Beryl Stott: A life on the run
World records, quiet spaces, little places
On a fine morning in May 1983, an Ottawa woman named Beryl Stott crouched down and filled a small vial with water from the Pacific Ocean in Victoria.
And, just before 10:30, she began to run, braided ponytail bobbing in the air. And run. And run. Stott, then 37, covered some 35 kilometres that first day — a marathon for some, a baby step for her.
Stott would not stop running until Nov. 29 when she arrived in Halifax, a distance of 6,868 kilometres, recognized as a world record: the drops of the Pacific had arrived at the Atlantic, 208 days later.
“Running in silence alongside the black horse in a park made the whole run seem like a dream,” she would later recount. “The quietness of the Mountie and splendour of the horse made me cry. It was a deeply touching and private moment.”
Stott died on Nov. 25 in her home in the hamlet of Elphin, in central Lanark Country. Her friends were shocked. Only 67, she had seemed the picture of health when she started to feel unwell that afternoon and called a friend for help. She would soon collapse, her pulse disappearing. She could not be revived.
“We truly lost a gem, with- out knowing we even had one,” said Arthur Tate, 67, of Dalhousie Lake, a friend who is helping with Stott’s estate. “Beryl was just a little firecracker.”
Inasmuch as her continental run was a sensation in its day, it was Stott’s volunteer work as a historian in North Sherbrooke Township that endeared her to many in her new home, where she relocated about 16 years ago.
As a retired teacher, Stott produced two volumes of local history, Inside North Sherbrooke, and had a third manuscript underway.
“The surprising thing,” said Tate, “is not one local ever had the ambition to do a history of that area, and here she is with two books, a plaque outside the church, and she even started her own historical society.”
It was a remarkable life.
Stott was born in England, one of four children, and always prided herself as “a Manchester girl.” Her father was a truck driver, her mother a cleaner. They were loving, but strict, she would tell author June Rose-Beaty in Heart of Gold, Will of Iron.
From a young age, she was independently-minded and a tomboy who excelled at sports. She married at 18 and in 1966, at age 21, she and her scientist husband moved to Canada, settling in Ottawa where he worked at the National Research Council. She continued to study and attended teacher’s college. Then began a long immersion in music and meditation, including the practice of yoga and the study of eastern philosophies. She took on the name “Kanchan,” which means “gold” in Hindi, and began a period of self-discovery through long-distance running.
She attempted ultra-marathons, including a 24-hour race in New York City in 1982 in which she finished second, covering 170 kilometres. A few months later, she was seized with the idea of running across Canada as part of her journey of “self-transcendence.”
The pace of the cross-Canada run was brutal, roughly like running a daily marathon for more than 200 days. There were blisters. Her feet and ankles began to swell and her knees ached, tendinitis would sideline her for days.
There were, of course, interviews to do in towns big and small. She would pay homage at the Terry Fox statue near Thunder Bay, be greeted by politicians and flag-waving children on Parliament Hill in October.
“Coming home to Ottawa was the watershed of the run. She had left in the spring as one person; now, six months later, she was re- turning as someone else,” reads the written account. After the run, her life entered a different phase. She taught at the Ottawa public board and opened a music store, Soothing Sounds, in the Glebe.
Her marriage by now over, Stott bought a 10-acre property near Elphin and had a house built, said Tate — a one-bedroom, open concept with walls of windows that overlooked a marsh.
She was a stubborn, determined woman, he said, and ruthlessly organized. When she died, in fact, he said she had left explicit instructions about which drawer contained the estate papers and will.
“Her mind works differently. She’s ahead of you all the time,” said Tate. He’s astounded at how much historical material she was able to amass from seniors in the area and local archives.
She was devoted to her dog, Paige, a German shepherd who died in October, said Tate. “She was really broken up about it.” She continued to play the flute and teach the recorder. She was just named a provincial director of the Women’s Institute.
A service is to be held Dec. 18 at the Presbyterian Church in Elphin. Her ashes are to be returned to family in England.
“It wasn’t until she passed away that we realized what we’d lost,” Tate lamented.