A Rose With Grace

For a number of years, she lived in the YWCA on Waterloo Street, and then in the house across the street, on the corner of Waterloo and Cobourg Streets, behind Knox church. She and Dand, friends for more than 40 years, shared that house and worked together on many YWCA programs.

McQueen, a native of Elora, started at the Collegiate in 1912, the same year Dand became executive director of the YWCA, though the latter had been in Stratford in 1910 to direct the city’s first playground. At that time, she was on staff at the Ontario Ladies College in Whitby. Within three years McQueen was one of Dand’s board members and, in addition to her board work, she taught English and history to adults in the evenings at the YWCA. She stayed on the board through to 1955, the year Grace Dand died, at the age of 67. McQueen died of cancer October 20, 1963, when she was 82. They are buried in the same cemetery plot, in Elora.

The YWCA had trouble keeping executive directors in its early years, probably because of the inadequacy of the building and equipment it offered. But it acquired 43 years of secretarial stability when it signed on Dand in 1912. At that time its membership stood at 101. By 1925 it was up to 560, of which about 475 were using the cramped and outdated facilities each week. In a speech to mark the YWCA’s 20th anniversary in Stratford, Dand said “The association, in its general program, includes  everything that will contribute to the happiness, well-being and development of the girls and in its program the association should have something that will appeal to every type of girl -- just as many types of girls as boys. The association should have in its membership girls from every part of the city life. It should be composed of the business girls, the industrial girls, high school girls, girls in domestic service and girls who have recently arrived in this country. I am pleased to say our membership includes girls from every one of those classes. All girls are welcome at the YWCA. Everything is kept simple to bar no girls . . . We want the YWCA to be a home, a club, a place where a girl may find friends, where she may have wholesome recreation and an outlet for the activities of mind and body ... There must be that distinctly religious impulse or motive, without which I am convinced the association will fail.”

With her parents, Grace Dand came to Collingwood, Ontario, from England, when she was two years old. And for more than 70 per cent of the time there was a YWCA in Stratford, she was running it. In December 1954 she told her board she wanted to step down, because of failing health, on January 1, 1956. But on the afternoon of July 31, 1955 -- a Sunday -- she died in the YWCA building while on the job. In a ceremony on June 3, 1956, a framed illuminated scroll honouring Dand was unveiled and hung in the main foyer of the YWCA. It said: “To the memory of Grace Dand, executive director of the Young Women’s Christian Association 1912-1955 whose unceasing efforts and courageous spirit gave all who associated with her a shining example of devotion to duty -- whose leadership and direction through many difficult years were responsible for the past and present growth of the YWCA -- whose outstanding gift of organization made possible the erection of this handsome and practical building, but whose greatest monument shall be the love and esteem engendered in the hearts of all those for whom she laboured so long and so devotedly.”

When she died The Stratford Beacon-Herald said “The story of the Stratford Y has been, in large measure, the story of Miss Grace Dand. How closely the career of our Y directing official was related to the growth from small beginnings to the present prominence of the fine `plant’ on Waterloo Street, has been sadly brought to mind by Miss Dand’s death on Sunday. Coming to Stratford as a young woman, trained for work in which she was destined to spend a lifetime of service, Miss Dand proved a builder indeed.

“The oldsters among us can well remember the transformation -- nurtured by the courage of early friends of the Y – that came to pass during the long term of Miss Dand’s occupancy of the executive secretary’s office. Her organizational gifts provided the key that opened the doors to the notable programs that resulted in the erection of the handsome Association building and its maintenance and improvement to present-day efficiency.

“That building must have been dear to the heart of Miss Dand. Her residence across the street (42 Waterloo South), where she spent her off-duty hours and where, we should imagine, she had planned to enjoy retirement when the time for that arrived --was, to the day of her suddenly shocking summons, a fitting outpost. And it was Grace Dand’s fate to spend the closing moments of her life at her post of duty in the Association’s building, which in a very real sense, must always remain a practical and inspiring monument of her years of fruitful service.”

Not everyone liked Grace Dand, but few could argue with her sense of purpose and the attention she devoted to it. Edna (Piggott) Douglas remembers the first YWCA camp, in 1924 in a field near  Thamesford. Miss Dand, she says, was about five-foot-eight and “kind of round, maybe a bit overweight.” She had a sense of humour but often she was stern. “She had to be, because girls can be very mischievous, you know.”

Source: Dean Robinson, Y Stratford.  Special thanks to Dean for allowing us to publish this chapter from his book.  A copy is available at the Stratford Public Library. 

Additional Reading: Rose McQueen bio Rose McQueen Biography | fibergenea .  For a history of the  Stratford YWCA, see Streets of Stratford - Waterloo Street . For a history of the Stratford YMCA, see Streets of Stratford - Downie Street .