THE BATTLEFORDS — Growing up, she fell asleep to the mad pounding of the Atlantic Ocean on the shores of the famous Irish County of Sligo.
As an adult, she found her children's playground frequented by polar bears.
Moving from Ireland to Canada was never meant to be permanent, but Moira Gautron is still here after 54 years.
She retains her Irish lilt and amongst the jewelry she wears daily to keep memories close is an Irish Penal Cross, representative of the times when the Irish were punished for supporting the Catholic church.
For all her Irish roots, Moira is now Canadian, and Battleford is her home of choice.
"Thinking about how things have evolved and how things have changed, I see change as something that is so important," she says. "But so is a sense of continuity and a sense of history and belonging, and that's why I love it so much here. I'm parked right in the middle of such an historic place that I dearly love."
Retired from a career of nursing and working in the field of mental health, she lives in an eclectically decorated condominium in Battleford with a wraparound balcony from where she enjoys a view of historic and scenic sites.
When she downsized from her Westpark log home after her husband Maurice passed away, she brought some of her favourite belongings, including a polar bear rug that represents a memorable time in her life. She also added some new, more current elements, chosen to complement the modern design of her new surroundings and create a comfortable mix of past and present.
Moira Gautron is known for her many years working and teaching in the mental health field. She was the director of the Saskatchewan Hospital for 20 years and served as the district manager for mental health for the Battlefords Health District.
But Gautron believes in change, and that is her past. She retired in 2002.
"Do I miss it? No. I can honestly, truly say no."
People asked her how she was going to manage retirement after being so involved in her job and having loved it so much.
"When I retired," she says, "I made a conscious effort to detach. I found it was such a blessing to finally own your own mind, free to think what you want to think and do what you want to do and not be concerned about illness and pain."
She adds, "It's still out there, but you do what you can and then you let go ... and somebody else is going to carry on."
People change, and that's as it should be, she says.
"I truly believe in that. You have to move on. I had lots of good experiences in my work at Sask Hospital. I had opportunities to develop programs that I think made a difference. Not alone," she adds. "You never do anything alone. You're interdependent as a team."
She subscribes to the idea that mental health and wellness requires an interdisciplinary approach.
"It's not a health issue, not a legal issue, not a social issue, it's all of those issues," she says, and she is gratified that mental health care is continuing in that direction.
During her time at SHNB, she worked to establish more family connections for the patients.
"Family involvement is one thing I really thought was so key."
Family and home have always been the key element in her own life away from work. It was for family's sake that the Gautrons came to be in Battleford.
It was a place where their children would be able to run barefoot on green grass and play without fear of wandering polar bears.
The string of events that brought Gautron to reside in polar bear country began when she was working as a nurse in Ireland.
She grew up in the town of Sligo, the namesake of County Sligo, famous for its scenic beauty and seaside vacation areas as well as for its association with Irish poet William Butler Yeats.
"I grew up in Yeats country," says Moira, whose surname at that time was Blighe.
Her father served in the national police service of Ireland, An Garda Síochána.
"As kids, of course, we spent lots of time at the beach. In the summer time, people came from all over the country and we resented them. 'What are these people doing here?'" she laughs.
From the age of 13 until she was 18 she was educated at a boarding school.
"In those years there wasn't a high school in every town in Ireland ... people had to pay for a secondary education. There were several of us in our family and all of us had to go to boarding school. We weren't rich ... so we were taught from early age to do well in school and get scholarships."
The boarding school experience was not a negative one for Moira, and she also believes it was a valuable experience to have had when she moved away from home to go into nursing. During training, in Romford, near London, England, she lived in residence.
"I really enjoyed my training and enjoyed what I was doing," she says.
"After I finished training I couldn't believe I was going to be paid to do what I was doing ... what a privilege!"
This was at a time when, like today, there was a shortage of nurses and recruiters were looking overseas for staff.
When she went back to nurse in Sligo, some of her co-workers asked if she would be interested in coming to Canada with them. Her preference would have been South Africa, but they assured her if she went to Canada with them, they would go to South Africa with her.
They chose Swift Current because one of the group had an uncle, an opthomalogist, living there, so they would know someone, at least.
They landed in Halifax, N.S. in November.
