Dora Sanders Carney

Dora Sanders Carney

Dora Sanders Carney (12 September 1903 – 18 September 1986), mother of Canadian Conservative Member of Parliament (1980-1988) Pat Carney, was a Canadian journalist who lived in occupied Shanghai during the onset of the Second World War.

Early Life

Dora May Sanders was born in Claremont, Capetown, South Africa, on 12 September 1903, to Harry and Lucy. Harry Sanders (1872-1952) crippled by polio in his youth, had immigrated to South Africa as a tutor to his brother-in-law’s family. There, he met and married Lucy Emma May Bing (1875-1947), South-African born but Irish in ancestry, temperament, and musical ability, according to her older sister Byrne’s Reminiscences. Harry followed his degree from Dublin University with a law degree from Rhodes University, earned after the arrival of his four children: Minnie Byrne Hope Sanders (1902-1981), Dora, (1903-1986), John (1905 - after 1986), and Wilfrid (1907-1990).

Dora spent her early years travelling throughout the southern African states, where her father worked as a lawyer in rural communities, moving between them in a "cape cart" pulled by oxen. As Dora’s sister Byrne commented: "for the most part we were isolated in black communities, for my father practiced law up in Rhodesia and the Transvaal. I can remember no white children, as there were no schools, and Mother taught us to read and write. We moved as a unit, learning friendship with each other, and becoming unusually self-contained as a family." Byrne notes, too, that although the family moved from South Africa when the children were still young, those years "were enough to make a life-long impact on us — in them we knew a magic and beauty, sadly lacking later on. They gave us a romantic background, and made us feel that we were something special, when we felt lonely, or faced unpopularity in Canada." When the Boer War and a tsetse fly plague created financial hardship that the family could not overcome, the family emigrated, moving first to England, where they stayed for a time with Charles Higham, the brother-in-law who had first employed Harry in South Africa. Finding no work in England, the family moved in 1912 to Canada.

Early career

Dora's first publication was a poem, “Song of the Trees,” printed in the Toronto Globe in 1915, when she was 11. She published a number of poems in the “Playtime Prizes” column of the Circle of Young Canada page, winning best poem in April 1915 and January 1916. After high school, she majored in mathematics at Trinity College, although she did not take a degree. Needing funds to support her brother Wilfred’s education, she took a job alongside her sister Byrne Hope Sanders as "one of the first female advertising professionals, writing copy for T. Eaton department stores." Byrne Hope Sanders became the editor of Chatelaine magazine in 1929, and Dora moved to the advertising department of the upscale Mayfair magazine, both associate magazines of Maclean's.

Dora and Jim Carney in 1934

In autumn of 1933, Dora set sail for China to join her cousin Tony, whom she had agreed to marry, but: "the lure of travel was tantalizing and I was beginning to make some mark as a freelance writer — Surely a trip to China, even if it ended in a broken engagement, would provide material to bait the hooks that would catch the freelance cheques!" Having met James ("Jim") Carney, a member of the Shanghai Municipal Council, on board the ship from Vancouver to Shanghai, Dora abandoned her Hong Kong plans and remained in Shanghai to find work as a journalist. It took number of weeks and great perseverance for Dora—a single European woman—to create a place for herself with a news agency, but she did, finally getting a job with Baker's news agency. In March 1934, she and Jim were married at the British Consulate in Shanghai and moved into Dora's small apartment with one servant, Amah, who became invaluable when twins Pat and Jim were born on 26 May 1935. A third child, named Norah after Dora's maternal grandmother, was born on 6 June 1937.

In August 1937, when Japanese troops attacked Shanghai, Dora was asked to provided a statement to a Toronto newspaper. Her message that described the horrors of the attack but reassured Canadians of the safety of the foreign community within the walled International Settlement was sent just before she received news of the first bombing of the Settlement. A few short days later, Dora and the three children were on the P & O liner Rajputana headed for Hong Kong. Jim took leave and joined them, and the family travelled home to Canada.

The family settled briefly in Toronto. In March 1938, Jim's leave was up, and in September 1938, Dora and the children returned to Shanghai. In August 1939, difficulties with a fourth pregnancy meant that Dora and the children had to return to Canada before the birth; on the doctor's recommendation, Jim tendered his resignation to accompany them. The family sailed on the Empress of Canada, leaving Shanghai only days before war was declared in Europe.

Their fourth child, Daniel David Thomas ("Tom") Carney, was born in Vancouver, BC, but the family then moved to Ontario, where enrolled in the Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph. From there, Dora reconnected with her journalistic community in Toronto, giving lectures to the Heliconian Club, of which she had been a member, and the American Women's Club.

Immediately after Jim's graduation, the family returned to British Columbia, settling first in Victoria, BC. In 1950, the family purchased 54 acres—complete with farmhouse and animals—just outside of Nelson, BC. Jim’s veterinary clinic included a boarding enterprise, managed by Dora, who restored a streetcar as extra rooms for their "doggy hotel." Dora also restored the derelict Naksookin paddle wheeler, towing it up the lake, beaching it below their home, and turning it into a tourist craft shop. "The day I knew my mother had power," Pat Carney writes in her autobiography, "was the day I watched hydro crews remove the electric lines along the highway so that the salvaged superstructure, containing the mail saloon, two staterooms, and the captain's bridge with its wheel, could be swung ashore."

In 1961, Dora and Jim moved to Saturna Island. There, Dora wrote a column, "Gulf Islands Vignette," for the Victoria Times-Colonist newspaper. She died on Saturna Island on 18 September 1983.