Sally Drummond
The woman behind the politics
There was a crash and an expensive mahogany table lay in splinters on the floor. He looked up and there, sprawled on top of it, was a beautiful young woman.
That was how Michael Drummond first became aware of Sally Sharwood. They were attending a Westmount dinner party in the early fifties. Sally was with someone else. But Michael followed up and they were soon dating. In September, 1954, they were married.
Michael was a photo-journalist, notably for Time magazine, for which he covered the early 70’s FLQ crisis. He had a second career as a much-in-demand commercial photographer.
After school at Compton, Sally studied at McGill, followed by secretarial training at the Mother House. She then worked in the Comptroller’s Office at McGill.
They raised a family of three — Gail, Peter and Jill, later joined by six grandchildren. As the children grew, Sally became an increasingly successful activist.
“Although she did many public things, don’t leave the impression that the political ones were the most important,” warned her husband Michael Drummond, when he heard that the Examiner was preparing this tribute.
“Her life was family first, with her three kids, and doing things together. She liked the country and skiing. We had family holidays in PEI, where the lobster boats were always an attraction.
“For the last 20 years, Lupus was her most important work. When diagnosed with the disease, she discovered there was no local organization and no information in French for sufferers. She founded the Lupus Society of Quebec and became co-president and fundraiser. She later served as national vice-president.
The Quebec society’s first home was in the Drummonds’ basement, and their first office was Sally’s answering machine. She wanted the accent to be perfect and recruited her friend Louise Agar to record the message.
“Sally did a lot including counselling in person and by long distance phone to other sufferers of the disease," Judi Farrell, the current Chief Operating Officer, told me from Toronto after searching Lupus Canada’s archives. “She was also active with other non-profit organizations.”
Among these other activities, she organized reunions for her former classmates at Compton School.
“People were not aware of her Lupus work. In fact, she often did things that I didn’t know about until someone else told me later,” Michael said.
Her husband recalls one evening in the ‘eighties during a Lupus conference in Montreal. They were having drinks with delegates from the U.S and Ontario in the bar of the Ritz-Carlton, when Quebec’s then Health Minister happened to walk in.
“Sally said ‘Hold the line’,” her husband remembers. “’I have to talk to this guy!’
“She produced a leaflet in English and showed the minister. ‘I want you to print this so that every person in Quebec has a copy in their own language,’ she told him.
“You know what: he promised to do so! It was as funny as hell!”
That was typical of Sally Drummond. She made things happen and often with accompanying laughter.
She died of cancer last month, aged 73. Marking their respect for her, more than 200 people — including a large circle of friends and relations — attended her funeral. She had asked that Derek Drummond should give the eulogy.
The participants rocked with laughter as Derek — a second cousin of Michael highlighted her role in the extended family.
She was Michael’s parents’ first daughter-in law and, according to Derek, she took the seniority seriously. “For 50 years or more, she ruled — organizing, instructing, and informing her brothers-in-law and their wives. She was the new high priestess of the family.”
He revealed that she always called Paul Drummond, her father-in-law, Poodles. “Strange names came naturally to her, probably because her own mother was called Mopsy.”
The election of the PQ government in 1976 brought tremendous social change. Sally was sensitive to the situation but not politically active. She had many French-Canadian friends and spoke French.
At a party, someone from Ottawa approached her — “I wish I could remember the name,” admitted Michael — and said: “We want you to work for the feds.”
“Why the hell should I?” was Sally’s first response.
“We are having a problem in Quebec and we need your organizing skills to put the Liberals back in power,” Michael remembers her being told. So began her political activism.
“The English and the French people have to stand together,” Sally reasoned.
Her greatest moment probably was the Yvette rally of May 9, 1980. A month before, PQ minister Lise Payette casually called Quebec women “Yvettes” after a schoolbook character. She included herself and Liberal leader Claude Ryan’s wife, Madeleine Ryan.
There was a storm of protest and despite Payette’s apology it became a rallying point. Sensing the mood, Liberal organizers booked the Forum, and Sally Drummond and her colleagues — with only a few days notice — filled 14,000 seats with women.
Later that year, she and Louise Agar — they became an inseparable political team —challenged the establishment nominee by supporting Richard French for the Westmount provincial riding and won.
They were subsequently part of every campaign — municipal, provincial and federal — up to the demerger referendum.
“I knew what had to be done and she knew who needed to be contacted to get it done,” said Louise Agar. “Since that time, we spoke almost every day, at least on the phone — right up to the final weeks of her illness.”
Sally became one of the Westmounters who made a difference for more than two decades. Like John Sancton and Robert Findlay, and few others, without seeking office herself, she worked to reform, uplift and modernize the community in which she had spent her life.
Many of those who worked with her in the eighties and nineties have paid tribute to her. Their memories will be included in a future issue.
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