Here is the photograph that I love so much of my mother (Esther Mary Curtiss) and my Great Grandmother (Mary Letitia Smith Graham). Obviously, the painting is my reference except that I did not paint in the busy flowers on the dresses and I picked some nice pink for the background and blue for the dresses (my favourite colours). The city is probably Calgary (or Edmonton) and I like the way these women are obviously enjoying each other's company. My mother looks to be in her twenties and her grandmother lived until 1949 or 1950 so I put the date at approximately 1945. It is too bad we couldn't blow up the license plate on one of the cars so we could see the date!

Grandmother Graham told my mother, in regards to her daughter Elizabeth ("Dizzy Lizzy"), that she didn't know what was wrong with that girl: "The day she was born she hauled off and gave me a dirty look!" So my mother's mother was a bit different from a very early age.

I may have met my Great Grandmother, but I was too young to remember it. I wish I had known her well.

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