Courageous or Crazy

THESE BOOKS WERE REVIEWED FROM ADVANCED GALLEYS PROVIDED BY THE PUBLISHERS.

Some children, the sages are known to say, “come from the factory” a particular way—and never really change. If you are fortunate, your changeless child might be a self-motivated go-getter who fears little, accomplishes much, then turns around and gives as much and more to others, during a lifetime of meaningful work. They might even then write about that life, in seven succinct and saucy chapters, and title the work Courageous or Crazy, a phrase they will explain with self-deprecating humour, which sets the tone for the book, published by Boularderie Island Press in the summer of 2022.

Hilda Tremblett, “an immigrant to Canada who was born and raised on the windy shores of Bonavista, Newfoundland” (before Canada’s last province joined Confederation in 1949), was such a child, born the third of four, to a fisherman’s family. Tremblett was also fortunate to receive timely support as a young woman, by way of a scholarship from the JW McConnell Foundation. This unexpected windfall (she was the single student in all of Newfoundland to receive the scholarship, with only four others awarded across Canada) gave her the opportunity to study medicine at McGill. It would also shape her future ideas about giving back, whenever she could, to students of modest means.

But in 1945, she was simply and proudly a fisherman’s daughter who had been set to start a teaching career in a two-room school in Greenspond, on the northeast coast of Newfoundland. Instead, she was off to the big city of Montreal. As the saying goes, she never looked back—until, perhaps, she started writing her book.

Tremblett, an Order of Canada recipient and a noted philanthropist, graduated as a general practitioner from McGill then specialized as a pathologist at Queen’s University in Kingston. She spent almost her entire working life at Northside General in North Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Her community has been blessed in many ways by this choice. In 1996, in honour of her parents, Tremblett created a memorial award for Cape Breton University students requiring financial assistance. In 2021, Tremblett committed a generous planned gift to the university.

Tremblett was at first reluctant to write her life story. Her friends, and a suddenly changed world, changed her mind.

“Several people have said, ‘Hilda, you should write a book about your life,’” she writes in the preface.

“I am a voracious reader, often reading two books in one day. Although it may be true that everyone has a ‘story to tell,’ I wasn’t convinced that I had a book waiting to be written. Until Covid19. Like so many people, I was more or less housebound, but I do not like to be idle. The pandemic finally presented an opportunity to put pen to paper.”

The book, she says, “is not a memoir—it is a series of reflections. I wrote what came to mind each day when I sat down at my desk and recorded my thoughts in longhand. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing process.”

As the reader will discover, there is little Tremblett doesn’t like, in terms of taking on a new life experiences, and conquering them. That determination and self-confidence would take her, a girl born in 1932 to a working-class family in a hardscrabble maritime setting, to places that few young women of her day had the opportunity to seek out. Even today, her story is a handbook for success against the odds.

“For any young woman reading this book,” she writes, “my hope is that I will inspire you to go for it, but be prepared to work hard and don’t be afraid. You may not always be able to return the favours to those who helped you, but you can always pay it forward when the opportunity arises.”

A reader might wish for more personal details of Tremblett’s life, and perhaps fewer broad strokes that paint over what must have been a complex life journey, but introspection is not her strongest suit. Tremblett lives in the here and now—eyes open for the next challenge. ■

Hilda Tremblett Boularderie Island Press

MARJORIE SIMMINS is the author of Somebeachsomewhere: The Harness Racing Legend from a One-Horse Stable; Memoir: Conversations & Craft; Coastal Lives and Year of the Horse. A freelance journalist, she has published across Canada with major daily newspapers, as well as numerous magazines.