Mother, wife-partner, Canadian Mothercraft Society executive director. Born March 11, 1924, in Hamilton, died Dec. 19, 2011, in Welland, Ont., of heart failure, aged 87.
It wo uld not have occurred to many Canadians in the 1960s that they would have reason to communicate with royalty.
But since the Queen Mother had been a long-time patron of the Mothercraft movement, and the Canadian branch was receiving negative press, Norma Jean Hopkins McDiarmid, the society's executive director, decided that it was time to demonstrate that regal patronage could still be influential.
Sir Martin Gilliat, private secretary to the Queen Mother, responded to Norma's appeal in 1969.
"On the occasion of the Opening of the New Canadian Mothercraft Centre in Toronto, I send to all those concerned with the Society my warmest good wishes for the future continuance of your important and dedicated work," it read, and was signed Elizabeth R., the Queen Mother Patron.
Born in Hamilton in 1924, Norma grew up in Welland, Ont. She graduated from Hamilton General Hospital's nurse training program in 1946. She often said only individuals with some degree of wealth were able to get good health care, and her social conscience prompted her to take a personal interest in disadvantaged mothers and illiterate adults and to become a passionate supporter of numerous social causes.
Norma strongly believed in the promise of education and supported her husband, Garnet, as he progressed from principal teacher in elementary schools to completing a PhD at Syracuse University in 1966.
Juggling a full-time job while raising three children, Norma became their model of an active working mother.
On their return to Canada, she joined a research project at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and made professional visits to Mothercraft, whose board of directors decided that it needed her expertise and enthusiasm.
Under ordinary circumstances, Norma was not an experimenter. But on the subject of baby and toddler care, her vision and ability to choreograph her staff's abilities drew innovation from the chrysalis of tradition.
The society advanced from a focus on breast-feeding problems into the emerging fields of early-childhood education and research into poverty and child-rearing practices.
Norma and two staff members wrote Loving and Learning, which led the field in "how-to" texts on the rearing of infants and toddlers. She also wrote a history of the Canadian Mothercraft Society.
On learning of Norma's passing, a former staffer wrote: "My most vivid recollection is of Norma's immediate response to crying infants, demonstrating her strong belief that healthy attachment sets the path for future healthy development. She was way before the times in this!"