12 Wild Women and One Outhouse

Before tattoos, body jewellery and thong underwear were common, we were twelve young women who bonded while attending Ottawa’s oldest and most historical high school, part of the “Class of 1960”.

Our group included a head girl, basketball player, cheerleaders, Girls’ AA leaders, Hi-Y members and high school yearbook staffers.

How could we know then that we twelve young women would fan out in different directions of the world and yet maintain our bond, albeit sporadically, over more than 60 years? And who would guess these same twelve women–at sixty-five years old–would get together again to celebrate their sisterhood?

Cottage country reunion

That’s exactly what happened with the “Longlasters” reunion over four sun-filled summer days at a McGregor Lake cottage in Québec in 2007. One common discovery: although our divergent life experiences had shaped our growth and development throughout adulthood, our core values and close friendship ties remained intact.

After university, which we all attended and which was a new phenomenon in our era, two of us joined CUSO (Canadian University Services Overseas) landing in India and Ghana respectively. Those two-year commitments led to a successful professional East Indian Classical Dance career for one and the launching of scholarships for female students in Ghana by the other.

One of us taught in the Canadian North and Newfoundland while another founded an alternative individualized approach to education in Toronto. A third taught Tai Chi for over 20 years. One was an economist working in Ireland.

Transitional Age

As one of our group puts it: “we represented the transitional age” for women. Our models at the time were stay-at-home moms; the academic environment then did not encourage us in careers.

We had to learn what we had not been taught. So, we worked outside the home and raised children simultaneously, some of us at careers that were male-dominated at the time. We each found success in our fields; in fact, we represented examples of “firsts.”

One was a film guru who received a Visionary Leadership Award from the Canadian film industry as well as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal awarded to young Canadian achievers under 40.

Also among us were professional writers, editors and a publisher, an economist, a nurse, a chartered accountant, school teachers, and a leading advocate in working to establish a National Botanical Garden in Ottawa.

Only one outhouse

McGregor Lake was the perfect catalyst for our reunion. Unfortunately, we had access to only one outhouse. Fortunately, the one-holer was tastefully decorated with ceramic cherubs. Still, it wasn’t a fluid change from indoor plumbing.

Those mosquitoes! Bugs! Creepy crawly creatures! That awful smell!

And being women with weak bladders from childbirth, stumbling our way in the middle of the night to the unlit outhouse in the darkness of a country sky, guided only by a flashlight beam, was fraught with danger from unseen creatures and obstacles.

Swimming au naturel

Foregoing daily routines back home, inhibitions due to flabby stomachs and fleshier bodies disappeared: we swam in the nude. We leapt eagerly back to nature, played in the lake. We listened to the plaintive call of the loon, remembered former crushes, camping days and campfires together. We devoured a calorie-rich birthday cake after an enthusiastic chorus of “Happy Birthday to us!”

In the wee hours of morning, we serenaded the lake’s cottagers with loud songs, sung off-key and accompanied by raucous bawdy jokes and copious bottles of wine. We shared stories and hopes and fears and philosophies and health hints. The worst physical injuries were a foot splinter from the dock and a nasty insect bite.