Anniversary slips away, family fights on
Uncle says mother wasn’t of sound mind; niece disagrees
They marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the First World War hospital ship Llandovery Castle a couple of weeks ago.
In Toronto, there was the debut of an opera about the 14 Canadian nurses who died that day: June 27, 1918.
And in Hamilton, a different observance. In a stuffy courtroom, an uncle and his niece continued the fight over what should happen to a portrait of their ancestor who died on the North Atlantic that day.
The Llandovery Castle was clearly marked as a hospital ship, but the Germans torpedoed it anyway. They tried to cover their tracks by machine-gunning survivors in the water. But they missed one lifeboat and word got out.
The incident stoked fury. A dramatic Canadian poster used the downed ship to sell victory bonds. And another piece of art surfaced. It’s not clear who painted it and when, but it was a portrait of fallen nurse Alexina Dussault. She had frequently served on ships carrying wounded soldiers back to Canada.
The painting ended up with her sister in Montreal. Then with Alexina’s great-niece — also named Alexina, last name Gardiner. She is 93 and lives in the Amica retirement home in downtown Dundas. For the sake of clarity, we’ll just call her Grandma. That’s what Kathryn Punys calls her. She is 46 and lives in Dundas too. She and her grandmother had talked about that painting many times and the story that went with it.
Last year, with the centennial of the sinking approaching, Kathryn and her grandmother discussed putting the portrait of Alexina in a museum. And on July 11, 2017, Kathryn wrote out a little note saying she would do just that. Grandma signed it.
Kathryn contacted the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. It replied that it would “happily accept your kind offer, and the painting will become part of the National Collection … it’s such a lovely piece.”
But then Kathryn’s uncle, Murray Gardiner, 62, found out about the arrangement and called the police. They went to Kathryn’s home, but she would not surrender the painting, crated and ready to be shipped to Ottawa. The police told Murray this was a civil matter. And that’s where things stood when we first reported on this last November.
Since then, there was a smallclaims-court settlement conference, which settled nothing. And last Thursday, Deputy Judge A. Douglas Burns heard the case.
Murray, who has power of attorney for his mother, says she was not capable of making the decision to turn that painting over to a museum. He said he had an assessment done on her after the painting was taken. And the finding, he says, is that “although mother presents in an affable way, she can be convinced of anything by anybody.”
The painting, he said, “was her connection to the past … As long as she’s alive, it should be with her. After that, I have no interest in the painting.”
Kathryn argued her uncle overstates that level of incompetence. She said an assessment from St. Peter’s hospital in September 2017 found Grandma had only “mild dementia.”
In short, Kathryn said, Grandma was able to decide whether the portrait should be donated. “She had no pictures of her husband or of her children when they were young. No wedding ring … she said the past didn’t matter.”
After nearly an hour of testimony, one more piece of evidence to come — the report by Hamilton police on the day they tried to take the painting from Kathryn. It turned out there were two versions of that report, so it was not introduced. The case has been adjourned, awaiting police clarification.
For now, the anniversary having slipped away, the painting remains with Kathryn. She stands ready for another day in
court. Murray, who spends much of his time in South Africa, may not be present for the next round but his lawyer will be.
Any final words?
Uncle Murray: “No comment.” Niece Kathryn: “No regrets.”