150 years, 150 women, 150 words compels

Craig Bakay | Aug 02, 2017

It was rather quiet in the meeting room of the United Church in Sharbot Lake Saturday, despite there being quite a number of people there.
The reason for the silence is that everyone seemed to be reading.

They were reading stories about area women, 150 of them to be exact, stories that were written by local people who either knew the women or were descendants of them, and this was the brainchild of Dianne Lake for a Canada 150 project — 150 years, 150 women, 150 stories.

There is a book (a few copies are still available) but the quests on Saturday were reading from recipe cards.
“This is a trip down memory lane,” said Ann Walsh. “We’ve (the MacPherson clan) been here for eight generations and this is amazing.
“I’m learning so much about people I knew as a child.”

Lake set the process of gathering the stories and then it sort of took on a life of its own.
In the end, she had 114 people submit stories about grandmothers, mothers, aunts, you name it.
“I enjoyed almost every minute of this,” Lake said.

The first story in the book is Myrtle Law, Lake’s mother-in-law and the last (150th) is Susannah Minerva Wagar, who was born on Oct. 5, 1867.
“It took me eight cemeteries to find someone born 150 years ago but we found one,” Lake said.
Along the way, they collected stories about five midwives, one chiropractor, several nurses and teachers.
When they had collected 150 stories, they stopped.

Lake said the focus on women seemed appropriate.

“I could find a lot of information about the men in the area,” she said. “But not so much about their wives — and I knew all the wives had stories.”