...because
Evelyn's approach to Scotty must be recorded: ``Hold his face Daddy while I pat him''.

...sleigh.)
``Belmere'' was the property of Mrs Routledge inherited from her father, Sir Hugh Allan. The ``Anthemis'' was one of the ships that plied the Lake, but the ``Lady of the Lake'', a side-wheeler, belonged to the Allan Line (I think I'm right) and presumably was there to ferry Sir Hugh's family and guests from Magog and/or Newport. ``Belmere'' is 15 miles south of Magog --- a glorious point of land of many acres. The drive from the main road to the House was lined with maples and seemed much more than a mile long. The big house was closed in Mrs Routledge's day. She lived in the spacious and charming (as I remember it) ``farmer's'' house with all her dogs (always a couple of Pekinese among an assortment of other breeds) and, of course, Jim her son when he wasn't in Montreal. She lived there all year 'round and she ran the farm. Often I rode down to have lunch with her or to spend the night, when, while Winnie was luxuriously stabled, we drove the ``pony cart'' inspecting the Estate. This was not only enjoyable but also (whether I knew it then or not) a huge education. Several times I was invited for the New Year's holiday. Jim and I went out by train to Magog where a sleigh, filled with buffalo robes and ``hot pigs'' would meet us. The drive to ``Belmere'' took well over an hour, so it was after 8 o'clock by the time we sat down to one of Mrs Routledge's marvellous dinners served in front of an open fire. (Even the bathroom had a fireplace in it --- and plants!) We used skis a lot to get around the place and, of course, horses. Jim was a wild man and much older than I. We did lots of wild riding (and speed boating in the summer) and I did lots of wishing that my heart would come down out of my throat and quite a bit of finger chewing when same fingers weren't crossed.

...a
Evelyn tells me it was not a Franklin stove but a QuebecHeater: ``The Woodland Queen''

...quiet.
Evelyn reminds me that with Daddy in the lead we tramped out in the snow the plan of the house he intended building near the Lake.

...picnic.
Harry Marpole tells a story about one of the Regattas. Talking to me he said: ``you asked me to organize the swimming races. So I did & in doing so I approached a slightly older man who rather resisted. However I chatted him up & he was persuaded. As I remember it, the race was from the pier, around the raft & back. As I was churning my way out the man passed me coming back! It was Franc McGill.'' (P.S. Frank was one of the greats among Canadian swimmers)

...parents.
A NOTE ABOUT CARS
  • The first car my father bought was in July 1920. It was a Chevrolet touring car ``type 490'' with which he had lots of trouble such as being able to negotiate Partington's hill only if he went up it backwards, and axels breaking (again on Partington's hill) and other miseries causing accidents, etc. There's a bulky file all about them here in the black box. It lasted until 1926 or '27.
  • In 1927 he bought the ``Model T'' Ford which stayed in Town for a few months. Jane and Evelyn both drove it but I wasn't allowed to because I was ``too reckless''. However at the Farm I taught myself to do so (at the expense of one gate post which Raymond West quickly mended) and have driven cars ever since.
  • The third car was a Buick named ``Becky P'' because it was bought with profits from selling Quebec Power stock. But this wasn't a farm car: this was bought to take Daddy to and from the Court House and 655 Grosvenor Ave. Evelyn was the chauffeur, but we all used it, even Alma, when it was available.
  • The fourth car was mine. I bought her in 1934 of '35 from Duncan Williams when he left Canada (Philip Fisher --- my boss --- helped me finance the $400 it cost me). She was a yellow Rockney sports car with a rumble seat and her name was ``Phillida'' (``flouts me''). She flouted me into spending quite a lot of money on her but I did sell her in 1937 for $400!
  • But before that Harriet Colby had lent me ``Launcelot'' her small touring car. This was during her summer holiday in Europe. After that I simply had to drive a car of my own.
  • P. S. ``Becky P'' was a ``black'' 4 door sedan bought about the same time as the Ford which Evelyn knew as ``Her'' car.

...the
Correction by Flin Flanagan (Sept. 1983) It wasn't the Ruhr Valley that kept these men overseas: it was the lack of ships. Flin remembers Terry MacDermot being on the extremely crowded ship with him. It was a friendship that lasted all Terry's life and now extends to Terry's children.

...after.
I think we were allowed to do this at quite an early age (11 & 12) because Stephen Dale, Phil Wardleworth and sometimes Ethelmary Cartwright came with us.

...a
This was Miss Dunlop's kindergarten. Louis Johnson (6 years younger than I) who was there for two years (we were there for only one) says it was on Stanley Street opposite the Drummond Apartments (where the F. M. G. Johnsons lived at that time.) If this is so either my memory is at fault or Miss Dunlop --- and her sister Annie who taught Louis in his second year, moved the school after Evelyn and I left. He remembers the long outside staircases leading to the second storey flat where, in his first year, there was a huge dining-room-type table around which the smaller kids were taught. In the second year there were fewer children and they were in a much smaller room. He also remembers his ``fairy princess'', Betty Ogilvie, being driven to and from school in a buffalo-robed pony sleigh by a buffalo-hatted groom --- with bells!

