Evlyn Kavanagh: Dancing Queen Turns 100

Editor's Note: I spotted this story a couple of weeks ago when it ran in the Vancouver Sun, and reached out to the writer, Diana Cawood, asking her if I could share this story with my Nashua readers. I thought it was kind of cool that Evlyn got her start in Nashua, and that she's still going strong at 100.

Nashua connection aside, I appreciated this beautiful, complete portrait of a life well lived, and thought it might be an inspiration to us all as we make our way in this life. Thanks to Diana Cawood for sharing, and to Evlyn Kavanagh, for showing us how it's done. - CR

By Diana Cawood

“I’ll get the one with the cha cha dress. I like that picture because it shows my legs.” Evlyn flashed her trademark smile as she stood up from the dining table, “I’ll get it right now.” I’d asked her for a picture, one she likes, to accompany my story about her 100th birthday. Evlyn Kavanagh turned 100 years old on June 11, 2012. 

“Please, Evlyn, don’t hurry. I have to write the story first.” We were enjoying a cup of tea from gold rimmed china cups decorated with magenta and pink roses, a matching tea pot, and a plate of treats on the smooth white tablecloth at Evlyn’s home in Kerrisdale, Canada. Delicious, healthy treats. Evlyn’s own recipes for mini-muffins made with zucchini, parsnip and carrot and something she called a breakfast bar made with sesame seeds, almonds, oats, coconut and a dollop of dark chocolate on top.

If you’d like to live a long, happy, healthy life you could follow in Evlyn’s footsteps. Evlyn’s greatest passion is dancing. She also loves chocolates every day (dark, of course), ice cream every evening (Maple Walnut and Cherry are her favourites), French cooking, travelling and men.

On May 5th, last month when Evlyn was still just 99, she danced five different dances under the chandeliers in the Westin Bayshore’s Ballroom as a student participating in Arthur Murray’s annual Showcase. After her cha cha and tango she changed from a Latin costume to her ball gown for the waltz and foxtrot.

More than 150 dancing enthusiasts glided, twirled, kicked, dipped and turned in solo routines and group heats in front of cheering fans and clipboard carrying adjudicators. Before the 8-hour day of dancing was over, Evlyn changed her dance costume again for the rumba. “I kept that last dress on because I thought it would be good for the night’s dinner and dance,” she told me. It was. And Evlyn was good, too, for social dancing throughout the evening.

Her dancing friends affectionately call her the Queen. She’s never without her bling.

Diamond and pearl necklaces, matching earrings, diamond and jade rings, a gold and emerald pin on her richly coloured stylish dress. In contrast to the other Queen, Evlyn sews her own dresses.

She is also regaled as the supreme social flirt in the dance studio.

“There’s no sense getting into an elevator if there’s no men it.” This quick repartee was Evlyn’s response to one of the dancer’s observations that there was only one man in the elevator as we left the studio on the 5th floor of the Tom Lee building after the regular Friday night dance party a few weeks ago. We turned to Evlyn in surprise but she just lit up her grin and batted her eye lashes, “I like men. What’s wrong with that?”

Evlyn was born on June 11, 1912, in Nashua, to Acadian parents. At the time her father bridged the Canada/US border with his first home in Carleton, Quebec and his US home in Nashua, just 40 miles from Boston. He served as the Master Mechanic on a ship sailing between Boston and Canada. Evlyn’s early years in Nashua were stress-free except for piano lessons enforced by her mother. Evelyn, as the first child (there would be 9), couldn’t escape the parental insistence despite Evlyn’s desire to be a ballerina. From the age of 6 she practiced piano, sat the exams and, at age 14, achieved the 8th level diploma, the highest level attainable from the Dominion College of Music in Montreal. She’s thankful now, recognizing how the piano was such a great catalyst in her life for socializing and entertaining. And early entrepreneurship.

She laughed in disbelief as she remembered that she taught piano to three students who would come to the house for their lessons once a week for a year. They paid her 50 cents a month. “Now”, she said, “my grandson teaches piano during his summer holidays for $18 an hour.

When Evlyn’s father became ill he decided to move his family back to the home in Carleton, Quebec. Evlyn was 12 years old. The home was far from the convent where she would go to school so Evlyn became a border at the convent. No one could have predicted that these circumstances would position Evlyn exactly right to meet the man who would become her husband in just a few years.

The convent ended each school year with a big play. “I had the leading part – always had the leading part.” Evlyn’s grin deepened the dimples in her cheeks. Her cheeks flushed. She tossed her curls. Sparks flickered from sapphire eyes. Diamonds flashed on her fingers as she fluttered her hands and recalled. “I was friends with two sisters who were also borders. Their older brother had come to pick them up to drive them the 300 miles to their home. After he’d seen the play he said to the  sisters, ‘I want to meet that girl.’”

The two sisters introduced Evlyn to their brother in the parlor of the convent.

