The Ban the Bomb Movement
Shortly after arriving in Canada, Enid and Rod attended a public meeting given by the Canadian Government’s Emergency Measures Organization to review the steps that would be taken for public safety if nuclear war broke out. They were appalled at what they heard. The officials giving the review seemed to be either cynical or naïve in their assumption that the aftermath of a nuclear bomb dropped “somewhere between the Rockcliffe Air Station and the Parliament Buildings” in Ottawa was survivable! At the meeting they met several other young couples that were also skeptical about the plans, and felt that the public was being misled. Rod and Enid had prior experience of being the victims of aerial bombing attacks during World War II, unlike many of the people in the auditorium. 

With a very small number of other young couples they started the Canadian Ban the Bomb Movement, charged with attending Emergency Measures public meetings and questioning the speakers about the anticipated size of the blast, heat flux and radiation areas which would surround the impact point of any nuclear bomb attack. As might be anticipated, the officials did not appreciate these public questions, and shortly afterward the RCMP began investigating Enid and Rod (entirely by coincidence of course!).

This activism and subsequent interest by the RCMP occurred during the same period as the McCarthy hearnings, and a great many people endured years of social ostracism and difficulty finding work as a result of being “blackballed”. Rod and Enid were relatively lucky, becasue although they were known “Socialists”, some of their public activities indicated they were actually anti-Communist (at least anti-the Chinese or Russian-sponsored political infiltration of political parties). The RCMP suddenly stopped their investigations, however the investigations had done considerable damage to Rod’s reputation as an architect in private practice in the very conservative Ottawa architectural marketplace, and this impacted them for some time.

Ottawa’s First Young Child Daycare
Although young child daycare was fairly common in the UK in 1956, it was almost unheard of in Canada and the United States. Women were expected to stay home, not work. Because her oldest daughter, Karen, was having difficulty being around other young children, in 1959 Enid proposed to several other young mothers that they start a daycare center to socialize their children. They used the house of one of the mothers, which had a large playroom. Several of the mothers had teaching or nursing experience, considerable organizing and management skills, and Enid contributed her teaching experience with small children and infants that she had learned from her mother when helping her at schools during the war years. The daycare grew rapidly by word of mouth advertising, and benefited the children enormously.

“Voice of Women”
In the early 1960’s Enid became involved in a grassroots movement among women to do something about getting truly equal rights with men for advancement, levels of remuneration, potential to occupy the highest offices in politics, the professions, academia and big business.  This movement was starting in many Western countries, and the women in Ottawa went about their campaign in a particularly practical (dare we say “male”) way.

This small group of women decided that the best targets of opportunity for this campaign were the Parliamentarians of Canada’s Federal Government, who were conveniently at hand in Ottawa, not only in their offices and on the street, but at the numerous cocktail, summer cottage, skiing and other parties which characterized the seasons in Ottawa. Their campaign was relentless, aggressive and inescapable, as the hapless male politicians were presented with political options with every cocktail and canapé. Considerable progress in women’s rights can be attributed to the efforts of these founding “mothers”. Some issues such as daycare, after-school care, and other factors continue to impact both women and men’s ability to work and have children, but the established the fundamental importance of these issues. 

“Party Politics”
Prior to coming to Canada both Enid and Rod had a strong general interest in politics. However, due to the class structure in 1950’s Britain, ordinary people usually felt very remote from the processes by which Members of Parliament were chosen, or the policies they proposed or championed.  In Canada the political climate was much more open and inclusive, and they plunged into political campaigning. In the early summer of 1957 they went with Enid’s father, who was one of the few Liberal supporters left in Britain, to hear one of the last campaign speeches being given by Louis St. Laurent in the 1957 election campaign in Ottawa. Laurent had been in power since 1948, and they found it appalling in its lack of stated public policy.

They were equally disillusioned with the Conservative leader elected in 1957, John Diefenbaker, as he suddenly ordered the immediate cancellation of a large and important project to design a Canadian fighter aircraft which had been started by the previous Liberal administration. Cancellation of the entire Avro Arrow Program and Project, the immediate destruction of the aircraft, which had already been built, and destruction of all records, drawings and documentation of all aspects of the project seemed irrational and based on a desire to allow the United States to control the aircraft manufacturing industry.

Enid researched the program, which was a sophisticated and mature attempt to meet the needs of Canada during the Cold War. It included the development and manufacture of the most powerful aircraft engine in the world at that time, the Orenda engine. Although she did not agree with the underlying reasons for the Cold War, she could not understand how the best interests of Canadians and Canada had been served by this decision to cancel a long-term, sophisticated, scientific development and industrial project that would create many well-paid jobs. 

