June Callwood Frayne

June Callwood Frayne in 2006, with Adara Braithwaite Morgan.  Photo by David Morgan

by Chris Braithwaite

I believe that godparents are intended to concern themselves with the moral progress of their charges, while the biological parents tend to the physical side.  For years, I didnít think my godmother took the job seriously. 

Not that I was complaining. June was half of a couple, Bill and June Frayne, who were among my parentsí closest friends as I grew up in southern Ontario.  It would be hard to imagine a more charming, amusing, and loving godmother.

But she never presented me with the obligatory Holy Bible, substituting a somewhat more morally ambiguous tome, the complete works of Shakespeare. 

As I found God and then lost Him, she pretty much left me to navigate the treacherous shoals of adolescence on my own. 

What I didnít understand then, but am starting to figure out five decades later, is that people tend to live a long time, and never really stop growing.

According to her obituary in the Toronto Star, June Callwood was born on June 2, 1924, in Chatham, Ontario, endured a wretched childhood, and dropped out of school at 15 to become a cub reporter on a small-town paper.  By 1942 she had worked her way up to the Toronto Globe & Mail, where she fell for a talented sportswriter named Trent îBillî Frayne.  She was 19 when they were married. 

June quickly established herself as a terrific reporter, and went on to become a distinguished author of 30 books, including ghost-written biographies of the likes of Barbara Walters and Otto Preminger. 

But somewhere along the line she lost the journalistís knack for being the fly on the wall, the sharp-eyed observer who writes the story but never gets involved. 

The Star posted a gallery of the photos it had printed of her, just after she died on April 14.  My favorite shows her, slim, elegantly beautiful, dressed in the height of fashion, glaring out from the depths of a police paddy wagon.  It was taken in 1968, the caption says, after June tried to stop police from abusing teenagers during a riot in Torontoís hip but troubled neighborhood, Yorkville. 

In a CBC interview just before she died, June gave journalism credit for her remarkably successful career as a social activist.  If she hadnít been looking for stories, she said, she never would have seen the things that drove her to act.

But something she is remembered for saying would give us ordinaryjournalists fits: îIf you see an injustice being committed, youíre not an observer, youíre a participant.î

The plight of those young troublemakers in Yorkville got June going.  She started Digger House as a haven for Torontoís young, sick and hungry hippies.  June never stopped, after that.  She founded Nellieís Hostel for Women, the first shelter for abused women in the city, Jessieís Center to shelter teen parents and their babies, and in 1988, Casey House, the first AIDS hospice in Canada. 

All in all, the Star noted in its farewell editorial, June helped launch more than 50 social organizations îto fight the injustices she saw all around her.î

At some point during her career I had to concede that, even if June hadnít provided much direct moral guidance, she was, by example, setting her godson a pretty high standard.

And though Iíd wandered far from Toronto, the personal connection was always there, always warm, when I got in touch.  When our first daughter was born in 1975 June recognized her as a goddaughter immediately, and began a correspondence which never stopped. Though sheíd been diagnosed with terminal cancer two years before, June drove her little sports convertible down from Toronto to be at Abigailís wedding in 2005 in West Glover.  A year later when Abby, her husband, David, and their new daughter, Adara, were in Toronto, June drove in from her west-end home to say hello to her great-goddaughter. 

îWhat in the world, in the whole world, feels better than holding a baby,î June wrote later in an e-mail to Abigail.  îI love my old veined hands on that tiny person.  There it is, the beginning and the end being blissful with one another.î

June was such a vital part of Canada that, when she got the diagnosis of terminal cancer in late 2003, she decided to make it public (it made the front pages) and set out on one last demonstration of how to do things right. 

In that final CBC interview, she expressed one regret:  She wouldnít be around to care for her beloved sportswriter.  Bill is seven years her senior at 89, and she didnít think it would happen this way.

You donít believe in God, the interviewer noted.  îIf thereís nothing after life.î

ìI believe in kindness,î June said firmly.  îI think itís very communicable.î

Strangers downtown almost always hold doors open for each other, she said. 

îAnd the person who comes through the door is a little bit changedî  Great consideration for one another.  Thatís whatís going to change the world.î

A moral universe founded on small acts of kindness inspired June to a life of enormous usefulness, a life that, this month, is being celebrated by a nation.  It seems my parents made a pretty good choice, after all.