A tale of two
incredible women

Last Friday, I had the honour of attending the memorial service for Helen Burns.

While very few people outside of Navan and Cumberland knew much about her, she was a pillar of her community for the past 50 years.

Helen was a lifelong member of the Navan Women's Institute, a devoted member of the Cumberland-Navan United Church, and a volunteer/organizer/ mother hen of the Navan Fair. In fact, there hasn't been much that has occurred in Navan during the past 50 years that Helen wasn't involved in.

I first met Helen in 2005. It was the first I entered the Navan Fair baking competition. I had done quite well, winning several red ribbons, but was nowhere near the level you needed to win the Baking Queen crown.

Anyway, Helen was manning the table in the Navan Fair building when I approached her with my idea to have a Baking King, as well as a Baking Queen, so more men would want to enter.

She probably thought I was off my rocker, but she humoured me just the same and we had a great conversation about how men can bake just as well as women, and perhaps Fair should name a Baking King.

Helen was speaking from experience, of course. Her husband Bob has won more bread machine ribbons over the years than the rest of the competition combined.

The next time I met Helen was at their home on Trim Road. I'll never forget walking in the door and seeing their cat lying on what appeared to be a large pillow in the corner. It wasn't until I walked up to the animal that I realized it wasn't a pillow, it was the rest of the cat which weighed close to 30 lbs.

In the years that passed since out first meeting, Helen always greeted me with a big hug. She made me feel like I was part of the Navan community even though I lived in Orleans.

She was tickled pink when I wrote a story about Bob's second cousin, Oliver Thomas Burns, who left the family farm in Navan in 1890 to fight alongside the British forces in the Boer War. The 23-year-old was killed during the Battle of Paardeberg shortly after he arrived in South Africa and his name is carved into a memorial on the site, along with 20 other Canadian soldiers who died that day. His name is also listed on the Navan cenotaph.

Helen's roots in Cumberland run as far and as deep as nearly anyone's. She was born an Edwards and she was related to the Fergusons and the Kennedys through various marriages and in-laws.

The pride she had in her community manifested itself through thousands of hours of volunteer work. She was an institution and she will be sorely missed especially by her children and grandchildren, and her husband Bob.

Her's was a life well-lived.

Speaking of a life well-lived, I recently wrote a story about another incredible woman. Kimberley Fawcett was nearly killed in an accident that claimed the life of her nine-month-old son Kieran in 2006.

She not only lost her infant son, but se also lost her right leg which they had to amputated just above the knee.

It's hard to imagine the emotional and physical trauma, Capt. Fawcett went through in the weeks and months that followed the accident. A lesser person would have drowned in self-pity, or allowed themselves to be overcome with hatred for the man who caused the accident.

But Cpt. Fawcett did neither. She didn't allow the memory of her son to be tainted by negative feelings or thoughts. Instead, she used her son's death as the singular motivating factor in her recovery.

Within six months of the accident she was walking with a prosthetic leg. She eventually started running and within a year she was training for the World Paratriathlon in Vancouver which she competed in in June 2007.

She went on to become a double bronze medalist in 2009 and 2010, Last spring, she switched gears and started training for the 100-metre dash which she hopes to compete in at the Summer Paralympics in August.

Later this week, she will be taking a break from her training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money and awareness for Parathletes Canada, a non-profit organization she founded to help provide equipment and training for physically-disabled athletes who want to take part in competitive sports.

If you look up the word "inspiration" in the dictionary, you will see a picture of Cpt. Fawcett.

And somewhere in Heaven, a little boy is beaming with pride.

(If you wish to comment on this or any other View Point column please write to Fred Sherwin at fsherwin@magma.ca)

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