One Woman's Journey: A Portrait of Pauline Vanier

R. Douglas Francis is a history professor at the University of Calgary.

Few wives of Canadian governor generals have become well known or been
remembered. One possible exception is Lady Aberdeen, wife of the Earl of
Aberdeen (1893–98), whose journal of her experiences in Canada
provides tremendous insights into the period of which she wrote. Pauline
Vanier, the wife of Canada’s second Canadian-born governor general,
Georges Vanier, never reached the stature of Lady Aberdeen and left no
lasting legacy equivalent to Lady Aberdeen’s journal. She did,
however, consent to 18 hours of taped interviews—interviews that form
the basis of this book—with Deborah and George Cowley in 1971, when he
was 73 years old.

The book is fascinating because of the many interesting and well-known
people that the Vaniers met over the course of the various positions
Georges Vanier held in London, Paris, Algiers, and Canada from the 1920s
to 1960s. Throughout these years, Pauline Vanier worked closely at her
husband’s side, making her own unique and valuable contribution to
their public lives. Emerging from this portrait are Vanier’s
weaknesses as well as strengths. She often became depressed, angry, and
anxious about her life and future. The book covers her early childhood
years in Quebec; her life with Georges Vanier in European embassies, and
then in Rideau Hall; and, finally her own journey, after Georges
Vanier’s death in 1967, to l’Arche, France, where she assisted her
son, Jean Vanier, in caring for the mentally handicapped.

Although Vanier tended to recall events in the light of their outcome
in these reminiscences, rather than conveying to the reader the anxiety
and uncertainty of the time, she offers a unique perspective on
important political and cultural events.