a poem by Grace Woodsworth MacInnis

    In 2015 my  novel, Grace in Love, was published. (See Baico Publishing, info@baico.ca  The central character, Grace, was a real person, who made several false career starts before finding her life's work in politics, where she focused on issues of special importance to women.  She was the daughter of J.S. Woodsworth, the key founder of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, (CCF), the forerunner of the New Democratic Party (NDP), and married to Angus MacInnis, a long-serving Member of Parliament from British Columbia.


       Grace in Love ias a romantic novel about a young woman searching for love and a life's work, and finding both after some trial and error. Items in the Simon Fraser University Archives and the University of British Columbia Archives were helpful to my research, and the poem, by Grace, which follows, is in the latter archive, under Grace MacInnis Papers, photo collection, 1911/6) At least, that's what it says at the bottom of the ancient copy I have.

    The poem, "Week End", dates from 1932 when she and Angus MacInnis were in Ottawa getting to know each other, he as a new M.P. and she as an unpaid assistant to her father and the CCF caucus.  They used to go walking late at night along the Rideau Canal, and called one of the benches in that park, "our bench."


Week End

by Grace Woodsworth 


I 've been thinking of the starlight and the darkness, warm and sweet

And the winding little pathway where we two have learned to meet.

Here beside the shimmering water stand the trees with branches spread,

 Yellow lights between them winking as the moon winks overhead.


Trees with branches underneath them shelter lovers, mute with joy -

While we swing along the pathway, hand in hand, a girl and boy.

Oh the night's a time of magic for it sets your eyes aglow

With a secret inner radiance which the world will never know.


And the night awakens memories and they creep into your eyes

And I wonder what you're thinking here beneath the quiet skies.

Peace at last comes gently stealing, and the world is far away.

Happiness and deep contentment mirrored in the moon's calm ray.


Come the chimes from far-off towers wake us from our dreams so sweet

Set us dreaming of the morrow, when again we too shall meet. 


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