It was one of those rare occasions - a woman enters a room full of people and the eyes immediately find another pair of eyes. They blink, refocus, settle and a spark flies. Whether that spark will kindle and fan into a conflagration remains to be seen. In the case of The Jeans, it burned steadily and brightly for 63 years.
In this historical autobiography, Jean Mary Conway tells the courageous, nearly timeless and inspiring story of the absolute Love of her Life through photographs, her poetry and the recollections of this full-of-life octogenarian.
Immigrants to Canada from England in the 1960s, Jean Conway and Jean Whiffin managed their lesbian lives in secret, tucked away on the edge of a two-acre cliff above the Pacific Ocean on the southern edge of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Never daring to risk it all by "coming out," the two transplanted Londoners made careers, built their home, gardened, survived winter storm and flood, and fulfilled their lives all the while loving each other deeply and privately.
When Jean Whiffin died on April 4, 2012, Jean Conway at the age of 81 was sure she would shortly follow her life-long love, the victim of a fatally broken and abandoned heart. Instead, she found inner courage, stubborn determination and the support of loving friends that in her reinvigorated a will for adventure and a new thirst for life.
The Jeans is an epic escape tale from war-time childhoods and Victorian social constraints that traces a couple's migration, in fact emancipation from tradition, and delivery into a brave new rugged world not for the timid or faint-hearted.
From Hitler's bombing blitz of London to zip-lining through the rain forest, this novel, like the lives of the two remarkable heroines it chronicles, never for a moment idles.
The Jeans, Whiffen and Conway, truly were Partners for Life.
In this historical autobiography, Jean Mary Conway tells the courageous, nearly timeless and inspiring story of the absolute Love of her Life through photographs, her poetry and the recollections of this full-of-life octogenarian.
Immigrants to Canada from England in the 1960s, Jean Conway and Jean Whiffin managed their lesbian lives in secret, tucked away on the edge of a two-acre cliff above the Pacific Ocean on the southern edge of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada.
Never daring to risk it all by "coming out," the two transplanted Londoners made careers, built their home, gardened, survived winter storm and flood, and fulfilled their lives all the while loving each other deeply and privately.
When Jean Whiffin died on April 4, 2012, Jean Conway at the age of 81 was sure she would shortly follow her life-long love, the victim of a fatally broken and abandoned heart. Instead, she found inner courage, stubborn determination and the support of loving friends that in her reinvigorated a will for adventure and a new thirst for life.
The Jeans is an epic escape tale from war-time childhoods and Victorian social constraints that traces a couple's migration, in fact emancipation from tradition, and delivery into a brave new rugged world not for the timid or faint-hearted.
From Hitler's bombing blitz of London to zip-lining through the rain forest, this novel, like the lives of the two remarkable heroines it chronicles, never for a moment idles.
The Jeans, Whiffen and Conway, truly were Partners for Life.
