Martha, shmartha…

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/04/2002 (8804 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SHE’S been honoured by her peers, held senior postings in the provincial government, and sits on countless boards and committees, but none of this has attracted as much attention for Doris Mae Oulton as being compared to Martha Stewart.

Ever since the entertaining and gardening queen of Middle Gate was named one of the winners of the Free Press search for a Made in Manitoba Martha to recognize Stewart’s upcoming visit to Winnipeg, Oulton’s telephone hasn’t stopped ringing.

“When I was (named YWCA’s) Woman of Distinction, I got way less attention than this,” she says over tea in the sunroom of her antique-filled, restored turn-of-the-century Georgian-style home, referring to the phone calls, gifts and requests to see her winning entry.

That entry, compiled by a half-dozen of Oulton’s closest friends and most ardent admirers, wowed the totally subjective panel of judges who studied, perused and picked apart 33 finalists to come up with three Manitoba Marthas. (The other two, Jeanette Henderson of Edrans, and Dawn Soloway of Winnipeg, will have their turn to shine in the Life pages in the next two weeks.)

The six-page, colour spread sprinkled with photos of Oulton’s elaborate formal gardens, Christmas decorations and large gatherings put her on top, combined with interesting recipes (featured tomorrow on the Free Press Food page), as well as a slightly tongue-in-cheek version of this busy and capable woman’s schedule, proved to the judges that Oulton was indeed “more Martha than Martha Stewart herself.”

“While Martha has an entire vast staff coming up with creative domestic ideas and cooking up recipes for her TV show, Doris Mae does it all on her own,” her friends write in a back-page “letter from Martha’s friends” in this faux-Martha Stewart Living mag.

“Where Martha is a solely, single-minded career professional, Doris Mae is a career professional and a wife and mother, to an equally professional husband and two sons who adore her.”

“We were wowed by her presentation,” comments Free Press food writer Ilana Simon, who liked both Oulton’s style and skills. “They made it look like a Martha Stewart magazine.”

“I’d like to live in her house,” says Entertainment/Life editor Margo Goodhand, a self-described anti-Martha with an obvious green streak.

Oulton’s house is truly spectacular, more so when she describes the state of the three-storey brick mini-mansion in Armstrong’s Point when she moved in two decades ago with husband Campbell Mackie and their sons Christopher and Craig. Still a work in progress, with an upper bathroom being updated and plans for a new kitchen displayed on the refrigerator, Oulton and Mackie have restored, refinished and re-invented the 15-room house from its former rooming-house existence to a gracious and comfortable family home.

The removal of a wall now allows a full-length stained glass window on the stairway landing to shine on two levels. An assortment of antique and contemporary crystal sparkles in the spring sun on a low reclaimed oak mantel, now at home beneath the dining room windows. Furniture inherited from family members has been painstakingly stripped and refinished, while a discarded pine pulpit from nearby Westminster United Church has new life as a vanity for the main floor bathroom.

Her yet-to-be-renovated kitchen is a serious working space, crammed with cake moulds, copper pans, rows and rows of spices, seasonings and her own specialty concoctions, like apricots soaking in brandy and her ever-present rum pot, stowed beneath a counter-high work table.

Her summertime ritual of filling the large glass jar with cloves, cinnamon, lime, lemon, sugar, brandy, and seasonal fruits is the basis for a whole year of recipes, including sangria and Christmas cake.

“You make a cake and use those things, ” the Cordon Bleu-trained Oulton, 57, explains of the rum pot, her vanilla-flavoured bin of sugar and home-made candied grapefruit and orange rinds. “But then you share the recipes with these things (in them) and people think you’re cheating.”

There’s no doubt she’s not cheating when she opens her house to guests.

Every one of her sit-down dinners or her large teas features her home-made goodies, with nary a catered morsel in sight. She’s famous for her garden parties and barbecues, as well as many Christmas functions, including her legendary Christmas Walk and Tea, where 60 people brave December windchills for a half-hour constitutional, and return to find Oulton’s house transformed into a Victorian-style tea-room, complete with little sandwiches and dainties.

“I don’t sleep for weeks,” she admits of the effort she puts into decorating and preparing food for the annual tea.

In addition to the sleepless nights and early mornings, Oulton employs a well-rehearsed party routine before each function, figuring out menus, breaking down tasks, dipping into the rum pot or chokecherry preserves, or figuring out how to incorporate last summer’s dilled carrots. Husband Cam is also pressed into service, serving as a silver polisher, kitchen helper and dishwasher during the weeks of preparation.

“She is focused and organized,” he explains, joking he has the cleanest hands around during the Christmas season because of his extensive dishwashing duties.

That focus and organization carries through to her second-floor office, where a drafty south-facing sunroom has been fitted with new windows and office equipment for Oulton’s consulting business Community and Youth Solutions.

Once a busy chief executive officer of the provincial Children and Youth Secretariat and a former assistant deputy minister, Oulton now throws herself into her new job, which involves frequent travelling for her responsibilities in assisting non-profit groups with strategic planning, designing programs and developing boards.

When she has a minute, the three walls of windows in her home office give her an overhead perspective of her extensive gardens, now just coming alive in the late April sunshine. A large plastic tub of fish destined for the garden pond burbles away in one corner of the office just off the large master bedroom, while red geraniums wait patiently on the windowsill for warmer transplanting weather.

An April walk on the brick walkways surrounding the rectangular beds of perennials and shrubs doesn’t do justice to what Free Press gardening columnist Linda Stilkowski describes as an “awesome garden, very tasteful and sophisticated.”

The backyard was overrun by Virginia creeper and slugs when the family moved in, and it is now an impressive combination of shrubs and perennials, rose bushes and vegetable plots, all surviving impressively despite the shade of the well-treed neighbourhood.

The hands-on approach Oulton takes in her kitchen transfers to her garden, where she does most of the grunt work, dividing perennials, refining beds, and adding that extra bit of visual interest every year, making the garden an ever-changing work-in-progress.

She knows she has a superwoman reputation when it comes to gardening and throwing parties, and being named a Manitoba Martha will only reinforce that image, but her reaction is simple. All of her working career has involved working with people in community organizations, where hard work may take years to show results. The harvest is more immediate in the garden, in home improvements or in the kitchen, she says.

“Cooking has always been that kind of outlet for me. You make something, it tastes fabulous and it is kind of payback for all that grief you had.”