Carved in Stone

They nicknamed her P'tit Ehlaine. Little Ellen. A funny term of endearment for the tall, lanky artist. She walked and worked with purpose, a no-nonsense kind of gal. Eleanor Milne was Canada's first Dominion Sculptor, charged with the task of carving the country's history in stone inside the buildings on Parliament Hill.

When the call first went out in 1961, she was the only woman to apply for the job. She got it, and led an all-male team of stone carvers - who always worked in the middle of the night. And she did it for more than thirty years. Eleanor Milne died last week at the age of 89.

Few things were more precious to Eleanor Milne than her tools. When she finally stopped carving, she was determined that they not become idle. She gave them to another woman, Mary Crnkovich, a former lawyer turned stone carver. Theirs was a connection of teacher and student, mentor and protégée, and sometimes, almost mother and daughter. A few months before Eleanor Milne died, Alisa Siegel met the two of them at Eleanor's home in Ottawa.

Alisa's documentary is called Carved in Stone. 

Click the Listen button above, and you can also hear some additional recordings of Ms. Milne talking about what it was like to work on Parliament Hill.

Next week on the program, more women and their tools. We will have a documentary from Karin Wells on the new generation of women in the skilled trades.