Helen Carscallen (1916-2003): Social worker, Professor, Broadcaster, Actress

 The following piece about Jane Helen Carscallen was written for the Culbert Family History blog by Helen's niece, Elizabeth "Betty" (Carscallen) Marmura. Helen Carscallen was the great-grandaughter of John Culbert and Mary Ward.

Helen Carscallen was a remarkable woman, and a very cool aunt. Time spent with Helen, and often her equally cheerful lifelong partner Ricky, (and their cats), was for her young nieces and nephews a much anticipated and happy occasion.  Helen seemed genuinely to enjoy us, and to actually be interested in what we thought!  We were made to feel somehow in league with this very interesting adult who had such a keen sense of adventure. My first cousins Steven and Richard remember particularly the great car rides in Helen’s convertible, and Pat and Wendy remind me of the thoughtful Christmas gifts that came our way: board games and card games that are still being handed down in the family. Helen was a fun person who welcomed change, as her many careers attest, and she had an ability to see new connections and relationships between phenomena - ideas, events, data - that was very stimulating and challenging.

"A remarkable woman, and a very cool aunt."

Helen Carscallen was born 12 January 1916 in West China, where her parents, Charles Rupert Carscallen and Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen were serving as educational missionaries. The youngest of four – three of whom were born in China, and one on furlough in Canada – Helen remained with her parents in Chengtu until she was ten, when the family returned to Canada.

The Carscallen Family in China. Rev. Charles Rupert Carscallen (seated at left). Back row, left to right: Helen's siblings, Kay and Charlie. Front row, left to right: Helen, Helen's sister, Alice, and Helen's mother, Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen.

 

In 1938, Helen graduated from Victoria College, University of Toronto, with a B.A. in Sociology. 

During the War, Helen was a social worker with Big Sister Association and in 1942 she became director of recreation in a munitions factory employing 5,000 people, mainly women. There she met her partner Ricky, who was overseeing the physical training program.  When the war ended Helen became a caseworker with the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, and Supervisor of Research and Public Relations for the CAS. It was about this time, when Helen was thirty, that she decided she would change careers roughly every ten years!

In 1956 she joined the Public Affairs Department of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and was soon executive producer for a one-hour daily radio show, Trans-Canada Matinee. When television came into its own, she organized a TV series on social issues, Under One Roof, and then became senior producer for TakeThirty, a daily TV program designed for women whose interests went beyond cooking and fashion.

 

Take 30's co-host, Paul Soles credits Helen Carscallen with the success of the show.

In 1962, Helen organized a CBC national conference, The Real World of Women, which was held at the University of Toronto. It was the first of its kind in Canada, and was a productive and well attended gathering. In 1964 Helen spent six weeks in Japan, filming – mainly in Tokyo and Kyoto – for Take Thirty. This was to give viewers a deeper knowledge and appreciation of a culture then largely unfamiliar in Canada.

Helen Carscallen (left) organized the CBC conference, The Real World of Women held in Toronto from September 6-9, 1962.

About this time Helen was instrumental in Adrienne Clarkson’s debut as host of Take Thirty. Years later, when Clarkson was Governor General of Canada, she wrote expressing her gratitude to Helen for having faith in her abilities. “Helen, you played such a large part in giving me my start in television. Bless you.”

It would be difficult to number the people whom Helen encouraged and supported to discover and make use of their talents.

 It was during these years that Helen met Marshall McLuhan, who was a guest on Take Thirty. She became very interested in his ideas in communications theory. This led to her third career. In 1965 she left the CBC and enrolled for an M.A. in Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her thesis, “Control in Canadian Broadcasting”, was a study of the power struggle between CBC management and its producers over a TV public affairs program called This Hour Has Seven Days, which aired in prime-time Sunday nights. The program was controversial, immensely popular, and led to frantic efforts on the part of management to control the issues discussed. Helen got us thinking about regulation in public broadcasting and whether it was designed to protect Canadian culture or to protect one set of Canadian ideas! The show was closed down before the end of its second year in 1966. In that year Helen obtained her M.A. and soon was well into work on a PhD when her financial resources ran out. She then abandoned the life of a student and began a teaching career, for a short time at York University and then at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, (now Ryerson University), to teach courses in communication.

Source: Exeter Times-Advocate,18 March 1965, page 13. Helen's mother was the former Hulda Culbert, not Hilda.

 

After she left CBC's Take 30, Helen Carscallen was interviewed on the show by Adrienne Clarkson. Source: Ottawa Citizen, 7 December 1968.

After ten years at Ryerson, though she was by then a tenured professor, Helen left the world of academia and at the age of sixty-two focused totally on a career in professional acting. She had always had a passionate interest in the theatre. She confessed that drama had been the dominant interest in her life since she was eight. Through the years and the careers as social worker, broadcaster and professor, Helen had acted in many amateur and semi-professional groups. In 1978 she auditioned and landed a job with the Stratford Shakespearean Theatre as the nurse in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. 