The only thing I remember is a swinging door --- or, two doors --- around and about and through which we pranced until the Misses Dunlops' nerves could stand the noise no longer and a halt was called.

Another thing I do remember is that we were not allowed to play in those tempting snow banks on our way to school. This was because the wool pullovers of our Red River outfits collected the snow in great clinging wet balls which were completely impossible to deal with indoors on a short-term basis. The rule was enforced by a very strict nanny and quite possibly was the cause of our unruly behavior with the swinging doors!

...Station.
We had a special train. It travelled West on the C.P.R. tracks and came back on the C.N.R. It picked up contingents of guides as it went along. When we stopped in different cities we were entertained by, for instance in Winnipeg, the Lieut. Governor in Government House. We stopped at Banff and Lake Louise and Jasper and Lake of the Woods in Muskoka, and other places. I remember the Bing Cherries at Yale, B.C. We crossed from Vancouver to Esquimault by night and slept on the ferry: most exciting! Both Evelyn and I did our stint as orderlies to Dr. Best. In Calgary I bought a Western saddle and bridle (Daddy must have given us a pretty generous spending allowance!) and carted them back to the Farm only to find that I really preferred riding in an English saddle. However, I think Alma liked the Western.

I remember vividly the crushing effect the mountains had on me in Banff & Lake Louise --- like a worm I felt --- so that I was far more comfortable on the high plateau of Jasper where the mountains are at a distance & there's room to breathe.

...steps
The story is this: Philip [Fisher] had brought his ackroyd over from Brome Lake to sail on Lake Memphremagog in company with ``The Pup''. He was having lunch with us --- Evelyn and Jack Saunders, Mother, Daddy and me --- when Walter and Old Sam brought the steps down from the workshop. Obviously, the Lunch table was deserted. This was An Occasion. Jack is in the first picture with Evelyn on the veranda; Jack and Daddy and Philip in the second with Evelyn and Mother on the veranda; I think it must be Raymond West who has joined them in the third picture, and somehow I got into the fourth --- or is it Jane?

...

...so!
He wasn't a Grier and I have a feeling that he was only vaguely amused at being so labelled. Anyhow it made no difference to me. I thought Merrett sounded just fine.

...made.
NOTES

Actually I have two or three vivid memories from those McGill days. The one I like best is of Lord Tweedsmuir's first visit as VISITOR to the University.

The Principal said that tea should be served in his office where the Visitor would be robed. So, I enlisted the help of Penna Selye because I knew she would have had experience in such things. And she did, providing a beautifully embroidered table cloth and napkins and really super china and, what with both her and my silver tea services, we were away. However, what we didn't know was that the gown and hat hanging in the wardrobe had been worn by Lord Bessborough --- a very different shape, especially in head size to that of Lord Tweedsmuir. The gown seemed passable but the hat was too small --- but much too small! Penna rushed home to get adequate scissors and we snipped the band increasingly more as Tweedsmuir through puckered lips kept saying: ``too small, too small''. His was all the credit for handling so battered a job so dextrously.

P.S.: Only because I speak of a Visitor to the University do I drag in the information that it was Lord Aberdeen who was G.G. at the time and therefore, as Visitor, handed Daddy his gold medal in 1895 and in 1898

Also, I must add this note on being Private secretary to the James because I like to remember how well Mrs McMurray (his University Secretary) and I got on together. She was great fun and I admired her enormously --- except it always upset me that she simply was incapable of turning out a tidy letter. I teased her a lot about this. It was always good for a laugh and, sometimes, I simply retyped them for her.

And the day Stuart Forbes, Director of Physical Education, did hand stands on my desk and cartwheels around it while waiting for a meeting with the Principal!

...soon
This obsession to have children of my own had always been with me and, thereby hangs the tale of the lost beau. I lost him because I let it be known that what I really looked forward to was having seven kids, and he simply disappeared from my life! I was pretty sad about this because not only was he exceedingly elegant looking: just what I considered an Eighteenth Century French or Spanish grandee should look like but, also, he had horses to ride! They were kept in a stable at the corner of Cedar Avenue and Côte des Neiges on a three-cornered piece of land now incorporated into the bypass behind the Trafalgar and Glen Eagle Apartments. So while the friendship lasted I rode on the Mountain from there early in the morning before I went to work. Everything worked because I had Flin's car to drive. He lived in the house beside ours on Grosvenor Avenue and walked to work; I drove his car and walked from Drummond St to 1070 Bleury. Nothing could have been better!

...translated
Correction, Nov. 1983
I am wrong about Miss Bryan's authorship of ``Pyramus and Thisbe''. Evelyn has just handed me her copy of ``Olim'', a collection of plays and dialogues in Latin. It was published in England for use in schools. We were in Form IV A in 1924. Evelyn had a speaking part --- one of Thisbe's two friends. We also sang in Latin ``God Save the King'', ``O Canada'' and ``Drink to me only with thine eyes''.

