Alice Hadden, Lives Lived March 29/11
Wife, sister, aunt, friend, matriarch, volunteer. Born Nov. 22, 1913, in Stoney Creek, Ont. Died Feb. 12 in Dundas, Ont., of heart failure, aged 97.
Alice May Hadden was the eldest girl in a household of five children born to Frances Caroline Walker and James Kenneth Oliphant. The hardships of the times and later the Depression forged a fierce devotion to family that lasted throughout Alice's lifetime.
She loved order and beauty in its many forms, whether in a piece of clothing, an antique, a bouquet of flowers or bird figurines, which she took to collecting later in life. In fact she loved anything bearing bird iconography.
One of her greatest regrets was that when she was a young girl and learning to shoot a rifle, she aimed her first shot at a bird, never expecting to hit it. It fell at her feet, and she wept at the memory. This early incident seemed to make her incapable of killing anything, including plants. In her remaining years, visitors could not leave her apartment without some kind of plant. Her favourite tree was the ginkgo, the dinosaur of the tree world. She propagated its seeds on her windowsill and always reminded people it was "the good-luck tree."
Alice held many interesting jobs. During the Second World War, when National Steel Car was converted to a munitions factory, she checked shells for flaws in casting. She also worked as a housekeeper, in a sweets shop, at a dairy and in a vineyard. Her longest position was at a nursery, where her green thumb found a calling encouraging all manner of living things to grow.
A devoted lifelong member of the Vinemount Women's Institute, Alice served for 55 years, approximately half as president. She often held meetings in her living room, bringing out the good china teacups and her delicious home baking while the women quilted for charitable causes..
Alice met Homer Hadden through mutual friends in the late 1930s. They married in 1940, raising daughters Linda and Victoria.
In 1990, Homer died of heart failure, and Alice took seriously to the craft of quilting. In her remaining decades, with Linda's help, she created more than 200 quilts. That same year, Victoria began painting. In 2007, they jointly exhibited Alice's quilts and Victoria's artwork in an exhibition entitled Coming Home at the new Hamilton Public Library. Both won awards for their works.
Alice loved to read, and never missed a day without a daily newspaper. She also loved the ponies and dreamed one day her horse would come in for the sole purpose of easing the lives of her loved ones. She touched many people throughout her 97 years with her beautiful smile and her kind, gentle and generous spirit. Her legacy lives on in the quilts she sewed and in the many cherished memories of her two grandchildren, Carrie and Brian, and four great-grandchildren, Jack, Owen, Lauren and Benjamin.
By Victoria Hadden, Alice's daughter