 

Helen Carscallen in Uncle Vanya at the Stratford Theatre, 1978.

Helen soon had parts in other plays: The Winters Tale and As You Like It. She said she learned more there in six months than she had learned anywhere else in that many years. She enjoyed acting immensely. From Stratford she went to TV and film, playing many roles.  One of her most memorable was in a 1986 CBC-TV two-part drama, The Other Kingdom. She received an award for Best Acting Performance in a Supporting Role for this work. In 1993, when Helen was seventy-seven, she was honoured with a life membership in ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists Performers Guild.

Helen always got excellent reviews. In 1974 the Toronto Star theatre critic describes some of Helen’s work in a hit at the Firehall Theatre called Shelter – a truly Canadian play! A Liberal MP from South Saskatchewan has driven his car into a river and drowned. His widow, who spends the first act under a blanket, is encouraged by four female friends to run for his seat in a by-election.  Helen plays Aunt Luel, a ‘right-wing’ mystic who runs everybody’s lives. “Miss Carscallen is a cheery blockbuster in bright colours and a white wig, whether singing camp songs” (Aunt Helen really knew her camp songs), "driving her daughter to attempt suicide in the wedding dress she has forced on her, or conducting a séance to while away the time on election night.”

Perhaps one of her more startling TV roles was in War of the Worlds. As I was preparing supper one night my kids suddenly shouted, with much laughter,” Hey Mom -it’s Aunt Helen!!” I came into the living room to find Aunt Helen emerging from a swamp as an alien creature from another planet.

At eighty-one she wrote: “While I am semi-blind my ambition now is to teach a series of seminars on multiple careers – advantages and disadvantages. It seems to me an appropriate career plan for women.”  Illness prevented Helen from carrying this out, but one wonders how many women would have the kind of courage, freedom, and adventurous spirit that would tempt them to walk away from an interesting career every ten years to begin anew, particularly in their sixties. I think there are not many Aunt Helens out there. Those of us who knew her for much of our lives – her nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews - feel very privileged. She was an amazing woman, and a dependable, stimulating and affectionate friend to us and to many others, always interested and always up for anything. 

Jane Helen Carscallen's Family Tree:

Ancestors:

John Culbert & Mary Ward (great-grandparents)

Richard Culbert & Jane Eleanor Fairhall (grandparents)

Hulda May Culbert & Rev. Charles Rupert Carscallen (parents) 

Note from the Culbert Family History blog creator, Mary Jane Culbert: Thank you, Betty (Carscallen) Marmura for composing this blog post about your remarkable aunt, Helen Carscallen, and for contributing photographs. Thanks also to other members of the Carscallen family who contributed photos, especially Helen's other nieces, Wendy (Gowland) Boole and Patricia (Gowland) Rowell. 

The following are some extra details and photos of Helen Carscallen:

Helen Carscallen (little girl with her head down) with her sisters, Alice (left) and Kay (right) with their grandparents, Richard Culbert and Jane (Fairhall) Culbert in Lucan, Ontario around 1920. The Carscallen family was on furlough at this time from their missionary work in China.

June 1944 at the Ontario Ladies College in Whitby, Ontario. Adults left to right are: Helen's sister Alice; Helen Carscallen; Helen's mother Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen; Helen's sister, Kay; and Helen's father, Rev. Charles Rupert Carscallen. The little girl is Kay's daughter, Patricia Gowland. Helen's father Charles Carscallen was the president of the Ontario Ladies College while Helen's mother Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen taught classes in Religious Knowledge and Modern History and worked to improve the college library.

1960s. Rev. Charles Rupert Carscallen and Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen with their four children.

Left to right: Helen Carscallen, Alice (Carscallen) Griffiths, Charles Newton Carscallen, Rev. Charles Rupert Carscallen, Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen, and Kathleen "Kay" (Carscallen) Gowland.

1960s. Rev. Charles Rupert Carscallen and his wife, Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen with their children and grandchildren. Their daughter, Helen Carscallen is seated on the ground.

The following are passages from Helen Carscallen's obituary, written by her friend, Margaret Norquay:

​Social worker, professor, broadcaster, actress. Born January 12, 1916, in Chengtu, China. Died May 28, 2003 in Toronto, of natural causes, aged 87.

Helen had a great capacity for Friendship. At a recent celebration of her life, colleagues, Friends and family spoke of the debt they owed her for the vision she gave them of their own unique abilities. Nieces, nephews and some grand-nieces spoke movingly about what a wonderful aunt she was -- how she never talked down, always treated them as adults, wanting to know what they were up to. Former colleagues talked about how Helen launched them in their careers, persuading them to believe in themselves and providing ongoing support. Helen gave something of herself to each of us and we were all enriched. 

Note: For a detailed 7-part biography about Helen Carscallen's mother, Hulda May (Culbert) Carscallen, click here. For a biography about Helen's brother, Charles Newton Carscallen, click here. For a biography about Helen's sister, Kathleen (Carsallen) Gowland, click here.