According to an article about her that appeared in the Guelph Mercury in 1975, “There was a great difference between Clara Dolby and the ‘Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.’ Mrs. Dolby knew exactly what to do with the great many children she had.”
The article, written by local journalist and historian Verne McIlwraith, paid homage to the childcare accomplishments of a Guelph woman who had been an outstanding foster parent for the Children’s Aid Society of Ontario. (The Guelph branch is now Family and Children’s Services of Guelph and Wellington County.)
At one time orphaned and abandoned children from Guelph and vicinity were sent to the Wellington County House of Industry and Refuge (aka “the Poor House”) in Fergus – now the site of the Wellington County Museum and Archives. Or they were taken in by such institutions as Providence House, run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. With the passing of the Children’s Protection Act by the Ontario provincial government in 1893, communities across the province established Children’s Aid Societies. Their mandate was expanded to include children who were victims of neglect. The children’s aid headquarters in Guelph was on Douglas Street. There was a children’s shelter on Clarke Street,
“Fostering” children out to family homes was a new idea. Its intent was to avoid institutionalizing children while at the same time protecting them from exploitation in homes where they would be employed as cheap domestic help. They would instead be placed in homes that had been vetted by the Children’s Aid Society, where their physical and emotional needs would be met in a loving environment by volunteer “foster parents” like Clara Dolby.
She was born Clara Belle Bradley on Nov. 12, 1894, in Hespeler (now part of Cambridge). Clara was the third of four children of Henry and Sarah (nee Kribs) Bradley. She was brought up as a member of the Methodist Church. Clara had a love of family and for children that was one of the mainstays of her life.
In 1916, at age 21, Clara married George R. Dolby of Guelph. He was a widower, 21 years her senior, with two children; an eight-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy. George and Clara did not have children of their own, and 15 years after their marriage George’s son and daughter – Clara’s stepchildren – were grown up. Clara evidently felt she had to have children in the house. George would prove to be her devoted helpmate.
Clara’s service as a foster mother began in 1931. A desperate young mother who had recently been divorced and was in difficult straits brought her year-old boy to Clara and George and asked if they would care for him because she had no one else to turn to.
As Clara later recalled in an interview with the Globe and Mail, “For a year and a half he filled our home with sunshine until his mother remarried.” (Divorce was not as common then as it is now, and it carried a negative stigma. A divorced mother could have a very difficult time providing for a child.)
Clara was heartbroken when the child’s mother took him back. “Parting with each child, you part with a little bit of yourself,” she said.
Shortly after that, the Rev. Amos Tovell, the superintendent of the Children’s Aid office in Guelph, called Clara and asked if she would like to do “a good deed.” Tovell wanted to know if Clara would take in a 20-month-old girl whose mother was ill with tuberculosis. The child had a five-week-old sister who was in Sick Children’s Hospital in Toronto. Clara and George took in the toddler and then later the baby, and cared for them for four years. The mother died, and the father took the girls back when he remarried.
Clara worked closely with Rev. Tovell until his death in 1939. Then she continued to do “good deeds” for his successors. Over the years, she would be foster mother to approximately 175 children. She and George adopted six of the boys they fostered. Clara was once runner-up for Ontario’s Mother of the Year award.
On one occasion, an 11-day-old boy was brought to Clara and George, and they were asked to look after him “for a few days.” Two weeks later, the baby’s one-year-old brother was brought to them, “supposedly for the weekend.”
“We didn’t know it then,” Clara said later, “but they had been abandoned.”
The Dolbys wanted to adopt both boys, but by then George’s health was failing so they were not permitted to officially adopt anymore children. However, there was one 17-year-old boy who applied to the court to “adopt” them as his parents. The judge commented, “It’s a lucky son who can choose such fine parents.”
George spent his final months in the Cambridge Nursing Home in Guelph. He died in 1966. Clara worked for a while at a nursing home for handicapped children in Fergus. Then she became head nurse at the Sunbeam Home in Waterloo, where she once again worked with children, which she called “heaven.”
Many of the children Clara cared for went on to have families of their own, and would bring their children to visit her. They called her Grandma. When George and Clara celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, they were surrounded by more than 40 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. One of Clara’s proudest moments was the christening, in February 1975 at Paisley Memorial United Church, of triplets – two girls and a boy. They were her grandchildren, and the first triplets born in Guelph since 1877.
Clara died on Feb. 17, 1990, in her 96th year at the Eden House Nursing Home near Guelph. She left behind a legacy of selflessness.
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