...of
Foula: off the west coast of the Shetlands

...stop!
I think Barbie Holmes now has Juliana and I remember Lawrence Hart asking to borrow the Peverely organ when we had no place to store it. I wonder where it got to in the end? As I remember it, it was, not like the pretty Howard organ, a great common beast so no one need mourn its loss.

...it.
Martha was the last to sit with Evelyn before she died on Feb. 4, 1997 at Barbara's house in Okanagan Falls, B.C. It was late in the evening, and Evelyn began to repeat the names ``Gordon, Grover, Peter, Fred''. Martha did not know that these were Evelyn's four Peverley uncles, not much older than the Howard girls, who were favourites in their childhood. Evelyn said their names often enough that Martha remembered them and was able to identify them later. THM 97/9/6

...boys
Among whom were Bill Hasler, Pat Beatts, Bob Wakefield, Tony Cardwell. Bob says ``No'' He was born in Canada.

...Austria
Steve Lyman was the son of an old friend of the parents. (``Aunt'' Ann Lyman was a sister of Mrs Hamilton, Mary Johnson's mother. She was a widow). Steve and his older brother Ben (or Philip) when they needed summer jobs were employed by Daddy on the Farm. They --- with the Dale boys and the students helping out at the Eliot and Holmes-Smith camps --- also beaued the Howard girls at the Hrmitage Club danced, etc.

...peace.
NOTE: When the time came that I (Hazel) spent most of my time on horse-back a special ``good manners'' rule became operative: A complete change of clothes before coming to the dining-table. Needless to say I ate most meals in the kitchen!

...exam.
The exam. was for a prize in Botany. She got half the prize and spent it on the trip to England the next year. She also had to make a collection of pressed plants and remembers that I typed the labels for her.

...him.
Inspired by his brief period of childhood in Finland, after his family fled St. Petersburg in 1917, Michael build a sequence of saunas in each of the houses he shared with Alma. The first was at Pumney Farm and was an electric kettle under a tent of plastic sheeting and horseblankets: more a steambath than a sauna. The second he built in the shed at Rickmansworth, and had a dry electric heater. The construction was of a composite pressboard, and the glues had a tendency to vapourize and smart the eyes. Mark three was at Chinley, with an electric heater arranged among rocks so that one could pour a little water onto the rocks once the heat was up, and flash the air temperature up to 52#52C, and with proper wood construction. At least one visitor read 53#53 on the thermometer, and began to talk of steam baths he had had at maybe 54#54. He was a little astonished to be told that the thermometer in the sauna was graded in Celcius.

I was privileged to experience all three of Michael's saunas, and Mark 3 was the model for the sauna I built at Muskrat Ramble in the Laurentians, which Michael experienced once and kindly praised. I had the advantage of a river to jump into, which Michael had only at Pumney. Chinley had an enormous bathtub which we could fill up with cold water and submerge in at the end of the sauna. I also remember rolling on the dewy grass in between sessions, and once on hoar frost. The bathtub seemed the most chilling of these methods to cool off.

Paddy was also an enthusiast. He would make the trek to the Thames, two fields away from Pumney, usually running naked to get into the water as quickly as possible. On evening, he reached the Thames in this condition, to find that a tent had been pitched directly in his path. He managed to leap over it and into the water, pulling up only one tent peg, whose guy he had caught in his foot. When he surfaced, he heard a female voice say ``what was that?'', and a male voice say reassuringly ``I think it was a fish jumping''. To which she replied, ``no it wasn't: fish don't say `bugger!' ''. THM 97/9/6

...him.
Michael produced memorable meals out of his background. I think particularly of zakuska, fondu, and pastaquasha.

Zakuska is Russian for ``little bits'', which describe the very fishy tidbits (such as caviar and anchovies) that accompany, in great quantity, the drinking of vodka, in great quantity. The vodka was chilled and drunk neat, in small glasses which must be downed in entirety. The oily fish was intended to ``line the stomach'' and slow down the absorption of the alcohol. But the formality of the occasion, presided over by Michael, was what enabled us to have a good time without excess, and without hangover the next morning. We drank only to toasts, which Michael would not let happen too often. The first toast was usually inspired by the fact that there always has to be a first. The second could be required because one needs two legs to walk. And so on.

Alma described an astonishing Russian colleague who could drink straight alcohol. Alma did not know how it failed to fix every cell in his esophagus.

Michael introduced me to Swiss fondu, which he prepared himself from the basic ingredients of Emmenthaler and Gruyer cheese and the right, dry white wine. The possible penalties for losing your bread in the fondu pot were discussed but not enforced.

