By Trevor Greenway
Norma Geggie took her last, peaceful breath inside the palliative care home that she helped create.
The 99-year-old was a community pillar who always believed that those facing end-of-life should have a peaceful place to rest, and her tireless work on establishing Wakefield’s Maison des Collines was integral to its opening in 2019.
On Sept. 24, just five years after the palliative care home opened its doors, Geggie died within the very walls she helped erect.
“It’s a very big loss,” says her daughter, Judy, sitting in her mom’s old living room on Sully Road in Wakefield. It’s a warm, inviting room with a central fireplace decorated with dated furniture. It feels lived in, and it was.
Norma spent much of her life there – just steps away from the bustle of the village – up until three days before her death. Judy looks around and takes a deep breath. “We shared so much together – I’ll just miss her every day.”
Norma’s legacy stretches far and wide throughout the Hills and beyond as the decades-long volunteer had her hand in scores of community projects: from raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Wakefield Hospital through her annual garden parties to helping set up two seniors’ homes in the Hills. She founded the Wakefield Grannies in 2004 – a grandmother-to-grandmother campaign, which connected Wakefield grandmothers with their South African counterparts who were facing an AIDS epidemic. The Wakefield Grannies was the first-ever Granny Group in the world, and more than 250 of them are now set up across North America through the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
“Norma’s legacy is that a generation in Alexandra Township [in South Africa] has become educated, functional people with a commitment to their communities,” says long-time friend Brenda Rooney.
Rooney was in the room when Norma had the “What if…” question in 2004: What if a group of Wakefield grannies began a relationship with grandmothers (gogos) in Alexandra Township who were caring for children orphaned by AIDS? That idea 20 years ago has since blossomed into a full movement.
Since the Stephen Lewis Foundation launched its Grandmother to Grandmother campaign in 2006 – two years after the original Wakefield Grannies was born – more than $40 million has been raised in support of grandmothers and the community-led organizations who support them in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Her legacy is going to be the same for Wakefield, with the Scouts, and all of these groups that she’s affected,” adds Rooney. “Look at what she has done for seniors. It is almost impossible to figure out just what her cumulative legacy is, but she certainly has made Wakefield and Alexander Township a better place.”
Norma was born in Australia in 1924 but spent most of her life – 71 years – in Wakefield, where she worked as a nurse and midwife in the 1950s. She and a friend had seen an advertisement that the Gatineau Memorial Hospital – now the Wakefield Memorial Hospital – was looking for nurses. Dr. Harold Geggie, who would later become Norma’s father-in-law, founded the hospital in 1953 and later brought his son, Stuart, over from England for a temporary residency. It was then that Norma met Stuart, and although Harold truly needed doctors, Norma always thought it was intended to set her up with his son. And if it was a setup, it worked.
Norma and Dr. Stuart spent 10 days together before he was due back at his medical residency in the U.K. Norma was planning to head back to Australia for good and had to make a connecting flight in England. While there, Stuart proposed to her. She said yes and never made it back to Australia.
“He proposed to her at the docks after having spent 10 days together. It was very romantic,” says Judy. They were married days later, spent their honeymoon camping in Scotland and headed back to Wakefield to run the Wakefield hospital.
“They were great together. They were really, really close. They did everything together,” she adds.
This is when Norma really started to make an impact on the community. She threw extravagant hospital garden parties every year, which would usually bring in anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 for hospital equipment. Readers may remember the impressive straw hats that locals would don for this popular afternoon event.
With her Wakefield Grannies, she and a dozen others travelled to Alexandra Township to connect with their South African counterparts, bringing supplies – food, clothing, condoms – and hope to struggling families who had been impacted by AIDS. She helped establish two long-term care homes in Wakefield and Masham, raised hundreds of thousands over the years for the Des Collines Health Foundation, and was the treasurer for Maison des Collines; her living room was the venue for early-day meetings as the facility had no office.
Norma was also highly creative. Long before Kaffè 1870 was a village watering hole, it was a craft shop, where Norma and long-time friend, Nicole Feraud-Lewis, would weave together intricate clothing – neckties, mittens, scarves and even her daughter Judy’s wedding dress.
“She dyed the fabric, wove it, sewed it,” says Judy. “So my wedding outfit was totally made [by] her…she could just make absolutely anything.”
When Norma wasn’t making clothes or raising money or awareness for village causes, she could often be found deep within the pages of one of her many journals. Norma was “a born writer,” says friend, John Hardie, who joined a creative writing club with her in 2012. A dozen or so locals would gather around her fireplace, tell their stories and share their life struggles.
“This was shortly after Joan Garnett’s partner, Norma Walmsley, died, and Norma saw a soul in distress, so she said, ‘Why don’t we have a little writing group?’” says Hardie. The group had close to 120 writing sessions before COVID hit.
“She really, really loved that writing group and adored it,” says Hardie. “It was something she looked forward to every month.”
Norma also published three historical books: one about local cemeteries, one featuring her father-in-law Harold’s medical journals and one entitled, ‘La Pêche: A History of the Townships of Wakefield and Masham in the Province of Quebec.’
Her volunteer efforts were recognized by Canada as she was awarded the Sovereign’s Medal for Volunteers in 2012 and the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 2013.
Her crafting friend Feraud-Lewis described Norma in just four words: “pragmatic, courageous, generous, curious.”
Norma often told her friends and family that she never wanted to live to 100, saying that “people are living too long,” and that living to 100 usually meant “losing your capacity.”
Norma died five days before turning 100.