“Then they went away and left me talking to him alone and that’s when he asked me to marry him.” That day!! “Yes, I was 14. I said to him ‘Are you crazy?’ because he was engaged to another girl his own age from Gaspe. I laughed at him and said ‘Absolutely No, I want to be an actress!’” On his third proposal, Alfred gave her a ring from Birks.

Evlyn married Alfred Kavanagh, July 31st, 1929, on a beautiful clear sky Gaspe day. Evlyn was 17. Alfred was 29. They honeymooned around the Gaspe Peninsula in Alfred’s Chrysler Coupe with the top down, then on to Boston for a second wedding reception given by Evlyn’s Godmother.

Alfred, with his Bachelor of Science, already had a good job in Carleton, Quebec, as one of the first fish engineers in Canada. He had also done post-graduate work in agriculture at university in Seattle. It was in Seattle that he learned the Charleston.

Evlyn and Alfred focused on settling in to a life they loved in Carleton. They built a brick house for $4,000 in 1929. They had their first daughter, Doris. Evlyn learned the Charleston.

“At the convent we didn’t dance. We played the piano. We didn’t run either. No exercise allowed. Only the piano. I learned to do the Charleston from my husband. Oh, it was lovely because he was very, very good at that.”

Evlyn widened her gaze as she spoke to me, as though the whole room had been transformed back into the hub of entertainment for their vibrant group of friends. They were, as Evlyn said, “big fish in a small town”. Happy. Happy. Until 1932.

Headhunters from Ottawa arrived at the little brick house to persuade Alfred to move to Ottawa as an agriculture specialist. Evlyn and Alfred resisted. “In Ottawa we’ll be a little nothing.” Alfred phoned his father, a man who still ran the general store in the same place he’d always lived and had parented 14 children, ‘Do you think I should go to Ottawa?’ His father told Alfred ‘take that job’. So they did. “We packed up. We moved to Ottawa. We left that nice little house (sold for $1,500), my piano and everything.” They couldn’t have known that the move to Ottawa would also provide a link to Australia that would break Evlyn’s heart.

Leneen, their second daughter, met Gerard, the son of the Australian Ambassador to Canada, in the Ottawa high school when she was 13 years old. Their friendship grew through skiing, partying and studying for the next 7 years. The Ambassador’s time was up in Canada and he had to return to Australia with his family. Both families gathered at the railway station, along with crowds of other friends and the Governor General. It was there that Leneen and Gerard agreed Leneen would come to Australia in the fall and, if they were still in love, they’d get married.

Right after Gerard’s departure, Leneen started packing her trunk. She bought the most beautiful wedding dress she could find in Ottawa and put it in the trunk. She told her mom that if she phones from Australia, Evlyn had to send the trunk. Evlyn went along with this. The fall came. Leneen set sail to Australia. Nothing more happened for months. The following February, Leneen called, ‘Send the trunk’. Evlyn’s heart sank.

She and Alfred could not even get away to attend the wedding. The two weeks’ holiday time allowed from work was not enough to go as far as Australia. In those days, as Evlyn said, “You go by ship.”

Five years later, when Leneen and Gerard already had three children, Evlyn and Alfred planned a long overdue trip to Australia. It was October, 1960. They had lived in Ottawa for 32 years. “We loved it. We had so many friends. That’s the city to live. It’s such an interesting city. Oh, the social life!” Alfred had retired and, a few months before their trip to Australia, they’d moved to Vancouver where Doris, now Dr. Doris Gray, and her husband, John, lived.They wanted to make their ocean voyage a big event – spend two months with family in Australia, get to know the grandchildren, sail home through England and New

York. Evlyn’s gypsy feet were dancing. Her heart was singing.

Two weeks after arriving in Australia, dear Alfred, Evlyn’s husband, died of a heart attack. It’s November, 1960. Everything that had been planned ahead for Evlyn was cancelled.

Evlyn didn’t leave Australia for six months. She was re-booked on the Canberra, still heading for Canada but the long way around, via Los Angeles, England, Europe and Boston. She was alone. She was unsure. She reflected on her situation. “I was very sad, I didn’t care to dance very much but, anyway, who likes a sad face.” Everyone in the dancing community in Vancouver knows this about Evlyn: she chooses to be happy. So it was no surprise to hear that Evlyn took her grieving self in hand and went to the dance parties on the Canberra. It was a surprise to hear that in the next several weeks, she received proposals of marriage from “three very wealthy men on the way home.”

One man (not one of those proposing) told her she should take dancing lessons when she gets back to Vancouver. Evlyn thought she’d visit Vancouver to work out what to do with her life. She had no intention of staying in Vancouver. Her friends were in Ottawa and she wanted to be with her friends.

Evlyn arrived in Vancouver by train from Montreal in the fall of 1961. In her mind this was a visit, maybe stay for Christmas. Evlyn did two things. She went to the community centre and learned the cha cha. Again, there were admirers. But wise Evlyn prevailed. “I didn’t want to get married because I was going to lose my pension from my husband. A pension for life!” She laughed. “They must be so fed up with me! Oh, it’s not a big pension, in those days they didn’t have big salaries.”

