Strong will

It is said it’s not the size of the person in a fight that’s important, but rather the size of the fight in that person.

Few people lived up to that adage quite like Evelyne Reese. The former Winnipeg city councillor may have been rather small in stature, but she rarely backed down from defending what she believed in.

“She always came to a discussion arguing this was the view of her constituents,” says former councillor Chris Lorenc who engaged in many heated debates with Reese during their time together on council in the 1980s and ’90s.

“She was connected and had a good ear for her constituents and did try to resolve issues that she brought to the table that were irritants to a happier constituency. We knew that was her approach and we knew that she would be tenacious and would push and push until there was a decision.”

Reese continued to fight for what she believed in until this past January when she died as a result of complications from a stroke. She was 91.

The emotional resiliency that came to define Reese was shaped in large part by her early upbringing. Born Evelyne Marie Bisson in Notre-Dame-des-Pins, Que., she grew up one of 14 children born to parents Wilfrid and Yvonne, who owned a small farm where they grew crops and collected maple syrup.

One of her earliest memories was driving around the farm in a horse-drawn carriage with her father in the winter with only heated stones to keep them warm. She and her siblings helped stook, or shape, grain on the family farm at harvest time.

“She had wonderful stories about growing up there,” son Barry Reese says. “She would tell me about her dad breaking the land with oxen. They had nothing mechanical.”

Reese and her family moved to a farm near Guy, Alta., in 1944 after her father took a job working on the Alaska Highway. She was just 12 years old at the time. She spoke virtually no English and had to learn it on the fly.

After graduating from high school, she attended teachers college and received her certification in 1953. She was just 21 when she accepted her first teaching assignment at a small rural school near Guy.

Reese demonstrated early in her teaching career the willingness to stand her ground that would come to define her later in life. A male student, who was much larger than her but a couple of years younger, didn’t appreciate something she said in class and told her to F off. She quickly showed him who was in charge.

“She slapped him,” Barry says, laughing. “She told him to go to the principal’s office, which he ended up doing because he was stunned. The mother heard the story and told her son to apologize to my mom.”

Reese took a sabbatical from teaching a few years later and joined with one of her sisters to run a restaurant in Wood Buffalo National Park.

That was where she met George Reese in 1958 and the two were married about a year later. Call it a case of love at first sight.

“One of my dad’s friends … made him a bet. He said, ‘You see that girl Evelyne, the restaurant manager? I bet you are going to marry her.’ And oh my god, he did,” Barry says.

The couple started a family soon after that included daughters Marilyne and Carol Anne and sons Barry and Martin. In 1966 the family moved from Nipigon, Ont. to Winnipeg where they settled in the Windsor Park area.

A few years later, Reese decided to continue her studies at the University of Manitoba even though she was still teaching and raising a family of four at the time. She went on to earn a bachelor of arts in 1969, a master’s of science in 1971, a bachelor of education in 1972 and a spot on the dean’s honour roll.

“In four or five years she got three degrees with four kids,” Barry recalls. “She worked so hard. I don’t know how she did it.

“The thing was, we never felt ignored. Mom would take the time to sit on each of our bed’s at night, even though it might be late, and talk to each of us every night and make us feel special.”

Reese taught junior high and high school for nearly nine years and was later a school guidance counsellor. She was also a sessional lecturer of psychology and sociology to nursing students at the U of M.

Of course, Reese is best known for her career in politics. She was first elected to city council in 1974 as the representative for Winakwa. She was elected to office four more times and represented the Langevin and St. Boniface wards until 1995. She also ran unsuccessfully for the provincial Liberal party on two occasions and had two unsuccessful bids for a seat on the St. Boniface School Board.

Reese was a staunch critic of many civic government policies of the day. She opposed proposals to allow unrestricted Sunday shopping and to provide public funding for a new arena to keep the Winnipeg Jets 1.0 in the city. She also opposed extending benefits to same-sex partners of City of Winnipeg employees.

Her son says of all she achieved during her time on city council, her proudest accomplishment was helping rally the community in the late 1970s to force the relocation of an asphalt plant out of the Windsor Park community. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and marked the first time a citizen or citizens group successfully sued a city for not doing its job.

“What ultimately made her feel the most proud about that whole incident was it helped develop community. She made lifelong friends as a result of that,” Barry says.

One of those people was Roz Krahn, who lived across the street from the family. She and Reese worked together on several occasions to advance environmental issues in Windsor Park. She also served on several of Reese’s election campaign teams.

Krahn remembers Reese as a selfless person who didn’t go into politics for fame or fortune.

“She came from a big family. You had to learn to share and to look after each other,” her friend says.

“She was just a kind person, she was compassionate. She wanted to improve things in her community. She couldn’t tolerate individuals trampling on the rights of people who were less educated or didn’t have as much money.”

One of Reese’s fondest council memories was getting to meet Queen Elizabeth when the monarch visited Winnipeg in 1984. The two shared a brief conversation during a reception in St. Boniface.

“My mom spoke to Queen Elizabeth in French. My mother was impressed at how Queen Elizabeth’s French was so good,” Barry says.

While acknowledging he and Reese often didn’t see eye to eye at city hall, Lorenc says he was always impressed by her collegial attitude.

“She was charming, she was tenacious, she was driven. But what was really neat about Evelyne was you could have disagreements with her, but they always ended with a smile. It was a lot of give and take and she gave as much as she took,” says Lorenc.

“We would do well to have people who approach elected office the way Evelyne Reese did. She served her community well and she served her city well.”

Another one of Reese’s passions was travel. When they were younger, she and George used to pack the kids into the family’s motor home, dubbed Big Paul, and travel across western Canada and the northern U.S. for weeks at a time. In her later years, she visited the Holy Lands, as well as her family’s birthplace in France and even got an up-close look at Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum.

Despite dealing with vascular dementia in the final years of her life, Reese maintained her sharp powers of analysis, son Barry says.

Hundreds of people attended Reese’s funeral service at St. Bernadette, the same church where her husband, George, was laid to rest in 1988.

“I hope she is remembered as a person of conviction who was sincere … and forthright and who always tried to do the right thing, no matter the cost,” Barry says.

“She told me once, ‘If you want to be clear and open and forthright about what you stand for as a politician, you’re probably going to end up losing.’ She said, ‘That’s OK. If I win, I win, if I lose, I lose, but I will make sure I have expressed myself truly, openly and with the conviction that I hold.’”

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