Dr. Maida Barton Follini, with admiration

Dr. Maida Barton Follini, retired psychologist, educator, writer, and life-long Quaker died on Sunday, November 3 in Halifax, at the age of 94.

Maida would often comment on posts to this blog, typically with sensitivity and candor:

"The slow, slow response to problems should be abandoned - citizens should not die before receiving compensation and help. 

The local gov. seems to act speedily when it is destroying helpful efforts (as in breaking down shelters charities made for the homeless).  I see the new gov. is moving on making an out-of-business motel into a shelter hopefully with supervision and good management. Homelessness is more dramatic than chronic disability but both conditions need sensitive and effective problem-solving. 

Hope you are well and thriving;   I am, although my serious arthritis makes me use either two canes, a walker, or my wheelchair, depending on the situation. But arthritis does not interfere with computer use, and I am engaged in much writing of letters, articles, etc. Am waiting to be eligible for my booster Covid shot."

I would wager that Maida met her fellow Radcliffe graduate Helen Keller (graduated much earlier in 1904 and a frequent Cambridge visitor) who had her own ties to Nova Scotia. 

Here is Maida's fascinating obituary.  A life well-lived indeed.  

Born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1930, Maida had a life that was both long and full of an eclectic range of experiences. As a child, she spent a great deal of time exploring nature in her family’s several acres of fields and forests.

She followed her father and brothers to Harvard, attending what was then the women’s college of the university, Radcliffe, from 1948 to 1952. She majored in English and sang in the Radcliffe Choral Society. One of her fondest memories from that time was singing Bach’s B-minor mass under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky.

During her twenties, Maida worked at a wide range of jobs including proofreader for a publisher, coordinator for the League of Women Voters, and recreation director for veterans at Valley Forge Army Hospital. One of the highlights of this period was a summer she spent working as a recreation assistant for a Navajo first nation in Arizona. She always would remark that the Navajo showed her more recreation than she could ever provide, taking her through the countryside on horseback and sharing their culture with her.

She received her Master’s of Education degree at Boston University and her PhD in Psychology at Clarke University. While at Clarke, she felt lucky to study with Tamara Denbow, an early proponent of a more humanistic approach to psychology in an era mostly dominated by impersonal and patronising styles of psycho-analysis.

As she gained degrees in education and eventually psychology, Maida began working at schools for children with disabilities. She worked for several years as a dormitory aide and teacher of the deaf-blind at the famous Perkins School for the Blind in Worcester, Massachusetts. It was this profession that brought her to Nova Scotia. She responded to an ad in the New York Times posting the position of Head of the Deaf Blind Unit at APSEA’s School for the Deaf in Amherst. She got the job, working there from 1980 until her retirement in the mid-1990s, with a switch to a position as school psychologist midway through her tenure.

Dr. Follini had high professional and ethical standards, consistent with her Quaker beliefs. In 1998, she testified as part of the Workers Compensation Inquiry into the injustice faced by many workers who had been denied compensation. She reported that psychologists like herself had been given training in chronic pain not covered by the Workers Compensation Act because it persists after the injury has healed. She was contracted by the WCA to interview workers to determine whether they should receive compensation or not. In each case, she assessed that they were entitled to compensation because the pain was clearly due to an unhealed injury. She reported to the inquiry that she had been pressured to change her report to conform with the wishes of the WCA who told her that ‘the psychologists should be serving the board and not the client.’ They threatened to withhold her payment if she did not do as they said. She refused and was not sent any other cases to assess after this. The transcripts of her testimony to the enquiry are on public record online at the NS legislature website and are fascinating.

Despite being a busy professional, family meant everything to Maida. She married Paul Follini in 1964 and had two children born in the early 1970s, Beth and Charles. She relished spending time with her children, grandchildren, and extended family, especially at the rustic family camp on tiny Ram Island in Maine. She was considered by the extended relatives to be their matriarch, the keeper of family history and traditions. For about a decade she put out a newsletter of family history, genealogy, and current goings-on. This was mailed or emailed to dozens of relations. She organised a large family reunion in New Jersey early in her retirement. As she moved into her 80s and 90s, she toiled away at her computer creating an annotated and digitised version of her grandmother’s 30 volumes of memoirs that spanned the late 1800s and early 1900s.

She was a prolific writer. Many readers of the Chronicle Herald may recognize her name from dozens of letters to the editor taking a stance in the mostly centrist to left-wing range, classically liberal and pragmatic. She was proud of her two letters to the editor published in the Atlantic Magazine. In the last decade of her life she was involved in the Evergreen Writer’s Group in Dartmouth, and had a number of short stories published in its various anthologies. She wrote articles about history for the national magazine of the Quakers in Canada and for the Arthur Ransome Society. As part of her volunteering work for Quaker House (part of Dartmouth Heritage Museum) she wrote a book on the unique history of the Quakers Whalers who came from Nantucket, settled in Dartmouth and who then went on to settle Milford Haven, Wales. On one trip to visit her daughter in London, she made a side trip to Milford Haven, staying with Quakers there and taking photographs of key locations which appear in the book ‘A Quaker Odyssey’, still available at the Museum Gift Shop.

She had fond memories of sailing as a child with her grandfather as a child. Soon after retirement, she bought a small sailboat which she operated on her own until her early 80s.

She was a lover of nature. Upon moving to Canada, she and Paul bought a six-acre property in Amherst Head, which became home to several domesticated cats, a number of barn cats, a horse, a pony, and a large garden. She would often gather a little bouquet of wildflowers on her nature walks. Later in life, after moving to Halifax, she walked on many local nature trails and sailed her boat on Bedford Basin. Several weeks before her death, she went around the boardwalk at Eastern Passage, pushed in her wheelchair by her son and directing him as to which flowers to pick.

The list of community organisations Maida joined locally is long: 4H, Cub Scouts, Zonta, Maggie’s Place, the Heritage Trust of Nova Scotia, Amherst Trinity United Choir, the Tantramar Theatre Society, the Early Music Society of Nova Scotia, and Interfaith Harmony Halifax.

In her last few years, with her mobility limited, she loved watching the activities on the Halifax Commons from her picture window on the 15th floor of the Welsford. Her small pair of binoculars allowed her to home in on any particular activity happening down below. The local cricket teams who diligently practise and play throughout all but the most inhospitable days fascinated her, and she had taught herself many of the rules of the game. The numerous dog walkers also provided entertainment as she zeroed in on the dogs, working out the breed. And of course, the walkers, joggers and cyclists who crisscross the Commons daily. She would often comment on the routines of the regulars as well as the special events such as the annual appearance of the hot air balloon and the summer Mi'kmaq gathering.

Some final words from her about life and family seem fitting, from a short memoir she wrote as part of her 90th birthday celebration. “As I view life, I see it has its wonderful gifts of love and friendship, its moments of beauty and delight; as well as times of grief and sadness, disappointment and frustration. But the love, friendship, beauty and delight outweigh the negative. I am proud of my husband, my children, and - yes, myself for what we have accomplished, and I expect if I could come back fifty years from now I would see the lives of my grandchildren, and their grandchildren rich in affection, love and creative actions.”

In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory can be given to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), which is the organisation of the Canadian Quakers based in Ottawa. You can donate online through Canada Helps. https://www.canadahelps.org/en/dn/11914

The memorial service will be held on Saturday December 7 at 2:00 pm, at Cruikshank’s Halifax Funeral Home, 2666 Windsor Street, Halifax. The service will also be livestreamed.