Austin Kirkby: family and farming were her passions

Former Niagara-on-the-Lake councillor Austin Kirkby is being remembered as a tenacious fighter for every cause she felt was right. Since she lost her battle with cancer early this week, tributes have been pouring in from both current and former councillors about the 79-year-old’s determination, thoroughness and meticulousness, as well as her ability to build teams during her 15 years in the council chambers.

Kirkby was a fighter right to the end. But as hard as she worked for the town, and for the local farming community, her three daughters stress that she worked a thousand times harder for her family.

Kirkby first faced cancer in the mid-1990s, during her first term as an elected official in a town she had already been serving since the 1950s, when her parents James Richardson and Dorothy Dobbie moved to Niagara.

“The Dobbie family had a florist shop in Toronto,” explains Kirkby’s daughter Katie Overstrom. “So Dorothy ran Richardson Florists on Gage Street and also on Queen Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Mom was the helper, while her sister Jean was the creative person. Mom would do the deliveries, and when she married my dad he helped with the deliveries on weekends.”

Austin first caught John Kirkby’s eye while he was in Grade 10 at Niagara District Secondary School. He mustered up the courage to ask her out when they both attended a teen dance the following year at the old Harmony Hall in the Chautauqua area of town.

They were married in 1963, and moved to John’s family farm, which had been in the Kirkby family for three generations. Austin immediately earned the respect of her in-laws with her work ethic and willingness to take on any job to keep the tender fruit operation running like clockwork.

As well, John was a volunteer firefighter in town, during a time before cell phones, pagers and other modern forms of technology. Austin was one of the firefighters’ wives who volunteered to work the phone chain to get word out to those who needed to respond to local emergencies. When the couple’s first of three daughters was born, she applied the same kind of devotion and passion that she had for the town to raising her family.

“We were the beneficiaries of that passion,” Katie says. “Us, and her six grandchildren, and I’m sure her three grand-children, too. She’s always known a family business. She instilled her dedication in us. We were always told when we were working in the barn that every peach we pack has our name on it.”

“And we don’t go home at 5 p.m. like the workers do,” the eldest daughter, Susan Janzen, adds, with a chuckle.

All three girls, and John as well, agree their parents were true equals on the farm and in their marriage from day one, setting an example they continue to live by to this day.

John says it was the difficult times for the farming community in the 1970s, and the aftermath of a 1986 hailstorm that wreaked havoc on NOTL farms, got his wife fighting for the farming community, and eventually considering a run for council.

“I started to speak out,” John remembers. “But I’m not a good writer. Behind the scenes, she would write all of my speeches. Eventually she got to the place where she realized that she felt she could make a change. She got elected, and was never the top vote-getter. The farming community, though, realized that she was really someone they could trust.”

Fellow grape-grower Jamie Slingerland, who was on council with Austin when she was first elected in 1992, says the agricultural community still owes her a debt to this day.

“She was a well-known voice at the Niagara Escarpment Commission, and at the region,” Slingerland says. “If there was an agricultural issue, Austin was right on top of it. She was fully involved. When she decided she was going to do something, she did it with dogged determination. She served the agricultural community and the municipality very well.”

Current councillor Erwin Wiens, also a farmer, tells The Local she “had a mind like a steel trap.” Before he ran for his seat on council he turned to her for advice.

“I went to see her to find out what it was all about,” he says. “She was an inspiration to me. She truly worked so hard for agriculture. It’s hard for anybody to hold a candle to what she did.”

Wiens goes on to add that Austin was a pioneer for water rights long before the current concern for global warming, and that rural NOTL would not have an irrigation system if it wasn’t for her advocacy.

“I’ve been working on the irrigation now for about eight years, all the way up to the feds,” Wiens says. “I don’t do anything on that without the work that she did first. None of this would be going on now if she didn’t do what she did back then. And she balanced all of that with her commitment to the entire community, and being a mom and raising three wonderful daughters.”

Youngest daughter Becky Kirkby-Arnold remembers her mom being so meticulous in her preparation for council meetings that other councillors would turn to her on Mondays to get up to speed or seek clarification on agenda matters.

Her commitment to her job amazed her husband, who says she put in full-time hours while also driving the tractor on the farm and putting in full-time sweat equity hours performing challenging physical labour. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994, she arranged to have her chemotherapy treatments on Tuesdays so she wouldn’t miss any Monday council meetings.

Though she was the only woman on council, it wasn’t long before she had earned the respect of her male counterparts, just like she had amongst the farming community, who took a while to warm up to the idea of having a woman lead the charge. Austin beat the first bout with cancer, but a broken clavicle in June, 2019 led to the discovery of the disease’s return.

“They discovered bladder cancer,” Katie says, “and it had metastasized. She was already a cancer survivor, she had that mentality. She was going to do everything she could to fight it, but our parents knew the farm was going to be too much. They made the very bold decision to sell the farm and they moved to Vineland.”

The three girls all agree their mother’s last three years were surely difficult, but in a way the move to Vineland allowed her to concentrate more on her family, and worry less about the NOTL community that both she and John worked so hard for throughout their lives.

“She didn’t get involved in politics at all there,” John laughs. “In fact, I’m not sure either of us could name anyone on council in Vineland.”

She started on another round of chemotherapy, and when that didn’t seem to be working she moved on to immunotherapy. In April, 2020, Austin was told she had only a couple of months to live. That month, Susan, Katie and Becky organized a drive-by birthday party for their mom, and were shocked at the number of people who turned up to pay tribute.

And, like the fighter she always was, Austin then discovered that the immunotherapy had done its job, and the cancer had shrunk, giving her more time.

She continued to throw herself into family life, attending her grandchildren’s hockey, lacrosse and track and field competitions right up until her last week. She had the chance to meet her newest great-granddaughter, and was able to know before she passed that another was on the way.

Her daughters suspect their mom was ready to go after she finally completed her last task about three weeks ago. “She had to get the bookwork done for the farm,” says Katie.

“She handed off the bookwork for the last seven years, so that we would understand it all.”

“I am a controller for a company,” adds Susan, “ and I told her she didn’t have to do all the work for the accountant, but she insisted.”

“And she made sure my dad knew how to cook and clean,” adds Katie.

John and all three daughters were there with Austin when she passed away, and they agree that she had a tremendous amount of peace in her life that her work here was done.

The family will hold a private interment ceremony later this week. A celebration of Austin Kirkby’s life is being planned for the Upper Canada Hall at the Pillar and Post for Oct.16. Donations in her name can be made to the Walker Family Cancer Centre.