John Humphrey Horner

    I’d like to speak for a moment about my mother Marie and some of the milestones on her life’s path.

    Marie had a zest for living that few of us could match.

    And what a full life it was: irrepressible ‘enfant-terrible’ in her youth, Air force officer during the war years, then an officer’s wife, devoted mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She was a dedicated gardener, a good swimmer, the life of a party and a ready friend to anyone she met.

    Marie Constance Simon was born in London, England on October 8^th, 1918. She had a ‘proper’ upbringing, comfortably middle class, in Brighton, a resort town on the south coast of England.  She wanted to be on the stage, dancing, but her mother wouldn’t have it.  Her father, who doted on her, died unexpectedly when she was ten. Sadly, her only brother, Eddie, was shot down and died in Holland during WWII.  Marie herself was a WAF officer during the war, and lived through the Blitz.  She met her husband-to-be Frankie Bell in those urgent times on an air force base.

    The story goes that Frankie had to secure some linoleum flooring for a dance party the flyers were planning and she was the quartermaster, and a difficult one at that ...until Frankie complained of a sore back and Marie gave him a massage he wouldn’t forget. In 1945, they married and soon moved to Toronto where Frankie continued his career as an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

    But life with Frankie didn’t keep her in Toronto long …just long enough for me to be born at the Wellesley Clinic.  Marie and Frankie had four children, myself, Simon, in 1950.  My sister Karen in 1951, and my twin brothers, Nicolas and James in 1955.

    Ottawa soon became her home where Frankie worked at National Defense HQ.  And then Paris, France in 1954 for four years at the NATO HQ. This was followed by another four years in Ottawa where we had wonderful family times… skiing in the winter and camping and in the summer, cottaging with the Arndt family in the Gatineau.

    The family returned to Europe in 1962 to Geneva, Switzerland, where Frankie had a diplomatic post with the Canadian Delegation to the Disarmament Conference at the United Nations.  It was quite the hi-life as I recall: lots of diplomatic parties and duty-free, …new friends from all over the world, extended car trips through Europe in the summer and alpine skiing in the winter.  I remember having playmates with names like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt before I knew what those names meant in the wider world.  Marie met Prime Ministers and Presidents but she never lost her common touch.

    After little more than twenty years together, Frankie was taken away from her, from us, too soon.  At age 46, just after taking early retirement to become an executive with deHavilland in Downsview, he suffered a lethal heart attack that left a big hole in all our lives.

    It was an unsettling time for Marie. She herself was 46, in a new suburban home, without the pillar of strength that Frankie was in her life. After a couple of years, she took the family to Ottawa for a year, then she moved back to Toronto. Then to Jersey in the Channel Islands for a time, then to Brighton, never seeming to find the contentment she sought.

    She met her next husband Allen Meacham Roberts, in Jersey.  Marie was always a big jazz fan and Allen was a jazz singer with a trio that played the clubs on the island. Their relationship was a stormy one and ended before he inherited his title as Lord Roberts. But he kept sending her letters address to "Lady Roberts" well after they parted ways.

    In 1981 Marie moved back to Toronto to be close to her family. Marie didn’t particularly like Toronto or the cold Canadian winters.  Perhaps her happiest times in the city were more recent ones, living in the St Lawrence neibourhood, bicycling about; to the market, to my office, to the cathedral here to arrange the flowers.

    There was an emotional intensity that Marie brought to most situations she experienced. She didn’t hold her feelings in and sometimes didn’t hold words back in situations where it might have been better to do so. But she never held a grudge for long. She’d just put an argument aside and carry on as if it was all over and done with.

    She made friends easily and often kept them for life. Her oldest friend, Peggy, who couldn’t be here today, was her best friend from aged twelve when they ice skated together in Brighton.  Peggy’s home was a second home for Marie who often returned to Brighton to relish the salty air and the happy memories associated with it.