I did not partake of pastaquasha, which is a home-made yogurt, but Michael had it every morning for breakfast, and Paddy was an enthusiast. White Hall in Chinley had an Aga, the enormous Swedish stove that filled a whole wall of the kitchen and burned continuously. (Ovens at varying distances from the coal fire maintained different temperatures, and baking was moved from one to the other according to requirement. The four burners varied similarly, and were covered with heavy, insulating lids. They could be used just by lifting the lid.) The back of the Aga was the place for a stock pot to simmer continuously, and for making pastaquasha. After breakfast, Michael filled his bowl, unwashed, with milk and set it on the Aga. The next morning, he had a new bowl of yogurt. The process had to be started by ``catching a bug'': only the right bacterium would sour the milk in the desirable way, and if the chain broke or the bug mutated, there would be a few days of letting milk go sour and tasting it, until pastaquasha was recovered. (Paddy described hanging a string from the milk bowl as a wick, for the bug to land on.)

Michael also once came back from a trip to France with a collection of about thirty cheeses, which he set out on the dining room table and invited his colleagues to share in a tasting which became a meal. Every cheese was labelled. There were hard cheeses and soft cheeses, blue cheeses and wrapped cheeses: in leaves, in grape seeds, and even in earth. There was also a label, ``Le Chat qui Sourit'', for, of course, the Cheshire that had slipped in from Chinley's home county.

[Michael had had some difficulties with his return connections from France, requiring him to spend an extra night, cheeses and all, in a hotel at the expense of the airline. He had pushed the airline around when the difficulty arose (which was probably a cancellation because of insufficient passsengers, disguised as a technical problem): he produced a notebook and took on the hapless clerk with ``I'll write. I'll write. What is your name? What is your superior's name?''. When they gave him a room, he insisted that the cheeses, which were a little smelly, remain in the checkroom, telling them that if they didn't like it, they could arrange to get him back to England as planned and he would not stay any longer.

I later used the same tactics myself with Air France in De Gaulle airport, when they changed their baggage allowance between our arrival with Andrea, aged two, and Patrick, aged five weeks, and our return two months later. Our bags included diapers and full baby paraphenalia and were very bulky. They all got on that plane.] THM 97/9/6

...Humphrey.
Hazel spoke to Alma on the telephone the day before she died and, when she said goodbye, Alma said ``Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye'', in a lingering way. I have just read ``Portrait of an Irishman, a Biographical Sketch of T. W. Rolleston'' by Commander C. H. Rolleston R.N. (ret.), (Methuen & Co., London, 1939). The book, which Patrick gave to her mother and Alma possessed after her mother's death, ends with a poem by TWR, The Song of Maelduin

There are veils that lift, there are bars that fall,
There are lights that beckon and winds that call ---
Good-bye!
There are hurrying feet, and we dare not wait;
For the hour is on us, the hour of Fate,
The circling hour of the flaming Gate ---
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!

Fair, fair they shine through the burning zone,
Those rainbow gleams of a world unknown ---
Good-bye!
And oh, to follow, to seek, to dare,
When step by step in the evening air
Floats down to meet us the cloudy stair ---
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!

The cloudy stair of the Brig o' Dread
Is the dizzy path that our feet must tread ---
Good-bye!
O all ye children of Nights and Days
That gather and wonder and stand and gaze,
And wheeling stars in your lonely ways ---
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye!

The music calls and the gates unclose,
Onward and upward the wild way goes ---
Good-bye!
We die in the bliss of a great new birth,
O fading phantoms of pain and mirth,
O fading loves of the old green Earth,
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye! THM 97/9/6

...Humphrey.
International Journal of Radiation Biology, 1983 43 (2) 111--113

Obituary, Michael Ebert (1914--1982)

Michael Ebert died suddenly on 28 December 1982, while on holiday with his wife, his daughter and his granddaughter, after a few days of sunshine and good company in Seefeld, Tyrol. The cremation took place in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where some of Michael's family reside.

Michael Ebert had family links with several European countries and was, to an unusual degree, a citizen of Europe. Born in St. Petersburg (as it then was called) on 5 November 1914, he could still, in later life, converse in Russian. The family moved to Germany and Michael was educated in Berlin in the years between the two world wars.In 1931, at the age of 17, he first visited Britain through a pupil exchange arrangement and spent a term at Wallasey Grammar School, thus early acquiring fluency in his third language, English. He matriculated at the University of Berlin in 1934 but had to spend the years 1935 to 1937 in military service. In 1937 he enrolled for chemistry studies at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. In August 1939, he was recalled to his regiment and served as an officer on various fronts during the war, winning the Iron Cross (2.Kl.). Before the end of the war, however, he obtained leave to pursue his studies in Professor Hahn's laboratory at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry and he remained in this group, then situated at Tailfingen near Mainz, until he graduated Dr. rer.nat. from the University of Mainz in 1948.

