Brenda CRUIKSHANK Reid’43 (left) and Francesca “Frankie” HARRISON Fullerton’43 (right) became fast friends when they met at Branksome Hall in the early 1940s. This year they celebrated their 80th Reunion, meeting once again at Branksome Hall’s Decades Lunch. It was the first time they’d seen each other since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
At school, the pair first got to know each other while eating lunch at the tennis courts—their favourite place to hang out back then—and soon found they had
a lot in common. “Brenda and I are both doctors’ daughters,” Frankie says, and
they were both born outside of Canada—Frankie in India and Brenda in Lebanon,
where her Canadian father worked in the faculty of medicine at the American
University of Beirut.
Both women entered Branksome after fleeing the violence happening overseas during the Second World War. At 16, Brenda came with her family to Toronto, where she and her two sisters were welcomed at Branksome. Frankie, aged 15, and her 12-year-old brother left their older sister and parents for evacuation to Canada along with 7,500 English children. They were war guests of Lady Gooderham in 1939–40. Frankie’s subsequent host, Lucile ROBINSON Pratt’26, sent her to Branksome, where Lucile and her sister had been Boarding students.
Frankie recalls playing lacrosse to entertain the soldiers at Toronto’s waterfront, while Brenda enlisted as a Wren in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service immediately following her graduation in 1943. She trained as an electrical technician and was posted to an isolated long-range navigation station in Nova Scotia, run entirely by women.
The two have stayed in touch over the years, including at Reunions. Being back at Branksome “is amazing! It’s so impressive to see what the girls are doing,”Frankie says. “I’m floored by how much they know,” adds Brenda.
While being on campus stirs up fond memories, both women say they carry the Branksome school spirit with them every day. Frankie still wears her tartan school scarf with pride during the winter months as a reminder of her time at the school. And Brenda says: “I still live in the area, and whenever I drive past I always feel like I’m still a part of Branksome Hall and always will be.”
