Nanny was always ‘Miss Blake’
Looking after others’ children was her calling ‘A combination Mary Poppins and Dr. Spock’
When May Blake died on Oct. 19 — at 95 and at complete peace, as one of her charges wrote in her death notice — it signalled the end of an era. May Blake was an English nanny, all spit and polish in her starched white uniform and sensible laced shoes and in her insistence on manners, hat and gloves, and thank you notes; on doing one’s homework immediately upon returning from school; and on always finishing the food on one’s plate, for, indeed, there were hungry children in the world not as fortunate as you.
Ever since she was 14, she had looked after other people’s children. It was her calling, nothing less.
“ Nursie” to all her Canadian children, and only to them, she was “ Miss Blake” to her employers. Never “ Mrs. Blake,” thank you; she was proud to be a Miss. She always made a point of addressing her employers by their honorific, no matter how often they entreated her to call them by their first names. Hers was a profession with a long and storied history, with standards that must needs be upheld; there were to be no first names. But long into their adulthood, there was unconditional love for all her charges — as she called the children she looked after — as well as front- row attendance at their school concerts and graduations, gifts every Christmas, special outings and oldfashioned fun. They grew into ballerinas, university professors, successful lawyers and one Lady of the British realm, and five years ago many of them came together to celebrate their Nursie’s 90th birthday.
It wasn’t a reunion, but a “ continuation,” as Edward Bulman put it. He was the first child Blake ever looked after.
Blake not only stayed in touch with all her charges; she stayed in their lives. As Laura Robinson, the last child of the last family she worked for, said: “ She was my second mother.”
“ I always thought of her as a combination Mary Poppins and Dr. Spock,” said Robinson’s first mother, Dr. Gail Robinson, head of the women’s mental health program at the University Health Network and a professor at University of Toronto.
Blake’s first job was as a maid for Edward Bulman’s parents in Hereford, England, to whom her father delivered milk. A friend of the Bulman family, a doctor, commented that he thought Blake was a naturalborn nanny; he had noticed she had a real way with the family’s three children. When Bulman, the fourth child, was born, she became the family’s nanny, later taking over the care of Elizabeth, the final child and first girl of the family, her first baby girl, as Blake always reminded Elizabeth, who became Lady Elizabeth Chatfield when she married Lord Chatfield and settled in Victoria, B. C. Bulman said he and his sister were “ devastated” when Blake left in 1932 to come to Toronto to a job as a nanny with the family of his uncle Verner Cook. They were reunited with her in 1940 when they and another brother were evacuated during the war and arrived in Halifax.
In 1945 Blake went to work for the Levin family with their children Jon, Nadine and Paul, with whom she stayed — officially — for 14 years, but whom she really never left. She babysat Jon Levin’s daughters; she travelled to Ottawa to help Nadine Levin for two weeks when her son David was born in 1981 “ to make sure he got a good start in life,” according to Nadine.
Dressed in her blue trench coat and warm woollies, Nursie was the one who went out every Halloween with the Levin children. She organized their birthday parties, accompanied them on walks in the fresh air, and traded their photos with other nannies. “ The nannies would take photos of their charges and mail them to each other, all carefully wrapped in tissue paper, all over the world,” said Nadine Levin.
Blake was at the centre of a circle of Toronto nannies — she was great friends with Esther, nanny to Conrad and Monty Black, who gave the Levin children boxes of Conrad’s books to read. She organized welcoming parties for other British nannies coming to Canada on two- year visas, and encouraged them to join her at the League of Health and Beauty, a downtown exercise class for nannies to keep up their strength and health. When, at age 66 or 67, she finally got her first apartment — a bachelor on Russell Hill Rd. — she often invited over the newcomer nannies. And when they left to return to Britain, she would hold farewell parties featuring a cake shaped like a ship with Lifesavers for portholes.
Blake left the Levin family for about a year to go back to England to live. “ I was very unhappy and my mother wrote her a letter saying how much Jon and I and Paul missed her,” said Nadine Levin. “ When she was away, I developed an incredible rash all over me. The doctors thought I was allergic to salmon or something, but when she came back, the rash disappeared.” But after the Levin family moved to Mexico, Blake took on positions with other prominent Toronto families including that of Clairtone and Barrick Gold co- founder David Gilmour. His daughter, Erin, one of her charges, would later be stabbed to death in her Yorkville apartment in a crime that is still unsolved. Blake also worked with clothier Perry Dellio’s family.
In 1973 she went to work for the Robinson family, where she stayed for 14 years. When she retired, she still was available for babysitting her charges’ children and their children. She marked every Christmas Eve at the home of Gail Robinson, where she would indulge in her annual glass of sherry, and every Christmas Day with the Levin family, who are Jewish but marked the day because Nursie did.
“ It was hard to explain to my friends our relationship. She was so close to us,” said Naomi Levin, 21, the eldest daughter of Brina and Jon Levin. “ My dear little friend” was the salutation Blake used in her frequent cards to the Levin girls. And wherever she was, Nursie found babies to admire.
“ She would acknowledge every baby carriage she saw,” said Jon Levin, one of Canada’s leading experts in Canadian banking law. “ She saw a baby and her face would brighten up and the children would react to her.”
Blake thrived in her retirement, polishing the silver and running the knitting table at the annual bazaar at her church, St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, until two years ago, when dementia and memory loss necessitated she leave her apartment. At two successive nursing homes she made herself useful to the staff, helping them fold towels, butter bread, sometimes even straightening clothing in the residents’ drawers, believing she was getting her charges ready for school in the morning.
At Blake’s funeral, Laura Robinson recalled once asking her why she had never had children. “ She seemed surprised,” Robinson said in her eulogy. “ ‘ But I had so many children,’ she said. ‘ I had all of you.’ ” cdunphy@ thestar. ca