In the immediate aftermath of the war Michael experienced real hardship and hunger, as did so many others in devastated Europe, and this he never forgot. He recognized his own good fortune in surviving and being able to continue his scientific work and as soon as he was in an established position he took every opportunity of assisting scientific colleagues trapped in dificult political situations by his friendship and hospitality and by enabling them to participate in advanced research projects.

Michael came to England again in the spring of 1949 and taught chemistry for some months at Latymer School in Hammersmith, where the Headmaster, Mr. Wilkinson, had known him during his term at Wallasey Grammar School. Late in 1949 he was introduced to Dr. L. H. Gray who offered him a position as radiation chemist in the basic radiobiology group that was being formed within the Radiotherapeutic Research Unit of the Medical Research Council at Hammersmith Hospital. Dr. Ebert's training in Professor Hahn's laboratory fitted him uniquely for this position and he at once took his place as a stimulating and productive member of the group, feeding chemical ideas and expertise into the collaborative research with physical and biological colleagues, and at the same time learning their special problems and methods. To this period belongs his work on H60#60O61#61 formation in aqueous solution and his contributions to the oxygen effect, which became a leading theme in Dr. Gray's group. At this time, too, the collaboration with Dr. Alma Howard began. Jointly they discovered the `rare gas effect', i.e. the inhibition of the normal oxygen effect when an additional pressure of xenon, krypton or argon was added to the aerobic system, an effect that has not yet been adequately explained.

Michael Ebert took British citizenship in 1954. In 1955 Dr. Howard moved to the new B.E.C.C. Research Unit which Dr. Gray had established at Mount Vernon Hospital, but Michael did not allow this to become a permanent separation and in January 1958, to the delight of their friends, Alma and Michael married and found near Rickmansworth a house and garden large enough to allow them full scope for both hospitality and gardening, their principal leisure pursuits, for which they rapidly established an international reputation.

Moving to Manchester in 1962 at the invitation of Dr. Laszlo Lajtha, they joined the expanding radiobiology research group at the Paterson Laboratories and found a spacious home at Chinley where they welcomed friends and scientific colleagues from many countries, allowing them to share in all the pleasures of country life. No one was allowed to feel superfluous when Michael was about. One could generally assume that the volunteer weeding the adjacent patch was distinguished in some scientific discipline, and could confirm this in the long evening sessions before a log fire.

Michael's first task st Manchester was to improve the facilities for the pulse radiolysis research which John Keene had initiated there. The early work had all to be done at great inconvenience during the night on a service linear accelerator at the Trafford Park Works of the Metropolitan Vickers Company. Soon, however, funds were authorized for a 10 MeV, 10 nanosecond pulsed linear accelerator to serve both the Paterson Laboratories and the radiation chemistry group headed by Dr J. H. Baxendale at the University of Manchester. This machine, built by the Radiation Engineering Division of Vickers Ltd. was commissioned at the Paterson Laboratories in December 1967, and immediately justified itself an an indispensible research tool. Dr. Ebert's efficient organization soon made it available to many `deprives' (i.e. of pulse facilities) groups in this country and abroad. The annual lists of publications from the Paterson Laboratories are sufficient testimony to the breadth and continuity of the numerous collaborative reseach projects and to the value of the published work. When Michael retired in 1977 he was presented with a large framed picture composed of individual photographs of fifty-one of his major collaborators during his 15 years at the Paterson Laboratory.

In 1968 Michael Ebert and Alma Howard became joint editors with John Wakefield of the International Journal of Radiation Biology. Pulled by this `troika' the Journal made rapid progress and the Eberts continued to edit it after their retirement from active research at the end of 1976. They had already planned to hand it over in excellent shape to new editors early in 1983. During the years 1964 to 1977 the Eberts also launched and edited the annual, and latterly quarterly, Current Topics in Radiation Research which gave space for extensive accounts of new discoveries in the field. They were able to attract contributions from many distinguished workers and these volumes remain valuable for reference today.

Michael Ebert was a founder member of the Assoication for Radiation Research and served as its Chairman in 1976 to 1978. He was Chairman of the L. H. Gray Trustees during the years 1976 to 1979. Distinguished as was his personal research work, Michael's special genius lay in his ability to establish a creative and friendly collaboration with colleagues from many counties and cultures, placing his knowledge and experimental facilities at their disposal. In the same spirit he made many lasting friendships in the village where he lived and among those he met in his leisure pursuits --- gardening, beekeeping, mountain walking. He was a link by which many subsidiary friendships were held together: such people are rare and invaluable. Michael Ebert will be sadly missed and long remembered with affection by his many friends throughout the world.

Jack Boag

...Humphrey.
International Journal of Radiation Biology, 1984 46 (1) 1--3

Obituary, Alma Howard Rolleston Ebert (1913--1984)

The death, on 1 April 1984, of Alma Howard, as she was always known in scientific circles, will be deeply felt by her many scientific colleagues and personal friends. Following the death of her husband, Michael Ebert, at the end of 1982, Alma moved to Sevenoaks, where a separate flat was being prepared for her in her son's home. The work was almost completed when she was taken ill. Untreatable liver cancer was diagnosed and she died less than three weeks later. However, the pain was well controlled and in this short span of time she accomplished much, by meeting friends, writing letters, and dictating on to tape some of the literary work she had hoped to do in the future.

