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MRS. W. B. SMALL MRS. J. R. PATTERSON May Day Is Time For Loving Service By Shirley Hunter On Monday afternoon when the parade rolls smartly down Marine and another May Day celebration gets smoothly underway, a group of faithful and devoted workers will be breathing their yearly sighs of relief. Somehow, every thing has turned out alright in the end. Their annual “show” is on the road. MRS. J. R. PATTERSON served . . . MRS. W. B. SMALL since 1931 For many of these women, May Day is a part of their lives, like Christmas and family birthdays. They would no more miss out helping organize the celebrations than the community would want to lose out on their services. Tiiough it is said no one is indispensible, some of these May Day veterans leave that adage o[)en to thought. Two of them have been part of West Vancouver’s May Day since its full-scale festivities began back in 1931: Mrs. J. R. Patterson and Mrs. W. B. Small. Says Mrs. Small: “May Day is something you wouldn’t be in unless you loved it. Everyone works together and this creates a warm and wonderful feeling.’’ And as Mrs. Patterson puts it: “There are all the warm incidents that give you a boost to go on. “There’s a problem to work out or help needed and no one coming forward. And then .some wonderful [)erson comes along and away we go.’’ Before 1931, Mrs. Patterson explained, (here was “the little I1T..\. May Day’’ ... a simi)le moi ning alTair and the children lid to uo to N'ordi Vtincouver a- lilt' dig i‘\(‘nls in (he aft('r- 1 Hill. "Tins seemed all wrong to (la'se ('arl\' workers, and at last Hee\'e Beyland called a ijublic meeting and West Vancouver’s official May Day was born, with T. E. W. Russell the first chairman.’’ Aftei' all these years, Mrs. PaUei-stm has her share of the oiganizing down to a fine art. Flower convenor, she supervises the decorations for the ten official cars and the May Queen’s stand at Ambleside. But times have changed and it’s getting harder to collect enough flowers to make a colorful showing. “There are no old-fashioned gardens anymore,” she says wistfully. “The climate is chang- ing, too, for there are no early roses as there always used to be for May Day.” Mrs. Patterson also is in charge of cars needed for the queen’s visits to surrounding communities, and tells of the time a car was needed to take the queen’s party to the New Westminster May Day. A Cadillac was generously provided and its owner was in touch with her as early as 6:45 a.m. on the day of the parade, checking on doubtful weather. While the car was decorated in his carport his wife provided coffee, and not only did he drive the queen and her entourage to the Westminster crowning, he treated them all to a sumptuous dinner in town en route home! It’s this sort of thing that Mrs. Patterson loves about May Day and the people who help along the way. Mrs. Small loves every moment of it ,too. Her official duties are to take care of the May Queen, the retiring queen and Maids-of-Honour. At the Community Centre where they meet on the big day, she sees that the dresses are right, the white brocade capos (nijide by Mrs. W. Green each yetir), the headdresses ;md gloves are in order, ;md that everyone gets into the right cars. The crown itself is the responsibility of Mrs. R. A. Thompson. She’s been making them, she says, “for ten or fifteen years.” Actually all these wonderful women find it hard to recall exactly how long they’ve been with “May Day”. , There’s a new crown made each year and the queen may keep it as a souvenir of her day, along with her cape. One queen wore her crown on her wedding day with her veil. Each year Mrs. 'Thompson tries to find a special theme for the crown. Tl'is yt!ar, for instance, she is v'orking in decorations of gold Jubilee year. Look:ng after the rest of the children taking part is Mrs Arthur Evans, with help from Mrs. T. E. Leigh, Mrs. A. II Parkinson and others This has been her job, “oh. for ten or eleven years,” slm thinks back, and she loves ii because, as she says, with two boys, "It’s the only lime m year I can work with girls. “And we always wonder hov. it will ever come off,” she laughs. “But it does!” But she admits that theii was one year when there vv;i> a near catastrophe. It was 1959 and the first year Hillside joined Inglewood in providing the Queen aiul Maids-of-Honour. They decided that to evtai things out and give each school two candidates, a thii'd Maid-of-Honour should be added. But no one remembercfl t(; tell West Van Florist, who'd been supplying three bouctuels for years, to make up a fourth. ‘The girls were in the cats ready to go,” Mrs. Evans recalls, “when we realized we had only three bouquets for fou; girls.” She says she’ll never forgci Maid-of-Honour, Sally Cam|> bell, who quickly said, ”l\’cvc; mind. I’ll do without.” The cars were just mo\in off from West Vancou\-er tJmi ed Church, the assembly point, when Mrs. Evans dispatched ;i helper at break-neck speed to the florist. By the time the parade had reached 17th Street, she was able to hand a bouquet info the car, and the parade passed on without so much as a pause. And so another May Da\ made successful history, as doubtless it will again on Monday, thanks to the perfectionist pride of Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Small and all the others who know the joyous meaning of May Day.