Vietta McInnes – long serving community correspondent hits the century mark

Jeff Green | Jan 20, 2021

Vietta Wood was raised in Snow Road Station. When she was young, her father drove a creamery truck to Tweed several days a week. He used to take Vietta and/or another one of his children with him, when they were old enough.

“We would jump out of the truck and open the farm gate. Every farm had a gate, and it saved him having to get out of the truck 4 times if we were with him,” she said last week from her sitting room at Sharbot Lake Retirement and Retreat.

The children would close the gate and stay put as their dad drove to the barn to pick up full cans of cream and drop off the empty ones. They opened the gate for the truck to go back through the opening and then closed it, and jumped back on the truck.

Her dad had different routes to cover, criss-crossing all the back roads in Canonto, Clarendon and Miller and Barrie Townships before heading over to Tweed to deliver the cream. Then it was back to Snow Road.

“He got up early, about 4 or 5, and got back at 8pm in the evening. It was a hard life for him. When we went with him, we enjoyed it. It was a bit of an adventure, but we did not have to load all those heavy cream cans,” she remembers.

Vie was born 100 years ago, on January 21, 1921. She was 23 when she married Ray McInnes, not long before he went off to fight in World War II. Vie gave birth to their first daughter while Ray was overseas. One of the more difficult days for Vie was the day she received word, via telegram, that Ray had been seriously injured in battle. After a time in hospital in England, Ray came home to Canada on a hospital ship. He spent a year in a rehabilitation hospital in Canada, coming home only occasionally on weekends, until he was finally released.

“They said he was too badly injured to work on his family farm over in McDonalds Corners, so they encouraged him to become a mechanic, which I never understood, because it is not that easy on the body to be a mechanic” said Greg McInnes, the youngest of Ray and Vie’s 6 children, who was born in 1950.

Ray trained as a mechanic, and got a job in Tweed, where the McInnes family lived for 9 years, from the late 1940’s to the mid 1950’s.

There was a garage available in Plevna, and Ray was approached to take it over, since he had the skill and the local community connections to make a go of it. He began running the garage in 1956.

Ray, Vie, and the family moved into a large house in Plevna that was located not far from the garage. While Ray ran the garage, Vie ran the house. In addition to their 6 children, she took in boarders, up to 8 at a time, and kept everyone fed and the house in running order.

She also began her newspaper career, which ended up spanning almost 50 years.

“After we moved to Plevna, I went to the office of the Tweed News, and asked them if they were interested in someone submitting community news from Plevna. They said yes, and that was the beginning of my newspaper career,” she said.

While running the garage in Plevna in the 1960’s, Ray earned a good reputation for service. With the economy in small towns losing steam over those years, as the farming base disappeared and the rural exodus picked up force, Ray found that many of his clients had trouble paying him. While that was not ideal, it did result in getting them a new house. One customer owned an entire lake, near Plevna, and offered Ray a lot with 250 feet of waterfront on the lake. Another customer, a builder, did most of the work building the house.

“Both of them owed money to the garage, so I don't think the house was that expensive to build,” said Greg McInnes.”

In addition to writing her column, Vie sold for Avon.

“She owned a Volkswagen, and zipped all over the countryside in that car, selling Avon all over the place,” he said.

A car accident in 1970, on what is now Road 509, resulted in another serious injury for Ray, and he had to let go of his garage. He finished his career working for an auto parts supplier, before he retired in the 1980’s. Ray died in the early 1990’s.

When the North Frontenac News [now the Frontenac News] started up in 1971, Vie began writing the Plevna column, and she also submitted her news to the Perth Courier. She sent all her columns by Canada Post.

Her column appeared in the Frontenac News until November 3, 2005, when she stopped because of health problems.

Vietta was 85 at the time. She had been writing for the Frontenac News for 34 years. Her health has not deteriorated too much however, and she continued to live in the house near Plevna, with her son and his family, for another 14 years, participating in community life, in and around Plevna.

She suffered a fall in late 2019, and now needs a walker to help get around. That is what led her to move to Sharbot Lake Retirement.

Since the lockdown for COVID-19 in March of 2020, she has not had the visits from family and friends that she enjoyed before then, but said that she hasn’t been that heavily affected by the virus.

“I feel pretty comfortable here, and I don’t get around that much anyway,” she said. “We are waiting for the vaccine.”

She will miss having a family gathering to celebrate her 100th birthday this week, however. Her son is the only family member who can visit, due to COVID restrictions.

“Hopefully, we can all get together outside when the weather gets warmer,” said Greg.

Meanwhile, the staff and other residents at Sharbot Lake Retirement will do what they can to celebrate the day.

Vietta is a special person, and we are going to do what we can to help her celebrate her 100th birthday,” said Andrew Kovacs, the owner/manager of Sharbot Lake Retirement and Retreat.