They eventually decided to support the newly founded New Democratic Party (NDP) based on the party’s support for universal health care. Enid and Rod had been taken aback when they got to Canada to find that there was no universal health care program as there had been in Britain. The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) Government of Saskatchewan, under the leadership of Tommy Douglas, had introduced universal health care. The CCF was in the process of founding a new left-wing political party in Canada, similar to the Labour Party in Britain. As Enid and Rod had supported the Labour Party in Britain they were interested in becoming members of this club. They joined it and later attended the founding convention of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. They worked in the Federal Election campaign. Rod had been made chairman of the NDP Constituency Association in the riding in which they lived in Ottawa, and gave his first public speech, which was a disaster, due to his extreme nervousness. After the meeting, Enid, who had been taught elocution and public speaking at the girls’ schools she had attended, gave Rod some coaching.

Enid was a very effective door-to-door political canvasser, being personable, extremely well versed in the issues of the campaign, and polite. The campaign was a lost cause from the outset as the NPD candidate was trying to beat an incumbent Conservative Cabinet Minister in a Conservative Riding. Many people apologized to Enid that they could not vote for her candidate, but commended her for her courage in fighting for a lost cause in the defense of democracy. During that campaign Enid proved that she was not only a very good political canvasser, but was an excellent organizer with a shrewd knowledge of the vast amount of hidden “backroom” unglamorous work necessary to mount a political campaign and sustain its momentum. 

Not long after they moved to Toronto in 1966, a provincial election was called. They received a cool reception from the local NDP Riding Association to volunteer to canvass in the poll where they lived, as no one believed they could support the NDP and live in Moore Park! So they left the NDP.

One of Rod’s architectural partners at the time was Colin Vaughan, an exuberant Australian who leapt at the chance to recruit Enid and Rod to campaign for the Liberal Party Candidate, Donald Macdonald. After a gentle, but thorough vetting, Enid and Rod did work for Donald Macdonald, although they refused to join the party until much later. They always won the polls that they were assigned, which was quite an achievement as they were embedded in a naturally Conservative part of Toronto. Enid’s political skill as an engaging canvasser was the main reason that these polls were won.

Enid, if she had chosen, could have been a quietly effective and highly skilled Member of Parliament, as she had very strong and clearly defined principles on all the main social issues about which she was completely up to date.  She could also speak both English and French, and knew a large amount about the history of the two “mother” countries of Canada and North American history in general. As an enthusiastic follower of the various Senate and Congressional hearings on Watergate and other major political scandals in the US, she had an unusually comprehensive knowledge of their impact on Canadian public life and national affairs. She was also an enthusiastic follower of the original National Hockey League games, when the league was small, and the hockey was elegant and very skillful. She lost interest when it turned into more of a series of televised battles. Throughout the period when she was very active in party politics she would still paint for about six hours every day for five days a week, and very often on the weekend, often late at night when the children had all gone to bed.

There was only one political campaign that Enid did not enjoy, that of the abortive attempt by her godson Peter Bassett to mount a successful political campaign to win a seat in the industrial town of Redcar in the northeastern United Kingdom. This effort was doomed from the beginning, as the townspeople blamed the incumbent federal Conservative Party of Margaret Thatcher for the policies that had lead to the closure of the large steelworks and chemical plants that employed thousands of workers.

The town had one of the highest unemployment levels in the UK. The riding was suicidal for the Conservatives, which was the reason that Peter had been given it to contest. For Enid, and her daughter Nicola who had accompanied her to the UK, trying to present a more progressive face of conservatism was a frightening and thankless task. Many people were abusive and threatening, some going so far as to set dogs on them. Enid and Nicola were amazed by the naiveté of some of the elegant rich young ladies and gentlemen who had come from London to work in the campaign and had no idea what they were going to be up against, and simply could not handle the very rough reception they got.

Enid’s last “political” campaign was a personal one: the single-minded goal of proposing her husband Rod for the Order of Canada, the country’s highest honour. Her aim in this was straightforward and simple (as were most of her goals) in that she believed he deserved it for his lifetime contribution to Canada’s architectural heritage, and for his political and social activism on behalf of a wide variety of people in his naturalized country.

In 2001 she informed her children that she intended to do this, and swore them to secrecy.  Rod was not to know. Over the next several months, letters were solicited from national figures in academia, politics, architecture, the arts and business. Enthusiastic recommendations poured in (secretly), and on May 8, 2003, Rod was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada (OC). Unfortunately Enid never knew that the campaign had been successful, as she died in December of 2001, however she would have loved the pomp and ceremony accompanying the investiture (probably a lot more than the recipient Rod Robbie did!).