For years, Whistler realtor Michael d’Artois and his loved ones were unaware of the legend surrounding family matriarch, and one of Canada’s first female spies, Sonya d’Artois (née Butt). However, once the proverbial cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and his mother’s outsized legacy had fomented itself in the Canadian imagination, it wasn’t unusual to get the odd book deal or offer to turn his mom’s story into a movie.
So, when a woman reached out about a quilt bearing his mom’s photos and story, Michael took it with a grain of salt.
“I was skeptical, because I didn’t understand what she wanted me to do with the quilt,” he recalled. “I thought she was looking to sell it—but I was totally off the mark.”
As it turned out, unbeknownst to Michael and his family, a heritage quilting guild based in Pritchard, B.C. had selected Sonya as the subject of their latest commemorative quilt—and they wanted to get it in the hands of the d’Artois family.
“The group had been running for about 20 years, and it was a heritage quilting group, so they studied heritage quilts and made reproductions of some of them,” explained Lyn Longair, who made the quilt by hand. “They would pick a woman out of history, usually Canadian, and learn about her and make a quilt that represented something about her life.”
By 2017, the group had gotten to the Second World War years, and settled on Sonya’s remarkable story as a secret agent for Britain’s Special Operations Executive, whose clandestine work was instrumental in helping the Allied forces make their D-Day landing in 1944. The problem was, the guild was under the gun to finish the quilt in time for a special exhibition at the R.J. Haney Heritage Museum in Salmon Arm. Longair’s mom, Diane, a regular member of the group, tapped Lyn to get the job done. Within a month, the quilt was complete, featuring images of Sonya and the war-time years, blue-and-white “friendship” stars, as well as a short biography stitched into the back.
“I was so impressed with what she had done in her life,” Longair said. “She was such an adventurous woman—and it was all before she turned 20. She was squished into this small timeframe, it amazed me. I was always very impressed with the women who were researched for all of these quilts, but she really struck me as an amazing woman who needed to be recognized.”
Sonya’s daring feats are almost too many to number. Trained as an explosives expert, she aided in the French resistance’s sabotage efforts. She regularly hobknobbed with German soldiers, all while coordinating ambushes against them. She narrowly evaded capture on numerous occasions, proving a master at deception. She foiled an assassination attempt on her life by skipping a resistance meeting based on gut feeling alone. In the chaos of liberation in 1944, she was shot at, her jacket riddled with bullets. At various times, she worked as a bicycle courier, recruiter, and intelligence gatherer.
“It’s very humbling,” Sonya’s son, Michael, said of his mom’s legacy. “I never knew why as a kid—we travelled as a family of six—both my parents were treated like they were royalty. Because we moved in military circles. Because of the adventures my parents had, we definitely had special treatment. As kids we always sensed that.”
For some time, the quilt stayed at Di-Versity Quilting Supplies in Pritchard, the shop the heritage quilting group was based out of.
“A lot of people said it should go back to the family, but I didn’t have any way of getting ahold of them,” Longair said.
Eventually, the group connected with Brenda Miller, a fellow quilter in Coquitlam who also had connections to the local legion. Through that network, Miller eventually got in contact with the d’Artois family in Whistler. By October, more than five years after its last stitch, the quilt was in the family’s possession.
Although he could see it eventually being preserved somewhere like the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, for now, Michael said the quilt will likely stay in the family.
“It’s going to find its home amongst the grandchildren, I would say,” he noted. “The grandkids just revered their grandmother, and even though she has this history, they revere her as a grandmother first and foremost. She was a wonderful, totally unconditional person.”