She also accompanied Doris and John to look at a house they were thinking of buying in Kerrisdale. Doris asked Evlyn to pick out the room she liked best. Evlyn chose the one with the sun streaming through the windows. And that’s where she still resides. Grandma Evlyn took over the kitchen, the cooking, and the piano, to the children’s delight and the relief of Doris and John, both busy doctors. To this day Evlyn is still the cook in the house. She is also the piano playing hostess for her French speaking group which she joined 48 years ago. They don’t meet so frequently now, but Evlyn still cooks a feast at Christmas and the plays piano for their French carol singing.

Evlyn’s love of cooking kept her busy. Soon after moving into the new home Evlyn cooked for four wedding receptions. She also cooked for parties of 110 (“Plus they asked me to play the piano.”) when Doris and John hosted gatherings for the medical community. After a French cooking course, Evlyn and her fellow classmates replicated one of Queen Elizabeth’s banquet dinners. Evlyn knew she needed to get organized. “I kept a list of my menus. I didn’t want to repeat myself.”

Indeed. A list of recipes. Evlyn’s cooking was well loved throughout the generations. One of her granddaughters, Caron, called on those lists to compile a sacred 111 page book, ‘Grandma’s Cooking’. This family treasure weaves Evlyn’s recipes together with photos of family members and family weddings. As Caron states on the inside front cover, “Evlyn is a wonderful cook who filled our childhood with smells of delight in the kitchen and our tummies with cookies and pies.”

But none of this story yet puts Evlyn into the Arthur Murray dance studio where she will take dance lessons, serious dance lessons, lessons that require Evlyn to sew dance costumes for competitions in places like New Orleans, Las Vegas, New York and Banff. The competition at Banff in April, 2011 was a testament to her love of dancing.

There was lots of snow. The dancing group did not stay in the same building where the dancing occurred. Evlyn and her friends rose to the challenge to get her across the snow in order to dance.

In 2002 Doris and John were preparing to leave on a two month cruise. Evlyn had changed her plans and decided to stay home. The day they left they taught Evlyn how to use the computer so they could stay in touch. They had also given her a 4-lesson gift certificate for Arthur Murray and expected her to use it. Evlyn took to the computer more than she did to the idea of going for dance lessons at “that fancy place”. She still emails all the friends around the world that she’s met on cruises, including daily emails with one retired judge in the US.

The day before Doris and John would return home, Evlyn finally went to Arthur Murray for her first ballroom dancing lesson. “I thought I’d better do it or they’ll be mad at me when they get home. They used to write to me on the computer – have you gone to AM yet?” Evlyn was 90 year old. What happened after that first dance lesson is evidenced in the drawer full of gold medals and awards Evlyn has won at the competitions and in how she showed up on the ballroom floor at the Bayshore last month.

We all applauded her. Evlyn’s been okay with that fancy place for ten years. “They are a business but they are nice and we get our money’s worth. All the people are so nice, they don’t drink, they don’t smoke. I thought that was great.”

One evening at the dance studio about two years ago Evlyn was telling a group of us, in between dances, about her upcoming cruise. I don’t recall if it was her cruise to Panama or the Baltic dance cruise or where. What I do remember is that she looked straight at William, my partner, and me. Her blue eyes sparked, crinkling at the edges in delight. She has a way of looking right at you when she talks to you, like Queen Elizabeth does in her walk-abouts. Evlyn has the same quality of graciousness and kind attention. She said, lifting a be-jeweled hand in our direction, “You two should come on the cruise.” I took a big in-breath and imagined for a split second what that would be like. Evlyn continued, adding a note of command to her voice, “William could dance with me. And Diana, you could work in the library.” The other Queen doesn’t have Evlyn’s sense of humour!

On Friday, June 29th, 200 people gathered in Vancouver to honour Evlyn.

Twenty-two family members arrived from Australia, Germany and the United States to join with family and friends from this community where she has lived for more than 50 years. What arrived in advance were three letters of congratulations: one from the Governor-General of Australia, Her Excellency Ms. Quentin Bryce AC, and one from the Governor-General of Canada, His Excellency, The Right Honourable Mr. David Johnston. Plus personal “good wishes” from Her Majesty The Queen.

Two days after the Vancouver celebration, all the great-grandchildren, the grandchildren, Evlyn’s four sisters, her two daughters plus all the spouses and a few best friends boarded the Celebrity Cruise Line ship called the Century for a one week Alaskan cruise. So there was Evlyn sailing into her 100th year completely in her element: social flirt, lover of fine food, surrounded by loving family and friends, travelling the high seas as the band plays a hot cha cha and she’s on the dance floor in her favourite blue dress that shows a little leg. Happiest of Birthdays, Evlyn. We love you.