Alma Howard was born on 23 October 1913, in Montreal, and was educated first in the Trafalgar School for Girls and then at McGill University. She graduated B.Sc. in 1934 with honours in Botany and Zoology and entered the Department of Genetics at McGill for graduate studies under Professor C. L. Huskins. Her Ph.D. Thesis, submitted in 1938, was on `The corelation between chromosome behaviour and susceptibility to mammary gland cancer in mice' and this won for her the Governor-General's medal for graduate work in science. During 1939 and 1940 she was a demonstrator in Genetics at McGill and held the Finney-Howell Research Fellowship. In the course of this work she discovered a new murine mutation, called `rhino' because of the crumpled skin. She is still remembered by a contemporary in the department as a tall, strikingly handsome girl who took a lively part in the intense arguments that went on, but always managed to `keep her cool' and to maintain an attitude of friendly respect combined with gracious dignity. These character traits remained with her throughout her life.

In 1939 she married Patrick W. Rolleston, an Englishman with Irish antecedents. The wedding ceremony was conducted in a flower-studded meadow near her family home. Her first son, Francis, was born in 1940 and her second son, Patrick, in 1942. The family settled in England after the war but her husband died in 1947 and Alma had to find work which would allow her freedom to bring up her two young sons. Dr. L. H. Gray was at that time looking for a cytologist to work in his radiobiology team in the Medical Research Council's Radiotherapeutic Research Unit at Hammersmith Hospital. By a fortunate chance he was introduced to Dr. Howard and flexible working arrangements were readily agreed. On this preliminary visit to the Unit Alma met Dr. Stephen Pelc and was much interested in his use of radioactive iodine for the autoradiography of rat thyroid slices. In the interval before taking up her appointment she had time to think out how this technique might be applied to investigate the dynamics of the mitotic process.

And so, on her first day as a member of the MRC staff of Hammersmith she suggested to Pelc that they might inject a mouse with 62#62P and study the rate at which that isotope was incorporated into the DNA of dividing cells in the testis. A mouse was immediately sent for and injected. A week later the first autoradiographs were developed and they showed some promise of success. In later work cells of the bean root Vicia faba, already a familiar experimental system in Gray's laboratory, proved more amenable for the elegant studies of the different stages in the cell cycle that Howard and Pelc succeeded in demonstrating --- a truly seminal discovery.

The radiobiology research community was then still small and the workers were well known to one another. Alma related how, one afternoon, she was standing on the platform of the rural station of Radley near her home when the fast train from London to Oxford passed through. As it slowed down through the station the head of C. E. Ford appeared at an open window and he shouted ``Alma, it's 46!''. This was how she first learned the true chromosome number of Homo sapiens.

While at Hammersmith, Alma worked with Dr. K. Tansley on cataract in the lens of the rabbit and, with Dr. Michael Ebert, discoered that excess pressures of the rare gases xenon, krypton and argon could suppress the oxygen enhancement effect on the radiation killing of Vicia faba cells.

In 1956 Alma joined the new Research Unit in Radiobiology which Dr. Gray was setting up at Mount Vernon Hospital with support from the Cancer Research Campaign and a capital grant from Dr. O. C. A. Scott towards the cost of buildings. In 1958 she married Michael Ebert. Much of her time in the period 1960--62 was taken up with arrangements for the Second International Congress of Radiation Research, which she served with distinction as Secretary-General. In 1963 Alma and Michael moved to the Paterson Laboratories in Manchester, where she became Head of the Radiobiology Group, and in 1966, Deputy Director. She retired in 1976.

In her scientific work at Manchester, Dr. Howard and her students and collaborators used various test systems, including, of course, mammalian cells in vitro and in vivo. Her early training in botany, however, enabled her to bring into use also some botanical systems with interesting properties, such as the alga Oedogonium cardiacum, the spores of Osmunda regalis and the desmids, Closterium moniliferum. Alma was author or joint author of some 94 papers in the fields of genetics and radiobiology.

As Joint Editor (1963--75) of Current Topics in Radiation Research and as Joint Editor from 1966 until her death of the International Journal of Radiation Biology, Alma Howard served the research community well by her rigourous standards of scientific accuracy and of literary style. She also served as Chairman of the Association of Radiation Research and of the British Association for Cancer Research and gave the L. H. Gray Memorial Lecture to the International Association for Radiation Research in 1966. She was for four years Secretary and later Chairman of the L. H. Gray Trust.

