Beth Nealson is rightfully celebrated as Leaside’s first female mayor. But she wasn’t the first woman elected to local office in Leaside. That achievement belonged to an independent and unconventional woman named Lenore Sibbald. Here’s her remarkable and somewhat eyebrow-raising story.
Ottawa-area roots
Lenore Sibbald (neé McVeety) was born in 1918 and grew up in the Ottawa region, where her mother ran a women’s clothing store in Perth. She was one of three girls in the family, and her father died when she was only six. As a young teen she had an intense relationship with an Ottawa boy five years her senior. But his family disapproved, and the romance was ended in 1935.
Leaside
By 1940, Lenore and her mother had moved to Leaside and were living at 218 Sutherland Dr. – home of Thomas Whiticar, a foreman with the Canada Pacific Railroad, whom Lenore’s widowed mother had recently wed. Both sisters had also married, and Lenore, now a secretary/stenographer, began dating a University of Toronto dental student named Claude Sibbald.
Shortly after Claude graduated in 1943, the couple married at Leaside United Church. Following the wedding they lived briefly in Manitoba where Claude, a lieutenant in the Canadian Dental Corps, was sent to treat the dental needs of servicemen stationed there during WWII.
Lenore and Claude returned to Leaside in 1947, and Claude started a dental practice. They bought a home at 24 Killdeer Cr., had a daughter, Karen-Ann, and settled into a comfortable, traditional 1950s middle-class life – with Claude as the breadwinner and Lenore as the dutiful housewife. Or so it seemed.
Politics
Lenore, however, was not the typical housewife. Rejecting this role, she took a job with The Leaside Advertiser as a writer and journalist. It was there that she probably met Beth Nealson, who also wrote for The Advertiser. Together, the two women in 1955 ran as candidates for the Leaside municipal council. Both lost, but each received over 1,000 votes. Lenore stayed active between elections, attending in Ottawa the annual meeting of the National Progressive Conservative Association, in January 1956. At the end of the year, she again ran for councillor. This time she won and became the first woman council member in the history of the municipality – defeating Arthur Donahue, her former boss at The Advertiser, by just 39 votes. It was a memorable event, recognized by the Toronto Star, which published her photo soon after the election. Two years later, in December 1958, Lenore was re-elected but with a much wider margin. She received more than 2,300 votes – the second highest number of any candidate.
Throughout her tenure as a Leaside councillor, Lenore’s reputation as a conscientious public servant grew. She served on the town’s parks committee and in that capacity was praised by The Globe and Mail literary critic William Arthur Deacon as someone who listens to her constituents. At the same time, she continued to be active in the Progressive Conservative Party, both at the provincial and national levels, hosting meetings, attending receptions and participating in conventions as a party member and delegate.
Turning point
In the early 1960s, something happened which shifted Lenore’s life in a whole new direction. She was in Ottawa with other town councillors when, on a whim, she decided to phone her old boyfriend from 30 years before. That boyfriend had become the largest and most important independent film producer in Canada: Budge Crawley. Budge was married at the time with five children. But the flame between Lenore and him had never fully died, and before long the two had rekindled their relationship. By the mid-1960s, Lenore had left her husband and retired from Leaside politics. In 1968, she and Budge married in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Lenore moved to Ottawa.
There was only one problem. Budge had never legally divorced his first wife, Judy. In short, he was a bigamist – and remained so throughout his marriage to Lenore, which lasted 14 years. Budge would divide his time between both spouses, spending part of it with Judy in Ottawa and part with Lenore, who had moved back to Toronto. Later, in the early 1970s, Budge bought a house in Rosedale at 170 Glen Rd. where he and Lenore lived for several years.
She accepted her marital situation without apparent complaint. She even partnered with Budge in his film business, collaborating with him on many projects. Armed with her considerable political, social and networking skills, she travelled to Hollywood in 1976 and single-handedly arranged audience viewings for Budge’s film, The Man Who Skied Down Everest, nominated for an Academy Award as best feature documentary. When the movie won, becoming the first full-length Canadian film ever to receive an Oscar, it was largely the result of Lenore’s behind-the-scenes efforts with Hollywood bigwigs and academy judges.
She and Budge had been separated for several years when he died in 1987. But they remained close, and she continued to refer to herself as “Lenore Crawley.” She died on Aug. 15, 2000, and is buried close to where she grew up and where she first met Budge – near Perth, Ont. Lenore McVeety Sibbald Crawley did it her way.1
1 Sources consulted for this article: Barbara Wade Rose, Budge: What Happened to Canada’s King of Film (1998); Newspapers.com; Ancestry.com; Toronto City Directories.