    Marie’s legendary gift-of-the-gab knew no social boundaries. Neighbors, shopkeepers and the receptionist at the doctor’s knew the details of her life and her children’s lives as well as anyone. Everyone was treated with the same openness and familiarity with the possible exception of the British royals whose every move she followed through books and magazines.

    She was such a proud mother and often told us so, trumpeting our achievements wherever she went. She was lucky enough to have all her children nearby as we raised our own broods. Over the last twenty years or so she was able to have us all together for practically every Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving.  She doted on her grandchildren, Marc and Andrew, Heather, Daniel and Trevor, Malcolm and Meagan, Moyra and Hillary, and then her great grandchildren, Victoria and Logan, a few months old, whom she never met. She was always present for their special days with hugs and gifts and her special brand of enthusiasm.

    Marie died on Sunday morning,… peacefully, in her favorite chair.

    She had had an operation on her foot six weeks ago and the leg cast she had to wear was a real bother, keeping her from her favorite activities of swimming, cycling, gardening and shopping. A blood clot formed in her immobile leg and rose to block her circulation.  Even for one as robust and full of life as she was, Life is fraught with unforeseen perils.  But she may count herself fortunate that she didn’t suffer a long illness or be confined to a wheelchair. Marie was never a well behaved patient!

    She will miss the flowers growing on her balcony, her outings with her friends in the neigbourhood and her visits with her children. She was looking forward to flying out to New Brunswick to stay with Karen and David at their hotel on Fundy Bay, and she would have been there now if it weren’t for that darn cast. She so loved the rural peacefulness and the salty air of the Fundy shore that she asked for her ashes to be spread on the waters there when she dies.

    Gertie Benitz was born into the Traill family that owned land in the south of the province of Santa Fé. Her parents gave great importance to education and she was sent to Sherbourne School in England. When she finished the headmistress strongly recommended that she go on to Cambridge University - she was offered a bursary. But Gertie knew how much her education had cost her farther already and, besides, she wanted to come home to Argentina.

    Until the Second World War broke out she divided her time between secretarial jobs in Buenos Aires, the "camp", and polo. The Traills had been connected with Argentine polo since its beginnings in the final decade of the nineteenth century.

    In 1940 she married George Hall, the son of an Englishman, who had come to work in in Argentina, married and settled here. They met on the ship in which they were both travelling to England to volunteer for the Armed Forces. Gertie joined the WAAF, George the Navy; both rose to be officers. She gave up her post in the operations room of an RAF station on the east coast a few months before her son was due to be born. Gertie received the news of her husband's death on an aircraft carrier that was torpedoed in the Bay of Biscay, on November 26, 1942. Their son was born on December 3.

    After the war she returned to Argentina with her little boy and helped her father run the family farm. One day she decided to take an active part in the doma. I remember her father’s anxious face and the concentration of the two men whose job was to keep the bucking horse off the fences. It was not allowed many bucks before, to her disgust, they crowded in to snatch her off.

    In 1946 she married Malcolm Benitz, a childhood friend who belonged to the same group of English-speaking families who settled that part of the province of Santa Fé. They had two sons.

    Gertie was not one for small talk and tea parties. Her interests, apart from her family, were farm management, horses, riding and polo. Malcolm and she had polo ponies as well as cattle and crops on their farm and spent much of their spare time during the season organizing tournaments and helping to run the Las Rosas Polo Club. Gertie was, as far as I know, the only female umpire registered with the Argentine Polo Association.

    Malcolm died in 1986. In 1988 Gertie suffered a stroke that left her semi-paralized. Her mind was hardly affected. She spent the last ten years of her life dependent on others, a particularly difficult position stoically endured, for one of her character. She died February 13, and is buried beside Malcolm in the Benitz family cemetery among trees and fields in the countryside she loved.

    A loving and unselfish mother, intelligent, loyal to her friends and inspiring loyalty in those who worked for her, honest to a fault and true to her convictions, there are not many Gerties around, more’s the pity.

    She will be remembered with affection and respect.

(21 Sep., 1889 - 4 June, 1954)