GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

27. The world hasn't forgotten 1963

THE YEAR 1963 DESERVES AN ADJECTIVE OR TWO -- perhaps even three -- but I can't decide which. The melody of "It was a very good year", written by Ervin Drake and made famous by Frank Sinatra, is an earworm I hum while trying to think of replacements for 'very' and 'good'. It was good for me but awful for Montreal, for Canada, the United States, for many countries.

Some historians call it pivotal, others lump it in with the rest of the 1960s, "a decade of change". If you check timelines for many countries you'll find events then whose ripples affect us to this day.

Very early in '63 I met Mother Assumpta's executive assistant at Marianopolis College, Gloria Pierre. Born in the U.S. to Lebanese immigrants, she was First Consul of the American Consulate in Montreal when she met Francois Pierre, an immigrant to Canada from France. When they married Gloria had to stop working for the U.S. Government.

Because she had dealt with women's colleges in the States and was already serving Mother as a sounding board about educational policies being debated in Quebec, Marianopolis hired her full-time. We and the Pierres became a foursome. Charlie and I were of average height. The Pierres, approaching 40, attracted attention wherever we went because they were slender, very good-looking, and tall -- Gloria just under six feet and Francois just over.

Gloria suggested that I volunteer to staff a table at an annual bazaar raising funds for Les Petits Freres des Pauvres -- The Little Brothers of the Poor.  (See Chapter 26.) The coordinator was Saidye Bronfman, a dynamo whose house in Westmount was said to be the biggest in Montreal, and who had an unlimited sense of noblesse oblige. (The fact that she was born in Plum Coulee, Manitoba, really amuses me.)

During the bazaar Saidye ambled from table to table, asking if staff needed anything. That wasn't mere lip service; her eyes and mind drew their own conclusions. After I said all was well, she said a standing lamp by my table should have a brighter bulb and she'd send one over. It was installed within minutes.

Saidye supported her workers, as Rev. Leonard J. Crowley did. Appointed as the first Coordinator of English Catholic Activities for the Archdiocese of Montreal, he assembled about 15 women and men to make The Challenge monthly newspaper happen.

Father was a bright-eyed charmer, 40-something, not tall, very thin, and always seeming surprised to be sitting behind his huge wooden desk. On its plate glass surface he had only a large blotter, a black dial telephone, a few papers, and a fountain pen. He was soft-spoken, smiled often, and had an unique style of business dialogue: He wondered out loud.

His mind seemed to just wander without a clear destination. Listeners felt he didn't know exactly what he wanted to say, so we tried to help him along. That was how he drew ideas out of our minds that we didn't know were in them! He was perfect for his job. More than once in later years I copied his cool wide-eyed management style to activate a team, and then hovered watchfully like Saidye, to see what the team needed from me.

The difference between the groups Bronfman and Crowley managed was that she had women and men of different ages, religions, motivations, education, experience, social status, etc., whereas The Challenge crew were professionals from the very complex and hierarchical field of newspaper production. Saidye herded cats. Leonard drove a bus. Their workers were comfortable.

The only time allThe Challenge's volunteers were together was when Paul-Emile Cardinal Leger received us in his residence, down the steep hill behind Mary Queen of the World Cathedral, to bless the project. Otherwise, we did our own things our own way. I paid attention only to what involved me directly.

There was so much new and time-consuming stuff going on in my life that I not only stopped keeping a diary but didn't save clippings. What you read about The Challenge from here on is either fixed forever in my memory or I found it in 2013 in what's left of the tabloid: Bound copies of Volumes 2 to 4.