Some fifteen years ago Alma began to sufer from progressive lameness, eventually diagnosed as multiple sclerosis, but she fought this both physically, by following rigorously advice on diet and exercise, and mentally, by totally refusing to let it get her down. She remained mobile and able not only to carry on her scientific work but also to entertain a constant flow of visitors to the Eberts' home in Chinley, and in the end the disease seemed to acknowledge defeat. White Hall, Chinley, was a meeting place for visiting scientists, postgraduate students of the Manchester University School of Nursing, and family friends from many countries. All were made to feel part of an extended family and were allowed to share in the domestic tasks. Alma lived her life with zest and enjoyument to the end. Her many friends will be glad to know that plans are afoot to invite support for an academic appointment at McGill as a memorial to a very distinguished alumna.

Jack Boag

Memorial Symposium It is planned to hold a Symposium in memory of ALMA HOWARD entitled: `The cell cycle concept and its applications' in the Spring of 1985, in Manchester. The two-day Symposium will consist of 12 invited speakers and will be limited (on a first come basis) to a total of about 75--100 participants. Further information from Dr. C. S. Potten, Paterson Laboratories, Christie Hospital & Holt Radium Institute, Wilmslow Road, Manchester M20 9BX.

The papers will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Radiation Biology.

Editor

...Humphrey.
The Times of London, 13 April 1984
DR ALMA HOWARD
Dr Alma Howard, who died on April 1, was a radobiologist who made a considerable contribution to cell biology.

Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1913, she took her degree at McGill University, and completed her Ph.D. thesis on genetics and cancer in 1938. She married P. W. Rolleston in 1939, and they had two sons.

After the tragic death of her husband in 1947, she returned to scientific work, and joined the team led by L. H. Gray, deputy-director of an MRC unit at Hammersmith. Gray introduced her to Stephen Pelc, and so began one of those fruitful partnerships, where people with complementary skills combine to produce outstanding work.

Pelc, a physicist, had developed an elegant photographic method, which made it possible to examine the chemical activity of single cells. She, with her background in genetics, realized the potential importance of DNA. (This was before the discovery of the Double Helix.) Together, they traced the connection between DNA synthesis and the division of a cell.

After some initial opposition, their work was universally accepted, and their nomenclature for the phases of the cell cycle is to be found in every texbook of cell biology. Their discoveries stimulated the development of a new branch of science, now called cell kinetics.

After the breakup of the Hammersmith Unit in 1953, she wished to rejoin Gray, but this did not come about until 1956, when the new Radiobiology Unit at Mount Vernon Hospital was completed. In 1963, she was made Head of Radiobiology at the Paterson Laboratories in Manchester, and in 1966 became deputy director.

In addition to her scientific skills, Alma Howard had a capacity for sheer hard work, which made her a natural choice for performing the administrative chores which many scientists prefer to avoid, such as the organization of the Radiation Research Conference in Harrowgate in 1962.

She retired in 1976, but continued to do editorial work, despite the onset of multiple sclerosis, and problems withher eyesight. When told that she had cancer, she faced the situation with iron resolve until she died, tended by friends in their home.

In 1958 she married Michael Ebert (later head of Radiation Chemistry at the Paterson Laboratories) and together they created a remarkable world in their house in Chinley, until his death.

Dr. Oliver Scott

...1911
(663#63 June, 1988) Undoubtedly this is reedsdale and the date is 1915 or 1916. We (Evelyn and I) think that we must have driven from Agwanis to Black Lake (3 days for 80 miles? Why not? There was no train except via Montreal and Quebec): Daddy but we think not Mother, Jane and the twins, and, of course, Lloyd in the surrey with the black horses. In 1915--16 the black team was Jin amd Joe, and Jim (a feisty beast) had a white star on his forehead --- which is what the picture shows. We stayed a couple of nights, the three girls sharing a double bed. Fortunately there was a great thick eiderdown which one of us used as a mattress on the floor.

...sing.
I must add a note to the not-singing bit which is that sitting under the piano --- and this is where I was during the hymn-singing --- I wasn't very happy until it occurred to me that if perhaps I just whispered the words I might be allowed to join in. So I asked Daddy and was very solemnly given permission. During the years I developed a bit of technique in this --- scarcely the Whispering Baritone but something like that. So as we grew up and lots of singing went on in our crowd I was there with my throaty whispers. The songs, I remember, were no longer ``There's a long long trail a-winding through the land of my dreams, where the nightingales are singing and the white moon beams ...'' or ``There is a tavern in the town, in the town, where my true love sits him down, sits him down ...'' etc. so beloved by my father, but ``Let me call you sweetheart, I'm in love with you ...'' and ``I bruise so easy so dance me loose, dance me loose ...'' and ``Eat an apple every day, be in bed by three, take good care of yourself you belong to me ...'' and one that Isobel Pev. taught us that had a patter chorus: ``Take me up with you darling way up into the sky, sail around the moon for a quiet spoon just the preacher, you and I ...'' and others.

...place!
This story appears in the last pages of Aunt Dolly's typewritten extract of ``Sketches of Prominent Families in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada'' published in The Picton Gazette, Ont. in 1910. This particular sketch is on the Demorest and Howard family. It was written by Maude Benson who must be the ``I'' in this story.

