A sterling Silver life

Winnipeg great-grandmother's boundless energy and lust for living an inspiration to all who crossed paths with her over 98 years

By: Danielle Da Silva

Rochelle Gamliel can still recall the sound of her mother’s typewriter and the mechanical clank every time a letter was pressed into the parchment as her fingers hammered down the keys of the hulking machine.

Roslyn Silver spent plenty of time in front of her typewriter — now at home with Rochelle — and wrote numerous letters to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press during her near-century living in the city.

"She would complain if she saw something that was unjust," says Rochelle, 69. "She was very much a person who believed in equal rights for the poor, for the women, for the underprivileged, and you would see it with everything that she would do."

Roslyn was unflinching in her pursuits. Whether that was advocating for change in the pages of her city’s daily — on the topic of Portage and Main she wrote, "It was asinine to close this famous intersection to pedestrians in the first place" — returning to school as an adult or taking up extreme sports in her senior years, Roslyn filled her days with passion and dared anyone to try to stop her.

"She was feisty. She wouldn’t compromise on her principles. She was a leader and people looked up to her because she was so active that they would all say to me, ‘I only wish we could be like her when we get to her age,’" Rochelle says, adding the petite, 4-10 great-grandmother left a big impression.

The Silver family matriarch died Nov. 19, at the age of 98.

Roslyn was born on Aug. 7, 1921, in Winnipeg to parents Jack and Sarah Weisman — owners of Weisman’s Confectionery — and was raised through the Great Depression in the family home on Flora Avenue with her two siblings, Harvey and Fay.

Having grown up in the midst of a severe economic downturn and constant uncertainty, Roslyn carried many of the characteristics she’d adopted during trying times into her adulthood, Rochelle says.

Grocery shopping trips had a certain level of restraint about them, Rochelle says, but without hesitation Roslyn would give generously to charity and expressed deep empathy for others.

"That was part of her throughout her life," Rochelle says. "She would never throw out a piece of bread even if it was dry; she would say you can make breadcrumbs or toast out of it. It was just those types of years."

As a young adult, Roslyn would fill her spare time visiting with friends and stopping at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association downtown, and it was through her group of friends that she became acquainted with Meyer Silver.

The two were no more than friends when Meyer was deployed in 1940 with the Canadian Forces to Europe during the Second World War, but he would write the Weisman family on a regular basis, and would ask about Roslyn. After five years of courting her by letter from the war, Meyer returned to Winnipeg in 1945 and, two days later, asked her to marry him.

Together the couple raised their three children in the Garden City neighbourhood, and Meyer worked for the City of Winnipeg in the taxation and assessment department while Roslyn stayed at home with the kids.

She continued to work from home while minding Rochelle and her siblings Vivian and Neil Silver. Roslyn was the one-woman complaints department of longtime Exchange District sporting goods retailer Athletes Wear, and when the company would drop off letters at their home, Roslyn would get to work writing back, Rochelle recalls.

"Maybe it was from that she decided to complain so much in the paper," she says, laughing.

But Roslyn was no keyboard warrior; she championed her causes in the community centres, at the board table and put her money where her mouth was.

She sat on the board of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg and the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada, served as a guide for the heritage centre’s museum on the Asper Jewish Community Campus and at Dalnavert Museum, volunteered for the Manitoba Music Festival and the Israel pavilion at Folklorama and volunteered to teach English as a second language at Gray Academy of Jewish Education.

And because she was not able to pursue post-secondary studies after high school, Roslyn found a workaround to get into university seminars in her late 40s. She signed up to audit courses in the Judaic studies program at the University of Manitoba.

"Even though you didn’t have to hand in work or write exams, she wanted to do that, too," Rochelle says. "So she would write the exams, she would write the papers, because she loved learning."

Roslyn was also a fierce supporter of Winnipeg’s many cultural institutions and regularly attended Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra concerts, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Music ‘N’ Mavens and Prairie Theatre Exchange. Judaism and Zionism were fundamental aspects of Roslyn’s life and she helped found the Chavurat Tefilah Synagogue on Hartford Avenue.

"Throughout her long life, our mother had a fierce determination to be socially and physically active as much as possible," says Neil, Roslyn’s youngest. "She loathed being idle.

"We are sure that our dad lived a long and healthy life because she always kept him moving and engaged. Like all happily married couples, they were inseparable."

The couple was married 64 years until Meyer’s death in 2009.

"We were very concerned how our mother would respond to her life-partner’s death," Neil says. "However instead of waiting for her own end, she became even more determined to ‘rage against the dying of the light.’"

In her 90s, Roslyn took up ziplining, whitewater rafting, dogsledding, horseback riding, Jet skiing, and flying in ultralight aircraft, and made a point of always celebrating milestones in the lives of her eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. Even after moving into a retirement residence as a widow, Roslyn continued to be the first to sign up for programs, and when it came time for seniors’ Olympics, her competitive spirit often led her to the podium.

"What so inspired me was the choice she made to continue living life to its fullest, in spite of her terrible loss," Roslyn’s daughter Vivian says. "She packed a lot into those last 10 years, leaving even her great-grandchildren with beautiful memories."

"And she always said to us," adds Rochelle, "‘There’s enough time to sleep or to sit and watch TV when you’re old and decrepit. I want to do as much as I possibly can while I’m living. You only get one life to live and that’s the way it is.’"

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca