My Aunt Hazel is 98 years old. They call her “the Queen” at Louis Brier Home and Hospital because, when she enters a room, she commands attention. I visited her in February, and she told me about her life in India, Iraq, Canada and elsewhere.
Hazel Stevens (née Moses) was born in Bangalore, India, in 1928. By the time she was 18, she had five brothers and five sisters. Her parents, my grandparents, were from Baghdad, Iraq.
Despite being one of maybe five Jewish families in the whole city, they kept kosher and made their own matzah. When Passover was over, their Hindu and Muslim friends would bring them bread.
Hazel’s mother and father ran a clothing store, so, to some degree, the six girls in the family, who were born first, were brought up by the servants. The five boys who came next were brought up by the girls.
What I noticed as a child growing up was that Hazel was clearly the funniest person in the family. When we all got together, she would chant slogans from Gandhi’s National Congress Party with incredible enthusiasm. Everyone would laugh. I think that part of my love for comedy came from her.
Hazel was also unequaled in her bravery. One day, a monkey grabbed her sister’s little girl, who was just a baby, and took her up onto the roof of the family’s home. Hazel climbed up to the roof to save her.
“I was frightened because the monkey could bite the baby or throw it off the roof,” Hazel told me. “I had to be very calm. I calmly patted myself and said, ‘Give me the baby.’ Finally, the monkey threw the baby at me.”
Luckily, no harm was done.
A few years later, in 1946, when Hazel turned 18, she visited Baghdad with her parents. It was a time of unrest, just after the Second World War. It isn’t well documented, but my aunt says that there was one week of “hysterical mobs” trying to kill their Jewish neighbours. The Jewish community had faced increasing insecurity for years, including the Farhud (pogrom) in June 1941, during which between 150 and 180 Jews were murdered, 600-plus injured and about 1,500 stores and homes looted, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. In the 1940s, about 90,000 Jews lived in Baghdad, notes the museum, making up a significant portion of the population.
During this time, Hazel and others in the Jewish community were given hand grenades by the Baghdadi government. She fearlessly carried an urn full of them on her shoulder, as she went around the city, delivering grenades to Jewish households.
“When you are young you are not afraid … because you could run,” she told me.
One night, Hazel joined her family on the roof, throwing stones down at a malicious crowd, which eventually left. Miraculously, no one in Hazel’s immediate family was hurt during this period.
Before her stay in Baghdad, Hazel had begun dating a young British soldier named Desmond (Steve) Stevens. He lived by the YMCA where she played tennis and he would come over and tell her not to hit or throw the balls so far away because the young Indian men would have to run far to retrieve them.
Steve would visit Hazel when she worked in her parents’ store. This was dangerous because girls weren’t allowed to speak to boys in those days, she told me. Dangerous in the sense that she should have been chaperoned.
Hazel would say to Steve, “Quickly, buy something, my parents are coming.”
The pair fell in love, but Hazel’s parents did not approve, as Steve wasn’t Jewish.
When Hazel was in Baghdad, her grandmother set her up with a man she hoped Hazel would marry. But my aunt was as smart as she was daring. She says that, when she met the man, she made all kinds of faces and threw her arms about. It was a very long 30 minutes, said Hazel, but she succeeded in turning him off.
Her daughter Lisa said: “It was her act of insanity that proved to her parents that she loved my dad. She wired him after her parents acquiesced, and he came over to Baghdad to spend some time with her. She told me they took walks and held hands.”
Steve promised to convert to Judaism and he did. The two were married in one of the beautiful synagogues in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1947. I remember that Steve was very knowledgeable when it came to almost anything Jewish.
Most of our family left India when it looked like there was going to be a civil war in 1948. Hazel and Steve went to England. I’m not sure of the order of their travels, but Steve remained part of the British army and so he and my aunt lived in various places in Canada and Europe. During this time, their first two children – Anita and David – were born.
Hazel told me that she was a dancer and remembers winning a $50 prize in her 30s – she can still pull one leg over her head. At the parties she threw, she would dress up in a belly dancing costume that she made, turn on Middle Eastern music and perform for everyone throughout the house. All the kids at the parties would crawl behind her, picking the shiny gold beads that would fall off her dress.
Nineteen years after her first child, Hazel gave birth to Lisa in Vancouver and soon enrolled her in dance classes. Today, Lisa is a director and choreographer, based between New York and Toronto.
Steve was a communications engineer at BC Tel (now known as Telus). He worked with new technology and, unknown to the family until after he retired, he provided spy satellites for NORAD. He was responsible for much of the communication capabilities when NORAD was first built, says Lisa.
Hazel was the homemaker for Marpole Neighbourhood House, where she provided in-home care for seniors and for people with disabilities. She won Homemaker of the Year several times. She also spent a lot of time organizing charity events for Vancouver’s Jewish Community Centre and the Hadassah Bazaar.
Steve and Hazel spent much of their spare time in the spring and summer caring for the front and back gardens of their house on Oak Street. Lisa says they often saw people stop their cars in front of the house and take pictures of the abundance of colour and the foliage.
Hazel ran a bed and breakfast out of her home on Oak Street and continued that after Steve passed away about 26 years ago. She also provided a room for out-of-town families who came here to visit their loved ones at Vancouver General Hospital, as the house was on that bus route.
In her late 80s, Hazel moved into Legacy Senior Living, where she says she led the exercise class at least once when the fitness instructor was away.
In a wheelchair now, Hazel lives at the Louis Brier, where she told me all about her incredible life.
I have a tendency to create funny, bold and daring characters when I improvise onstage and I think that maybe, just maybe, I get that from my aunt.
Cassandra Freeman is a Vancouver storyteller and improviser. She wrote this article with files from the Moses family and from Hazel Stevens’ daughter, Lisa Stevens.
