Born: 1932, Cadomin (Canadian Dominion Mines), Alberta

Places lived: Cadomin, Edmonton, Victoria, Edmonton

Parents: Anne Pryde Smyth Gerlitz (1903 -2002) and Daniel Eddie Smyth (1891-1945); and stepfather, John Gerlitz

Husband: Jack Ready (1955 – 1971)

Partner: Jules Theodore (24 years)

Children: Marianne (1956), David (1958), Pattey (1959 – 1977), Lori (1961)

Step-siblings: Stepbrother, Reg Gerlitz, and stepsister, Barb Gerlitz, one younger and one older than Helen

Education and Career: Bachelor of Science in Nursing, University of Alberta, 1955; Master of Health Services Administration, U of A, 1982. Helen’s awards included the President’s Gold Medal in Nursing (1954), the Dr. Fulton Gillespie Memorial Prize in Surgical Nursing (1954), and First Class Standing Awards (1952 -1955), all from the University of Alberta.

Her career rose dramatically from public health and staff nurse positions to Acting Associate Director, Nursing Education; to Assistant Professor, Associate Faculty of Nursing; to Associate Director of Nursing, Edmonton Board of Health. Her work in the health field ran from 1955 to 1995.

Professional Associations and Community Organizations: Many organizations related to nursing, community health, public health, international health, and nursing administration over all her years of work. Helen sat on five national health organizations and was a founding member of Alberta Nurses for Nuclear Disarmament. Her volunteer work covers 12 voluntary organizations covering global, multi-cultural, women’s, peace, Unitarian, and native health issues.

Helen Ready. What a name!

Helen’s résume summarized above is testament to a vibrant, multi-faceted, and successful life. But she modestly and quickly acknowledges the significant influence of her mother as role model.

 Early in our first interview, Helen spoke of her love and admiration for her mother, Anne Gerlitz. Not a Roman Catholic herself, Anne had to promise to send her child to the Roman Catholic Church to gain permission to marry her Catholic fiancé, Daniel Smyth. At seven years of age, Helen’s first confession was stressful. Because she couldn’t think of any sins to confess, she made something up. Her mother was an agnostic all her life and joined the Unitarian Church of Edmonton when she was 75! (Of course, Helen had been part of UCE for many years.)

Her mother had been sent to Scotland to visit an aunt just before World War I and got caught there. She was then educated in Scotland and, when she returned to Canada, attended Normal School in Victoria, became a successful teacher in Cadomin, Alberta. There, Anne met Helen’s father, an accountant at the mine.

At that time, there was no road, just the train, called The Blue Flea to Edmonton, via Edson. Helen’s memories of making that big-adventure trip as a child are still vivid. They would stop in Mercoal for refreshments, including beer just for the men. Then they stayed overnight at an Edson hotel before getting back on the train to Edmonton. When she lay in bed as a child in Edmonton’s King Edward Hotel in the late 1930s, Helen could hear the sound of the streetcars going back and forth. One delight was being allowed to have as much water in her hotel bath as she wanted!

Helen, an only child, was obviously a confident, smart, and empathetic little person. She asked tough questions of the Roman Catholic sisters—who couldn’t answer them. Helen did visit the Catholic Church regularly, as she didn’t want to disappoint her Nova Scotian Catholic relatives in the East. But she knew early on that she was skeptical about what the catechism taught.

Helen’s mother took her to Scotland when she was only six. They had to take the train across Canada to Montreal to sail to Glasgow. Her great aunt had died, but her great uncle gave her five pounds when she lost two front teeth. Queen Elizabeth and the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, drove by whilst they were there on the streets of Glasgow. Helen was amazed at the princesses’ beautiful pink complexions. She and her mother were in Scotland during the Munich crisis in 1937. Her mother paid no heed to her husband’s entreaties to return home, and they stayed for six weeks in Glasgow.

When Helen was eight, her father had a stroke and her mother cared for him for five years until he died. Helen was 13. He, like her mother, was full of fun. Her memories of him include the nonsense rhymes her made up to accompany opera tunes in the car. (Helen learned the saxophone in school and later played the clarinet in the Cosmopolitan Band for 10 years.)

She remembers asking her Dad lots of questions, such as “What is infinity?” Surely everything has to end, she thought. And she loved it when her Dad played the mouth organ (someone had to hold it to his lips) and the piano at the same time. Devastated when her dad had his stroke, she had to live with her grandparents for a time.

When finally she was allowed to visit her Dad before they took him to the Edmonton University Hospital, her mother asked her father: “Do you know who this is?” He immediately replied: “Of course, I know my little girl!” Helen thinks that she got the idea to be a nurse from the hospital visits. Mostly she liked the nurses’ uniforms.

