Left, Right and Centre: Chapter 13 by Dave Jaffe: One Woman Against China - Part One.

 One  Woman Against China - Part One


        Some people spend the last years of their life lying down in bed, alone or with somebody else. Others fly around the world one last time before their health gives out. Some just go to 'Starbucks' every day and then go home to watch t.v. or take care of their grandchildren.
    Then there's Dorothy Pride. "My aim is to bring down the Chinese government," says Pride a 70ish grandmother of three grand children. Will she succeed? It's doubtful but who can tell? Pride was born in India in the late 1930's. "There were 67 servants in our house," she says. "I did have a lovely childhood."
    Dorothy loved her mother but adored her father who was a doctor. He was working for the British government that back then ruled India. Yet Pride's family that was made up of her, her brother, sister and her parents were living in the last days of the British rule of India. In 1947 the family left India and settled in Atlantic Canada. Dorothy's father became head of mental services in an Atlantic province and the whole family got used to the bracing eastern Canadian climate.
    Pride was a brilliant student. She won a scholarship to the University of London. In the late 1950's she got an advanced degree in English literature. "It wasn't a Ph.D," she later said regretfully. "And that cost me a lot of money later on." Then she married an engineer who had a wandering eye. They moved to Atlanta, Georgia. Here, she met Martin Luther King Junior, and his wife Coretta Scott King. She helped raise money for civil rights groups  and worked in the same building that King did.
     At that time Atlanta was a fiercely racially divided city. Quite a few times, white southern men phoned Dorothy at home to threaten her. "You filthy bitch," one man told her. "We know you're sleeping with black men. We're going to kill you." Yet this short blonde woman was very brave. She kept doing her job and stayed in Atlanta for about 18 months. Then she and her husband moved north to New York City.
     Here she met some movers and shakers. She became committed to the United Nations, a loyalty she held to in the 1990's. She and her husband also lived in Pakistan and India. "India was lovely," Dorothy said."I never liked Pakistan." Dorothy came back to Canada in the late 1960's. She was now a mother with two growing sons. She and her husband split up and Dorothy ended up in Vancouver.
      In this coastal city, Dorothy set up the first British Columbian chapter of 'Amnesty International'. She taught English at the University of British Columbia for a very low wage. Here at UBC she met the young Michael Ignatieff, who one day would lead the federal Liberal Party of Canada. He would say to Dorothy, "There's an interesting idea you should look at Dorothy." Then he would sketch out his latest intellectual find. Finally one day Dorothy replied, "I'm busy Michael. I've got children to look after and a job. Why don't you do it?"
   Ignatieff went back east but Dorothy stayed. She bought and sold houses often making money in the process. Yet she still kept working on 'Amnesty International' issues.