vancouver Sun states: Marion Borden, the Powell River flash, has been doing her training the hard way lately; she is working night shift at the plant and has to sandwich her training between work and breakfast…

Few if any athletes had sponsors back then, so when Marion entered the work force, it was not long afterward that she kissed competitive atheletics goodbye. “It wasn’t possible to take time off to be in sports,” she said in a later interview. “You wouldn’t have a job if you did that.”

She moved to Vancouver to find gainful employent, and one day, she applied for a job as a waitress in a cafe near the Hotel Vancouver. The manager was a dashing young man.

And in 1942, they married, eventually setting up a nice life in the quiet suburbs of Coquitlam, B.C. Dad held a nine to five, and mom - well, a woman’s work is never done.

But, every night at 6, they stopped to watch the news.

One evening, as I coloured in my colouring book, I heard Walter Cronkite report on some people who said the world was coming to an end. As I looked up at the TV, I saw these folks being interviewed from inside their end-of-the-world hideaway.

For hours I suffered in silence awaiting the apocalypse. Then, as my mother tucked me in that night, I started to cry. I told her why, and she reassured me in a voice that was soothing, soft and strong.

I will never forget my mother’s voice.

I asked through tears if she would call our neighbours and ask them if the world was going to end. I thought that because they attended church they’d have a direct line to God, who’d know all about it and have something to say about what we should do.

My mom said she’d call. Then she ran her fingers through my hair and told me again that it was alright, the world was not ending. And I thought then, as I drifted off to sleep, that my mom must actually be God.

Sometimes, she was a complete cypher to me, a woman of mystery with secret places to go. If I was playing outside and saw her get into her car, I’d call out: “Where ya’ going, mom?” She’d smile and say, “Crazy. Wanna come?” It was a recurring joke but, knowing motherhood as I do now, I wouldn’t doubt if there was a grain of truth in it. Maybe she was driving herself to a bit of a respite.

Eventually, she remarried and moved to a farm in B.C.’s interior, a beautiful big swath of land, not far from the Washington border, where she tended goats, corralled cows, collected eggs, raised racehorses and planted a huge vegetable garden. She was so happy there.

The last photo I have of her shows a woman of eighty-three, her hair still dark against a backdrop of snow. She poses with a bobcat she’d just bagged from her kitchen window. Her dog had barked to let her know the chickens were in peril, and before the invading cat snagged his dinner, mom took him out at a hundred yards.

The image that stays with me, though, is one from memory: my mother standing at the edge of the creek that ran through her farm. It’s a hot afternoon and we’re there for a dip. She’s wearing her usual blue bathing suit. Her skin is as brown as toasted coconut and her hair is as black as ink, grey strands glint out like silver stars in the night.

She stands as tall and calm and strong as a tree, and in that moment I understand that she's my guiding light and my rock. And the soft echo in my mind's ear of her velvety voice reminds that she always will be.