Lady of class

A privileged, upper-crust British upbringing prepared her for high society, but she chose life in Canada instead

By: Kevin Rollason

 

Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Teillet was raised in an upper-class British family and never learned to cook. When her Canadian husband suddenly died, leaving her alone to raise five children, she took charge by going back to school so she could get a job and support her family.

Teillet died at 94 on June 2, after living with Alzheimer’s disease for some time.

David Teillet said his mother was raised in the high society world of teas and balls. She gave it up to marry a Canadian who had a modest background.

"She was 100 per cent taken care of (while) growing up," David recalled recently.

"Growing up, she didn’t do cooking, she didn’t make tea, she never did laundry. She was born privileged and could have done anything she wanted. She chose to marry my dad, who was a great guy, and she came here."

When she was four, Betty’s parents sent her from Ceylon — present-day Sri Lanka — to England so she could attend boarding school. She never returned home to live with her mother and father. The decision to send her away came after her older sister, Eleanor, died, possibly from a tropical illness.

"It would have been halfway around the world on a steam ship so she just spent most of her vacations with a friend’s family during holidays," David said. "And, if that didn’t happen, she would just stay at the school.

"My mother said the day she left, she woke up and her mother was sitting on the bed crying. So it must have been hard."

Teillet’s sister-in-law, Kathy, said Betty barely knew her parents. "She said once her dad was visiting England, and she went to meet him at the train station, and she worried she wouldn’t recognize him."

Teillet was born in Ceylon on Oct. 8, 1923, to Arthur and Norah Dawson. Her father was working there as the surveyor general in the colonial service when he met his future wife while she was on a world trip.

David said while growing up, in the pre-internet age, he and his siblings had no idea about the history of their mother’s family. When he was 10, his mom’s dad died, and he received a cigar case that had been given to his great-grandfather by Queen Victoria’s eldest son, who later became King Edward VII. At that point, David realized there was more to his family’s history.

And that’s only one interesting branch on his mother’s family tree.

Betty’s mother was a Matheson. That side of the family can be traced to the 13th century, during which they were powerful landowners. A baronetcy was created in 1851 for the head of the clan. The honour came after James Matheson and his partner William Jardine founded Jardine Matheson and Company in 1832. It became the largest British company in China, importing opium, tea and other goods from China. At the time, opium was legal in Britain and other western countries.

Later, when the Chinese government attempted to stop cocaine exports, both Matheson and Jardine persuaded Britain to attack China, leading to the First Opium War in 1839 to 1842.

The company still exists, but the family sold its interest in it several decades ago.

"My mom didn’t talk about all this," David said.

During the Second World War, Teillet, who had recently graduated from high school, joined the Royal Air Force. Her family recalled that she learned to lie about what she was doing.

Kathy said her sister-in-law revealed a few years later that she had been a radar operator at secret radar stations, which were set up to alert the air force when German planes were on the way during the London Blitz.

"That would have been an important job," she said, "But she didn’t talk about it much."

While with the air force, she met Ted Teillet, an airman from Winnipeg. He had his own interesting family tree: he was a great grand nephew of Louis Riel.

They were married on July 4, 1944, when he was 23 and she was 20.

"She thought she would live like her mother did," Kathy said. "She went to finishing school and said she had never worked a day in her life, but then she saw Ted. She later got to know him and she married him."

Turns out, Betty didn’t know her husband’s full name until the marriage ceremony.

"They would have thought Ted was the short form of Theodore, but when it was announced during the wedding his name was Heliodore, she said ‘the whole church burst out laughing,’"

To join her husband in Canada, Teillet was issued Canadian Travel Certificate No. 4453, which was valid for a single journey to Canada, by Canada’s high commissioner in London on Feb. 7, 1945.

Her certificate was stamped on Feb. 27 in Liverpool and she arrived in Halifax as a landed immigrant on March 6. She soon arrived in Winnipeg.

Kathy and her husband lived with Betty and Ted for a year while waiting for their own house to be built.

"There was a shortage of housing because all the veterans wanted to come home and have families," she said.

Kathy said after she moved in, she quickly realized her sister-in-law’s housekeeping skills were almost non-existent.

"Betty was educated to be a lady, and she was a lady," she said.

Laughing, Kathy said Betty "told me ‘When Ted proposed, he had always told me I’m not in the same class as you.’ She said ‘I thought it meant dusting. I didn’t know it meant I’d have to clean a toilet.’"

But Kathy said because both of the young brides didn’t know how to cook many dishes, they each subscribed to several magazines and traded recipes.

Betty and Ted had three sons and two daughters, but in 1966, Ted had a heart attack while working near Kenora and came back to Winnipeg before seeing a doctor. Days later, he died.

Betty suddenly had to get a job.

"She was educated, but not for a living," Kathy said. "She knew how to serve tea, but she had been in boarding school until the war and then she met Ted. She was a widow when she was young, and she had nothing in her background for a job.

"We all thought she would go back to England, but she said I’ve lived in Canada now longer than England, and I don’t want my children to go to boarding school."

She enrolled at Red River College and got a certificate that allowed her to find work at a doctor’s office and then in the medical records department at Health Sciences Centre.

"She had the strength and the desire to do what had to be done," Kathy said.

"She was a good mother. Her daughter, Lea, told me she doesn’t remember her mother ever yelling at them. She had that gentle nature."

Teillet is survived by her five children, 10 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca