Doris Woodward never studied piano, but it could be said the musical instrument played a key role in defining the person she became.
Woodward was born April 5, 1926 in Winnipeg, where she grew up on Lipton Street in the city’s West End with her parents Fredrick and Maud Weitman, sisters Ivy, Eileen and Elsie and brother Fred.
As a child, she had to undergo multiple surgeries to treat osteomyelitis, a serious bone infection that caused her to endure severe pain in her right leg. This was during the 1930s, before publicly funded health care was introduced in Canada. As a result, her parents were forced to sell the family’s prized piano to pay for Woodward’s medical expenses, much to her regret.
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Doris at the Shriners Ball with grandson Wesley and Doris’s brother Freddie.
“She never got over that,” says her son Fraser. “She always regretted that my grandparents had to give up their prized possession. She even tried to buy it back when she got older.”
That regret would later fuel Woodward’s passion for helping others.
She became actively involved in a number of charitable organizations, including the Christmas Cheer Board, where she helped organize the delivery of hampers to families in need for 27 years. She was also a member of the Khartum Temple Ladies Auxiliary for 25 years and supported the Khartum Shrine for 47 years, where she was one of the Shrine’s top Christmas cake sellers each year. Woodward was also a life member of Westworth United Church where she taught Sunday school for nearly 25 years.
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Doris spent nearly 30 years at her cabin at Malachi Lake near Kenora.
“That incident with the piano influenced her all of her life. I think that’s why she was always gung-ho about volunteerism,” her son says.
“She was a firm believer that you have to give back to the community and she did that forever. She really felt volunteerism was the way to be and that a person give of themselves and ask for nothing in return. I really, truly believe that was my mom’s mantra.”
Linda Grayston first met Woodward through the United Church and later worked alongside her for many years at the Christmas Cheer Board. She says what she remembers most about Woodward was her ability to remain calm even when things became chaotic around her.
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Doris loved spending summers with her children, grandchildren and close friends Doreen and Fred Stephenson.
“She was just unflappable. She was always so calm. She would always say ‘Leave that with me, we’ll get that out today.’ I was the exact opposite of her. I was always excited about things. I think it was because of that that we got along really well,” Grayston recalls, laughing.
“Her whole personality when you met her was she was so interested in people. She always had time to talk even when she was busy. She always had a smile on her face. She was calmness in any situation.”
Woodward also knew when it was time to roll up her sleeves and get to work, says Ruth McCorrie, who knew her for more than 20 years through their mutual involvement with the Khartum Ladies Auxiliary.
McCorrie recalls the time a fundraiser had just concluded and the ladies auxiliary was left with a bunch of unsold costume jewelry that was destined to go into storage. Woodward offered to take it home with her to the seniors residence where she lived and ended up selling it, which raised several hundred additional dollars for the charity.
“She was a hard worker, a very hard worker,” McCorrie says.
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Doris remained active into her 90s.
“I always admired her and her capacity to work and her capacity to be cheerful about it and not expecting anything in return. There was nothing she wouldn’t give. I miss her.”
Of course, work was nothing new to Woodward. Growing up during the Great Depression, she dropped out of school as a teenager and started working in order to help her family. She went to live on the West Coast where she lined up a job working at vegetable canning factory. By the Second World War she had returned to Winnipeg and landed work at Canada Packers as a clerk and later Simpson Sears and The Bay.
It was around this time she met her future husband Frank during a dance at the old Royal Alexandra Hotel on Higgins Avenue. The two were married in 1952 and two years later bought a house on Beaverbrook Street in River Heights where they raised their two children, Fraser and Maureen. One of Fraser’s favourite childhood memories was the summers the family spent camping at Rushing River Provincial Park near Kenora.
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Doris loved spending summers with her children, grandchildren and close friends Doreen and Fred Stephenson.
Doris and Frank’s time together came to a premature end when he suffered a fatal heart attack while on vacation in Everett, Wash., in 1977, just a week before the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary.
“It really impacted my mom. My mom kind of felt like the third cog in the wheel after that. She felt kind of out of place. She really threw herself into volunteering after that,” Fraser says.
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Doris loved spending summers with her children, grandchildren and close friends Doreen and Fred Stephenson.
Even though Woodward made friends wherever she went, she could sometimes rub people the wrong way. She had strongly held opinions and wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, even if her position on an issue wasn’t popular at the time.
“She’d tell people off if she thought they were doing something wrong. She was very feisty that way,” Fraser says, laughing.
That included a gentleman she encountered when she was a young woman walking home from work one day. The man was clad in a trench coat and flashed Woodward as he approached her. Even though she was terrified on the inside, she pointed at the man and laughed and he quickly moved on. There was also the time some skinheads were harassing a man at a bus stop. She walked up to them and told them off before accompanying the man onto the bus.
An avid traveller, Woodward crisscrossed the globe many times with friends and family. That included stops in the U.S. (Alaska, the Dakotas, Minneapolis and Florida), Ireland, England, Scotland and Morocco.
Still, her favourite place in the world was the cottage she bought at Malachi Lake near Kenora in 1981. She spent nearly 30 years there enjoying summers with her children, grandchildren and close friends Doreen and Fred Stephenson, who lived nearby.
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Doris with great-granddaughter Elliana at Christmas.
Supplied Passages Doris Woodward
“She loved the cottage. It was a refuge for her and was peaceful place for her and she really enjoyed it there,” Fraser recalls.
Woodward remained quite active well into her 90s, a fact family members chalked up to her “mind over matter” attitude. That attitude continued to be on display even after she was diagnosed with metastasized cancer this past January.
When asked a few days after the diagnosis how she was feeling, Woodword responded, “In the quiet hours, I think of how I can beat it.” She died four days later on Feb. 1 at age 97. The family is planning a celebration of her life for Aug. 7.
Despite her regret over her family giving up its prized piano, Woodward became an ardent supporter of the arts. She was a season ticket holder at the Manitoba Theatre Centre for nearly 40 years and regularly attended Prairie Theatre Exchange and Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra events, as well as the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival.
“Even as young kids, we had to go to everything at MTC,” her son remembers.
“Every concert, every symphony, we went to all those things. Mom thought it was really important we had an education in music and the arts. I don’t know where that came from, but she loved it, she absolutely loved it.”