PORTER (Snow), Elaine “Lainie”

82, of Heckman’s Island, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, died on March 6 at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Born December 7, 1940, to Ward and Dorothy Snow of Blue Hill, Maine, Lainie graduated from George Steven’s Academy (Blue Hill) in 1959 and went on to study at Gorham State Teachers College (Gorham, Maine). During her college years, she worked summers cooking on the Stephen Taber, a Camden, Maine-based passenger schooner captained by Edward “Ed” Porter. The cook and captain worked and played well together, thriving on one another’s company. At the end of the 1963 sailing season, they were married; the start of a constant loving partnership that would inspire and sustain them both for six decades.

The newlyweds moved to Norfolk, Virginia where Ed worked at Old Dominion College and Lainie taught at the public elementary school until 1965 when they relocated to Pennsylvania, Lainie teaching at Chestnut Hill Academy, and Ed at the Philadelphia College of Art. Their sons Nathaniel (1967) and Aaron (1970) were born during their years in Pennsylvania, and Lainie left teaching to dedicate her time and talents to raising her boys.

In 1971 the young family moved to Canada, settling in an eccentric old coastal farm on Heckman’s Island in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia; Lainie’s home for the rest of her life. She took her new life in stride, weaving, knitting, and quilting; baking countless loaves of bread; stacking and carrying cords of firewood; growing and preserving fruit, berries, and vegetables; raising chickens and pigs; hauling groceries and animal feed on a toboggan from the end of the plowed public road through the winter months; and clearing water from the flooding root cellar and planting vast gardens come spring.

Most summers she spent with Ed and her sons on a series of family boats sailing anywhere from Maine to Newfoundland, often without the benefit of an engine, but always with a realist’s expectation, good humour, and a comforting tune on her lips. Lainie was the watch mate you wanted on deck with you from midnight to 4 a.m.

She was an unwavering and practical advocate for education, especially of the public variety. Confounded by the locked libraries in her sons’ schools, she helped to rally a group of volunteer parents to open the stacks to students again, organized a group of student librarians, and eventually secured a budget for new acquisitions. She also volunteered as a literacy tutor for students of any age.

Despite her reverence for formal education, Lainie was a collaborator in the sporadic truancy of her sons, pulling them from school in favour of bog walks, tide-pool explorations, winter picnics, and multi-day excursions with family and friends whenever she judged the learning opportunities outweighed those of the standard curriculum. Her time in the classroom had taught her that there was a lot to be learned outside of it. The natural world never ceased to fuel her sense of wonder at what was there to be discovered and her delight in sharing it.

Lainie possessed an effortlessly encyclopedic memory for poetry and song lyrics. “You’ll know this one,” she’d say before launching into a dozen verses of a grim Scottish ballad, a soothing lullaby, or some obscure ditty from the 1950’s hit parade, all in her beautiful clear voice. When she wasn’t singing, she whistled, which made her easy to locate on a winding trail, down a school hallway, or among the sheds and gardens on Heckman’s Island.

Her innate sense of justice steered her to shun elitism and made her a champion and comfort to any who had suffered misfortune or what she classified as, “a raw deal.” The many mantras she lived by always included kindness. “What can I do for you?” was her reliable and genuine greeting to family and friends even into her last days. The answer: Almost anything.

Lainie is survived by her husband Ed; her son Nathaniel Porter, his wife Stephenie Sala, and children Elias and Amelia Porter, of Appleton, Maine; her son Aaron Porter and partner Kate Holden of Brooklin and Portland, Maine; and her sister Miriam Hamilton and husband Donald of Winterport, Maine.

There will be an informal gathering of Lainie’s friends for sharing a time together to celebrate her life on Saturday, April 8 between 2 and 4 p.m. at the Dana L. Sweeny Funeral Home, 11213 Highway 3, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia

In lieu of flowers memorial donations in Lainie’s memory may be given to SHAID Tree Animal Shelter, Doctors Without Borders or to Nature Conservancy of Canada. www.sweenyfuneralhome.ca