Her mother's second marriage, to widower John Gerlitz, took place when Helen was 14, and she acquired a step-sister, Barbara, age 16, and step-brother, Reg, age 13. They formed a close and warm blended family.

The tiny town of Cadomin where Helen grew up was a mixture of ethnic backgrounds and religions and, despite her RC affiliations, she attended the United Church’s Canadian Girls in Training (CGIT) group. That early mixture of groups in her community was no doubt fertile ground for her accepting the “interconnectedness-of-all-existence” principle later in life. She loved school, was good at it, and loved reading literature best of all.

Her best school friend, Jean Thomson, was also an only child, and they remained friends all their lives. Helen and Jean kept in touch by letter until 1982, and then the two of them began travelling together. Between 1982 and 2005, Helen’s trips with Jean included Western Europe, Peru, Bolivia, Turkey, China, Ireland and British Columbia.

In 1950 when Helen started university in Edmonton, the coal mine closed and her mother and stepfather, John Gerlitz, moved to Edson. Helen was very homesick and glad to get home in the summer and work in the grocery store.

In her 5th year of university, Helen met her future engineer husband, Jack Ready. Jack’s fraternity brothers rented a bus and came to the Edson wedding with their girlfriends. After four children and 15 years together, their marriage ended.

Helen has handled her personal life tragedies with courage and strength. In the early years of her marriage with four small children, she worked between the very close pregnancies to earn enough for her family. When the children were small and the marriage ended, it was a challenge. She completed her last university degree over several years, as she was working as a single mother at the same time.

Later, for 24 years, Helen had a fine friend and partner in Jules Theodore, a dentist from the Caribbean who also taught at the university. But Helen did not want to complicate her children’s life and they never lived together. Jules died shortly after the 80th birthday party Helen helped organize for him.

 Helen’s four children, whom she happily describes as all socialists, include her eldest Marianne in Edmonton, who has two boys, Colin and Michael, and stepdaughter, Jennifer. David, her only son, was a flight data analyst in Edmonton, now in Ottawa. Her third child, Pattey, died tragically in a car accident when she was only 17. Helen’s younger daughter, Lori, is a physiotherapist at the Calgary Children’s Hospital. She has one son, Kinnon.

What has UCE meant to Helen?

“Everything,” she said. “It has been central to my life, a real gift. It is a second family and I am at home here. I have liked all the ministers and continue to enjoy the people.” In 1964, she began attending and took all four children to the Church School. The services and friendships strengthen and rejuvenate her. Most of all, UCE verifies what she believes.

Helen’s children all attended Unitarian church school until pre-teens and, although David was the only one who continued attending, Helen said, “They all have the instincts of Unitarians!”

She has participated in the lager Unitarian Universalist community, attending Western Canada District meetings, Canadian Unitarian Council, and General Assemblies of the American Unitarian Universalist Association.

From early in the 1980s, Helen combined her love of travel with her commitment to many work and volunteer organizations. These included a 1985 trip to Israel with the International Council of Nurses; a 1987 trip to Moscow, USSR, with the International Women’s Peace Groups; trips to Montreal and New York with the World Congress for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; to Germany and Denmark with the International Association of Religious Freedom; and to British Columbia for the International Peace Forum in 2006.

Since her retirement in 1995, Helen has

1. co-chaired the Steering committee of Project Ploughshares Edmonton;

2. attended Edmonton Lifelong Learners (ELLA) since its inception (10 years) and been a member of the Executive Board for three years;

3. played clarinet in the Cosmopolitan Band for 10 years;

4. received a 2009 Seniors Association of Greater Edmonton Award in the area of social justice and peace.

As Helen commented about herself, “I don’t like to drop any part of my life.” She never dropped her friend, Jean, who died two years ago. Regular reunions with friends and former co-workers continue today. Helen still has a cabin at Cadomin, and so the obituary comment about her mother applies equally to her: “Cadomin and the Coal Branch touched her soul and in her heart she was up the Branch.” Helen still attends Coal Branch reunions every few years and, this year, she will be attending the 57th anniversary of her University of Alberta nursing class graduation!

Helen has contributed her skills and warm heart to our church organization for many years. She has served as Chair of the Personnel Committee, as Co-President of the Board of Trustees from 1987 to 1988, and as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1986 to 1989. For many, many years, she has sung in the UCE choir.

Helen Ready has spent her life so far teaching, nursing, providing leadership, mothering, inspiring and, in her gentle, quiet way, sharing her rich, loving life.

Helen was ready—long before she took on that oh-so-appropriate name— ready for a life full of adventure, activism, hard work, commitment to family, friends, community, and the globe.

 Interviewed April 2011