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  • Table of Contents

    • Part 1: First Nations of the Peace River Region
    • Part 2: The Fur Trade Era
    • Part 3: Transportation and Communication
    • Part 4: Old Timers and the Price of Land
    • Part 5: Dawson Creek: The Story of the Community
    • Part 6: Mysteries, Adventures and Indian Legends
    • Part 7: Arts, Crafts and Recreation
    • Part 8: Agriculture
    • Part 9: Church Histories
    • Part 10: Schools
    • Part 11: Health Care
    • Part 12: Industries and Enterprises
    • Part 13: Policing the Peace
    • Part 14: Pouce Coupe, Rolla, and Other South Peace Communities
    • Part 15: Chetwynd and the Fort St. John Area
    • Part 16: The Alberta Peace
    • Part 17: Natural History of the Peace River Region
    • Part 18: Interviews with Old Timers
    • Part 19: Remembering Our Veterans

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04-016: “Aunt Kate” Edwards

By Dorthea H. Calverley 
“Aunt Kate” Edwards was a type as much as she was an individual. Every pioneer community had a woman who stood above the rest in her contributions to society. More often than not they were the midwives to whom many owed their very lives — both mothers and children. Some were like “Granny Whitford” who appears over and over in the Fairview Native women’s story. Some were trained nurses married to homesteaders. Some were like “Aunt Kate” who learned her techniques of setting bones, pulling teeth or whatever from treating her animals.

People still living can remember “Aunt Kate” resting in the old gossip-centre in the Co-op store.

“Aunt Kate” dressed like a man, talked like a man, and smoked a pipe like a man, thereby scandalizing some of the “well-brought-up” ladies of the community. But let’s put her into the background of her environment.

She was a rancher. She drove and rode horses like a ranch hand. How many working horses were “broke” to lady-like language? They didn’t “speak English” but they did respond to tone. It is hard to put the ring of authority and the fear of the lash into Ladies Aid language like “Please, my dear, do try to go faster” or “Do pull a little harder to get us out of this mud hole!”

No hands were more gentle when coaxing a flicker of life into a tiny premature baby. Nobody was more tender in caring for a wee mite too small or too weak to be carried, except on a pillow. Nobody could be more careful, stoking the fire night and day so that the wee occupant of a shoebox on the oven door could have exactly the right amount of extra heat like that now provided in a hospital “incubator”.

No veterinarian could more firmly suture a gash in a horse or a man. The lash of her tongue was the only anesthetic needed if the latter didn’t “hold still”. If all else failed she could sit upon him firmly and get on with the job!

Some women disapproved of her, some men were afraid of her, but many of both sexes and all ages admired and even loved her.

 

« 04-015: Dr. George Mercer Dawson, First Explorer to see “Dawson’s Brook”

04-017: Reminiscences of an Early BC Homesteader »

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