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Former executive secretary to three commissioners dies Galit Rodan Northern News Services Published Friday, March 2, 2012
Geraldine Eleanor MacLean, a twice-widowed, wry-humoured, "loving, lovely person," according to brother Ron Fleming, died Monday at the age of 83. MacLean led a full, if not an easy life. Most notably she raised four children while working as executive secretary to three successive NWT commissioners - Stuart Hodgson, John Parker and Daniel Norris. MacLean, lovingly referred to as "Gerry" by family and friends, was perhaps closest to the seat of power during some of the territorial government's most formative years. She began her work with the government in 1970, three years after the seat of government was moved to Yellowknife from Ottawa and during a time when power was gradually transitioning from a territorial council led by a federally-appointed commissioner to the current system of responsible government. "She was sort of in on the ground floor of building the government here and setting up the institutions and basically what we have today," said son Robert Wilson. MacLean worked for the territorial government for 21 years, until 1991, undoubtedly amassing countless stories about the political heavyweights of the day. Wilson said his mother loved her job and was "pretty good" about keeping secrets. "It was a confidential secretary position and she took that to heart," he said. Still, she didn't keep absolutely everything under wraps. Sadly, "Any stories that she did tell I really wouldn't be able to pass on," said Wilson. "There were some. We were very entertained by them. Some of the people that were in the territorial civil service at the time were unusual to say the very least. You know, very, very vivid characters at that time. And she painted them with a vigorous brush." MacLean was born in Sudbury, Ont., and later moved to London, Ont., with her family when her father contracted tuberculosis and was sent to a sanitarium, said Fleming. The eldest of three children, MacLean was a wonderful sister who would "do anything for you," said Fleming. In 1954 she married her first husband, William James Wilson, with whom she had four children. Wilson's job saw the couple transferred to a number of different cities across Canada, though they eventually settled in Yellowknife in 1970. After Wilson's death, MacLean was a single mother for a long time, said the younger Wilson, "and held down a very demanding job as well as managed to keep us alive and got us all through school, through university and college." MacLean emphasized the importance of education and hard work and chose to move to the North partly because of the generous financial assistance available to students at the time, which allowed for all four of her children to pursue post-secondary education. "One of her favourite sayings was, 'Nothing succeeds like hard work,'" said Wilson. Secretarial work was her lifetime career and she excelled at it, quickly advancing from a job at the now-defunct Super Silk Hosiery to becoming secretary to the general manager of General Motors Diesel to working for politicians in Alberta and, finally, the Northwest Territories. "She was very proficient with shorthand, which was, even then, a dying art," said Wilson. "She was a blazingly fast typist," he added, "But she also had a mind like a steel trap when it came to all the other sorts of things." Later in life, MacLean married her second husband, John MacLean, and became a stepmother to four stepchildren. John MacLean, too, predeceased Geraldine. "Growing old is not for sissies," she recently took to saying, though she revelled in spending time with her grandchildren. A celebration of MacLean's life will take place at the Baker Centre on March 3, from 1:30 until 4 p.m. Her family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in MacLean's name to the Stanton Territorial Hospital Foundation.
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