Eratus Howard, my great grandfather, married Catherine Demorest in 1811. H.M.

Eratus Howard, the pioneer, owned the mother of the historic horse, Old Black Tippoo, and when Black Tippoo was a young colt, Mrs. Howard used to ride the mother with the foal running by her side. In fact, Mrs. Howard told her children that she had ridden the mother for miles with her feet resting on Black Tippoo's back. Black Tippoo was the founder of the finest family of horses emphatically Canadian, that this country has ever produced. Although the name Tippoo was somewhat lost sight of in that of the Royal George horses, still, back of the Royal Georges was always Black Tippoo and his strong characteristics. Dr. McMonagle, writing some years ago, regarding the Royal Georges, had this to say of them: ``The class of horses in Ontario particularly, that have a type of their own, that are firm in their characteristics, that are undying in their habits, and that always have held their ancestral heredity in spite of opposition, are the Royal Georges. They originated from Old Black Tippoo; and contain within themselves, characteristics that cannot be destroyed. They have size, form, velocity, longevity, and type, that leads to permanency in the family.''

So much for the desecndants of the famous horse. Now as reagards Black Tippoo himself, I feel I cannot do better than quote the following interesting history which was written for the Canadian Horseman, several years ago by an aged resident of Mansewood, Halton County, a Mr. Owen Robinson. Mr. Robinson says: ``Tippoo was foaled in Prince Edward County in 1818. His dam was a chestnut mare with a white stripe on her face, and was brought from the upper Lakes. Mr. Howard of Demorestville, sold her to Griffith Howell. Tippoo's sire was an English thoroughbred called Fleetwood, and was brought from the States by an Englishman about 1817. The winter following the season, he was quartered at Henry Fox's place, one mile south of Demorestville. It was learned that the owner of Fleetwood had not paid the duty on the horse crossing the lines, and Jacob Bonter, a Customs House officer came to see the horse. The owner requested the privilege of hitching his horse, and go with Bonter, and prove that he had paid the duty. After getting ready, he politely informed Bonter and party, that they might go to a warmer place than Prince Edward County and struck for Kingston. The chase cntinued to Kingston, for some fifty miles, and Fleetwood took to the ice, crossing over to the land of liberty by way of Cape Vincent. Bonter gave up the chase, believing that Fleetwood and owner would be drowned anyway, as the ice was not considered safe. However, the Englishman wrote back to his friends that he had got safely across; and that is the way Fleetwood got the appellation Scape-all, because he escaped his pursuers and drowning.

As Tippoo grew up to horse estate he showed splendid action. He had a French wave in his mane and tail. He had a number of owners during life, and died at the age of 15 years, owned jointly by Isaac Morden and Henry Dunning, Northport, Prince Edward. His death was caused by stepping on a rolling stone in Peter Demill's orchard at Northport. He broke his thigh-bone, and died a month afterwards, in John Fox's stable. My brother-in-law, M. N. Fox, son of John Fox, then a young man, helped to draw the horse to the bush after death. I called on Isaac Morden some few years ago, with Mr. N. M. Fox, purposely to get his full version of the above story. He was then 88 years old, but I found him hale and hearty for his years. Mr. Morden was considered the best judge of horses, in his day, in Prince Edward; and he gave it as his opinion, that Fleetwood was the nearest perfect horse he ever saw. He knew both of the owners; and he was perfectly well acquainted with Tippoo from a foal, and often saw his sire and dam; and I can vouch for the above history as being correct. Mr. Morden is dead, but Mr. Fox is still well and hearty. I requested Mr. Fox to go with me to the sepulchre of the old Roman hero. By removing some leaves that kind nature had spread over his grave, I really found the broken thigh-bone that caused his death, and thought it no sacrilige to appropriate it, and have it at present.

No finer family horse has ever travelled the roads of Prince Edward; and certain it is, the thanks of the Ontario horsemen is due to the memory of Mr. Eratus Howard.

...Medallist
Mother gave these gold medals (or was it just the 1895 one? which was awarded for Physics) to Alma who gave the B.A. one, because of the Physics, to Tim. Nobody knows what happened to the B.C.L. medal. Perhaps it was used to help finance the European trip? H.M.

...birds!)

Martha repeats a story of her mother's. Evelyn was often her father's driver when he attended official functions. The occasion was the opening of the Jacques Cartier bridge, at which the Judge, a senior dignitary in the Montreal community, presided. Both Evelyn and her father were formally attired. But with the ribbon cut and the distinguished audience dispersed, back into the car. Off with the top hat and toss it into the back seat. Off with the bonnet and throw it beside the top hat. Off with the formal glove and they, too, wound up behind E. E. and Evelyn. Loosen the tie and roll up the sleeves and off we go to Magog and Agwanis.

THM, 97/8/20

Prof. T.H. MERRETT
Fri Oct 17 12:03:53 EDT 1997