“Who Is May Ocean — Beyond the Headlines?”

Who Is May Ocean?!

There is much more to a life than what may appear in a court decision.

My name is May Ocean. Other than mom and gramma,  over many decades, I have been an artist, designer, inventor, entrepreneur, researcher, housing activist, women’s advocate,  community volunteer, and last but definitely not least, a life saver. 

Some of that history has disappeared from easy public view. Much of it happened before the Internet existed.

In the 1980s, when I was known as May Spinney, I became involved in the housing crisis facing women and low-income families in metropolitan Halifax. Together with Heather Schneider, I helped establish Mothers United for Metro Shelter — MUMS.

We marched. We demonstrated. We created a Tent City. We challenged governments over housing conditions affecting families who had little political power of their own. Our activities attracted extensive news coverage, including television coverage, and eventually took us to Ottawa.

Our advocacy was not always welcomed by those in authority. But it was noticed.

MUMS was recognized through the YWCA Women of the Year awards, and our housing advocacy brought me into further public and community work.

That was only one chapter.

I wrote for Halifax’s feminist newspaper Pandora. I became involved in women’s organizations and shelter advocacy. I served on the board of Bryony House. Later, following a highly publicized dispute concerning representation and discrimination, eight departing board members became the original co-founders of what became the Universal Shelter Association, an alternative safe-home organization.

There was another side to my life as well: art, design, business and invention.

I sculpted in earthenware. I became a professional pewter designer. While working at Seagull Pewter, I designed a Christopher Robin/Winnie-the-Pooh pewter picture frame that I remember being selected through an international Disney competition, leading to further Disney design work by the company.

Then came something quite different.

I developed an idea for a new method of casting pewter.

It wasn’t simply an artistic design. It was an engineering proposition that had never been tested.

I submitted the concept for Nova Scotia research-and-development funding. Eventually the question became: Who was qualified to determine whether this idea could actually work?

The proposal was referred to Professor Reginald W. Smith of the Metallurgical Engineering Department at Queen’s University, an expert whose field included metallurgy, casting and solidification.

Professor Smith came to Halifax. I presented my proposal. I received the funding.

I was subsequently invited to Queen’s University to conduct the experimental research there. On my first day, Professor Smith introduced me to his departmental leads and told us that he was leaving on a one-year sabbatical. He instructed his team to make their expertise and facilities available to me as required for my project.

That meant I had to coordinate the people and specialized resources necessary to test an invention I had brought to the university. There were initial difficulties, as there can be in any demanding project, but productive working relationships developed. One department head with whom I initially came to heads ultimately treated me very well.

I was a woman conducting and directing my own technical research project in an overwhelmingly male metallurgical environment in the late 1980s. I do not need to tell readers what to make of that historical setting. The circumstances can speak for themselves.

The work was highly collaborative. I drew upon a range of specialists and departmental resources. One stage required fabrication of a heavy steel apparatus capable of withstanding the pressure involved in vulcanizing a specially designed rubber mould for the casting experiments.

And something important happened in that laboratory: the underlying theory worked.

It was not yet a completed commercial invention. Considerably more engineering development would have been necessary. At the same time, another enormous undertaking was demanding my attention — I was establishing OceanArt Pewter.

OceanArt itself would become another substantial chapter of my life as an artist, designer, manufacturer and entrepreneur.

And there are many more chapters.

Some are dramatic. Some are controversial. Some are simply human.

At a campground near Tatamagouche, I once pulled an unconscious man, Raymond Forrest of Moncton, from the water and performed emergency resuscitation until he began breathing again. I remember subsequently receiving recognition for saving his life.

These stories are not being presented here because I expect anyone simply to take my word for them.

Quite the opposite.

I have begun a project to recover the historical record.

Old newspapers, photographs, organizational archives, university records, government records, television reports and documents still exist. Some have already been found. Others are sitting in boxes, archives and photographs accumulated over more than forty years.

I intend to bring that record together.

Not because every decision I have made in my life was right. Not because everyone who has disagreed with me was wrong. And not because a biography should be written as a defence brief.

I want something much simpler:

I want the whole person to be visible.

When someone’s name appears prominently on the Internet because of litigation, a judicial decision or controversy, that material can easily become the public’s introduction to an entire human life.

But litigation is not a biography.

I have therefore begun documenting the broader history of May Spinney / May Ocean — including the successes, controversies, public advocacy, artistic work, inventions, businesses, community work and the independent historical sources that can establish what actually happened.

Ultimately, I don’t want to tell people what conclusion they should reach about me.

I want to give them enough of the record that they can decide for themselves.

That, to me, is the beginning of something