Nella Iris Barker Chapman ThomasSupplied
Nella Iris Barker Chapman Thomas: Creator. Lifelong learner. Traveller. Matriarch. Born March 31, 1925, in Briercrest, Sask.; died May 19, 2023, in Saskatoon, of heart failure; aged 98.
Iris Barker lived through drought and food shortages in the Depression; her mother lost her teacher’s salary and had to keep house for farmers, her father lost his job and received a near-fatal injury at the Regina Riot. All this took a toll on her parents’ marriage, which ended. The absence of a close, loving family and happy home was the greatest deprivation of all.
Iris found solace in painting on calendar pages with colours she crushed from wildflowers; by listening to the meadowlarks singing her and her little sister June to school, and through affection from her grandmother and father. She excelled at school and had close friends, which offset her deep insecurity. After high school, Iris came in second in a provincial exam for a single scholarship. Her dream of university dashed, she worked at a bank, spending any extra cash on fashionable clothing after so many years in dungarees.
One day, Lorne Chapman walked into the bank and into Iris’s heart with his generous smile, dapper fedora and Robbie Burns recitations on picnics. Marriage brought four daughters – Norma, Paula, Bonnie and Pam.
Iris continued to create and sell her paintings and design furniture that Lorne built. The family moved to Tisdale, Prince Albert and Saskatoon as Lorne’s career advanced. At each new home, Iris’s creative flair produced beautiful interiors and gardens. The TV was always in the basement.
Iris loathed grocery shopping, so Lorne happily volunteered, yet always returned with too many packaged sweets. Iris asked Lorne to buy a large freezer, which she kept full of homemade baking. Her specialty was fudge: chocolate walnut and divinity fudge, and bringing it to school made her daughters’ popularity shoot up. On Halloween, trick or treaters called out, “This is where the fudge lady lives!” Iris ground her own meat, made her own yogurt and kept a cupboard full of preserves and jellies made from hand-picked chokecherries.
Although her academic dream was thwarted, for 40 years, Iris and her friends held retreats that included books, discussions and guest speakers that empowered her and awakened her to social justice. She learned how to stand up for what was right. She reported a teacher’s verbal abuse of her daughter and other students, and a church leader’s sexual misconduct. Through these actions, Iris taught her daughters to stand up to powers that demean human rights.
Iris’s repeated mantra was, “There will always be many people around you with much more anywhere you walk in life; however, there will be many more with much, much less.” When her daughters wanted the latest thing, they’d say, “Well, everyone has it!” That didn’t wash with Iris. But later in life, she loved taking them on annual “Whee Weekends.” Iris once wrote she delighted in “spoiling them and catching up with my austerity teachings of not showering them with ‘endless things’ in childhood.”
Two years after Lorne’s death, Iris was set up on a blind date in a bridge foursome. She was initially irked at having to play with Dr. Garth Thomas, a former University of Saskatchewan mathematics professor, but they soon found common enjoyment of mathematics, crossword puzzles, travel and community service. They married in 1998. He was her “silver-haired fox.”
Iris’s childhood taught her to handle adversity, which enabled her to care for others for most of her life, beginning as a child with her sister, through her mother’s stroke, Lorne’s Alzheimer’s, and Garth’s stroke and cancer, keeping him at home until the end.
At 93, a malfunctioning hotel door caused Iris to fall and she received severe injuries. But her resilience and intense physiotherapy helped her walk again. So no one else would suffer, she also successfully sued the hotel owner.
Iris’s daughters lived interchangeably with their spirited mother for three years, enabling her to stay at home for as long as possible. She outlived all her friends, never complained and asked for nothing except chocolate.
Her life was a rags-to-riches story. Iris’s greatest treasure was her family who held her in the warmth of their love until she drew her last breath.
Bonnie Chapman is Iris’s daughter. Philip Cameron is her son-in-law.
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