This is a post about signatures. You know, the one you use to sign legal documents, at the bottom of old-fashioned letters (does anyone write those anymore?), the one authors use to sign their books.
A signature. It becomes one of the key defining items to showcase who you are. Like the Greatest Showman song, a signature states ‘This is Me.’
I have a pretty good memory of the first time I starting thinking about, and practicing, my signature. I grew up on a stump ranch farm north of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, halfway or so between Christopher Lake and Paddockwood. We were pupils at Paddockwood School, a K-8 feeder school for the high schools in Prince Albert.
Our principal in my later years at Paddockwood (between about grades 6-8) was Mr. Don Toporowski. He taught Grade 8 but like all teachers, would rove a bit between grades as needed. One of his sons, Kerry, was in my grade.
Now, like all school kids in the 70s and 80s, we learned to print, first, them learned cursive handwriting (‘joined up writing’ I’ve heard it called…😆). We were past the practice stage of handwriting by the time we hit Mr. Toporowski’s class ( Mrs. McCalmon and Mrs. Spoonheim had whipped my class into as good a shape as they could) and were writing our English and History essays and exams in handwriting.
[Aside: I had my first practicing in forensic handwriting interpretation, which is a key skill for a historian, at this time. We often swapped each other’s papers to mark in class. Our two class lefties, left-handers whose writing was a bit more challenging, usually came to me. Looking at you, Kerry and Lee! 😘]
But one afternoon — and I can’t remember if it was winter or spring, but it was most likely a Friday, and we were done for the week and waiting for the buses — Mr. Toporowski decided we should develop and practice our signatures.
And he put his on the board. With good heavy chalk and a swirl of dust, he put his signature up as an example. Signatures, he said, are more than just your name.
We probably looked fairly blank at this point. It said his name, Don Toporowski. We’d all seen it on our report cards, in our school newspaper The Paddockwood Pow-Wow [yeah, I know], and on anything from the town, since Don moonlighted as the town mayor, too.
So to prove his point, he got a classmate up to try to copy his signature underneath. Don Toporowski. Oh. Yeah, there’s a difference.
So we got out notebooks and started practicing, figuring out how we wanted our own signatures to look.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, he said, but it can’t just be a scribble. It has to be recognizable, more or less. And strong. A strong, confident signature is important.
Well, confidence was absolutely not my strong point, when I was in grade school. So that felt weird. And kind of faked. I wasn’t confident. I was tentative and driven to achieve excellence, when possible. Imperfection and confidence? Ha. You can imagine what my first few tries looked like. Trying NOT to strive for perfection was my first challenge.
Then there was the M problem. I have a lot of Ms in my name. All Ms, in fact. Not one, but TWO middle names, b beginning with M, as was my first and (at the time) maiden name.
[Aside 2: yes, I did think I should find a husband whose last name started with M. It would have broken my rhythm otherwise. The passport office thinks I may be the only Canadian with all Ms).
And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but when you only have ONE main letter to use, you need to get creative with it. But how many ways can you change up an M? First arch big, second arch small? First arch small, second arch big? So, I played with different ways to write the letter M. And looked with pure envy at everyone else, happily using MORE THAN ONE main letter. Humph.
By the time I’d covered a couple of pages with practice Ms and my whole name, I had something that I didn’t have before: my own way to write an M, and with that, the beginning of my signature.
‘You should be able to sign your signature with your eyes closed,” Mr. Toporowski said. New challenge. Merle the Obedient: ok then.
Well, less pretty, but I think that was the point. To learn to feel it, not just see it, to let it flow. With eyes closed you snipped off the awkward sharp bits and found rhythm and cadence. And, confidence.
‘Buses are here.’ Time to tuck away pens and notebooks, gather and go, flexing writing hands to ease the cramps. Take a final look at my pages. Oh. A signature. MY signature. I see.
It wasn’t quite finished — my style continued to grow and change — but the lesson that day resonated with me. Your signature is yours. No one else writes the way you do. And you’ll need it often — to get your first bank account, to sign cheques, to sign your taxes, your mortgage. And, in my case, to sign books. It’s me, distilled, so you can see at a glance.
Mr. Toporowski’s lesson was this: your signature is important. It’s important enough to require development, concerted practice, personal intention. And confidence.
So every time I sign my name — whether on a document or at a book signing — there is a little invisible dotted line that leads from me back to Don Toporowski and his signature lesson. Because your signature is who you are. And only you can decide what that should look like.
Thanks, Don. RIP our schoolteacher and principal. And thank you for pushing me to find my signature. https://grays.ca/tribute/details/2563/Donald-Toporowski/obituary.html
Merle Massie A Place in History 
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