"We had no comprehension of how cold 'cold' is," she laughs.
"I can remember the wind and the cold and how awfjul it felt. And then we got on a train and e came from Halifax to Swift Current and I could not believe the vastness of this country."
She adds, "I came from an island, and you can go to one end of it to the other in a few hours."
The train trip was five days.
"I was awed by the vastness of it. I felt like I was in outer space," she says. "If you have an island mentality, you have to have boundaries. You need to know your surrounded by somthing, like the ocean, but here it's so vast your just out in the middle of nowhere."
But once in Swift Current, she felt welcome.
"Very quickly you learn that it might be cold and it might be in the middle of wherever, but basically people are people and you're going to be fine here."
It was in Swift Current that she met her life's partner.
"I met Maurice through church. He was a very quiet man. I went out with him, but he was far too serious for me. 'I'm not staying here, I'm going back to Ireland,' I told him."
He answered, "Sure, that's fine."
She laughs, "If I had known him as well then as I did later on, if I was serious about going back to Ireland I would have hightailed it back then, because whatever he decided he was going to do, he would do."
They married in 1962. Aileen, who is now a webmaster in Calgary, Alta., was born in Swift Current in 1963.
Moira did end up going back to Ireland, but not to stay. She describes herself as being not terribly efficient at having babies, so when her husband, who worked for the Department of Transport in Flight Services, was transferred to Baker Lake, N.W.T., it was decided she would stay with her parents during her next pregnancy. Paul, who is now a lieutenant colonel in the military based in Kingston, Ont., was born in Ireland and has dual citizenship.
By the time she came back to Canada, her husband had been transferred to Churchill, Man. Their third child, Shane, who now works with the CP railway, was born during this time, although the delivery was in Winnipeg.
Despite its remoteness and the polar bear population, the Gautrons loved Churchill.
"We made wonderful friends. It was a transient community and people went and left, but Maurice so loved the north, he wanted to stay there."
Still, they felt the children wouldn't have as many opportunities in the north, so Maurice took a transfer to North Battleford in 1972.
The need to relocate had become clear during a trip to Winnipeg.
"The children were totally amazed that there were birds flying free in the trees. They didn't have any experience with trees, just lopsided evergreens totally bare on the north. And when they first walked on grass in bare feet ... !"
In Battleford, the Gautrons created a family home enjoyed by three generations.
"We had a small patio area that Maurice had made interlocking bricks for, and when we had grandchildren visit they made a footprint or handprint."
She remembers saying to Maurice years ago, "Someday we're going to have to leave this house. What about our bricks?"
He told her not to worry, he would just make some more.
"He made a replacement set so that when I left the house I took up the one with footprints and handprints on them and put in the new ones, because I wanted them as a memento ... and no one else would want them."
They reside on her balcony, along with an antique stained glass window and a host of potted plants.
Gardening was something Maurice and Moira had enjoyed together in their Westpark home. They also enjoyed cooking and entertaining, "a very simple life, really."
They enjoyed travelling, making trips to Mexico, Ireland and Europe as well as to Manitoba to visit Maurice's family.
Although home hasn't always been the same place, it has always been very much Moira's centre of interest.
"I love my home," she says.
Some people feed off the energy of always being around others, she says.
"I'm the opposite."
She needs time by herself to regenerate.
"If you don't do that you cannot give to anybody else," she says. "You can't give what you haven't got."
She adds with a laugh, "Not everybody likes what you give, either."
While enjoying time at home, Moira makesgood use of her collection of favourite books. A true daughter of Yeats country, she is passionate about poetry, especially Irish poetry.
"I love poetry, I really do."
One of her favourites is Yeat's The Lake Isle of Innisfree, published in his second book of poems, 1893's The Rose. It is considered one of his first great poems, and is one of his most enduring.
The poem resonates with Moira because it referred to Innisfree, one of about 20 small islands in picturesque Lough Gil, which lays partly in Gautron's home county Sligo and partly in neighbouring County Leitrim.
It's near where her mother's family grew up, she says, and they went there often.
"That [poem] says to me, 'You are who you are,' or as Popeye puts it, 'I am what I am," she laughs. "But Yeats, I think, said it much better."
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
-William Butler Yeats
