Evelyn Reid will join a small group of people to reach the 100-year-old mark on Monday, Nov. 8 when she is joined by family and friends to celebrate her milestone.
Born in Lindsay, Ontario, Reid grew up in the community, attended school and married Jack (John) Emery Reid in 1942. The couple met at a dance at the Lindsay community hall and spent a lot of their life together working hard and spending their leisure time dancing, she recalled with passion in an interview with Elliot Lake Today.
During the interview, Reid acknowledged that her memory, particularly dates, might be a bit clouded with some of her life experiences, but what she remembers she does with passion.
After they were married the couple moved to Hamilton to work for companies making materials for the war effort. Jack Reid worked as a tool and cutter/grinder and Evelyn, who was an experienced knitter, helped make the straps on backpacks used by Canadian soldiers in the war.
“The war broke out and we got conscripted,” she recalled. “They got a hold of me because I worked for the Lindsay Knitters from when I was 18. When I got to Hamilton they found out and they conscripted me to work at a factory to do the same thing.”
The civilian work here meant that Jack Reid, “never went overseas,” she said.
Following the war, the couple moved to a community in the Stoney Creek area where they purchased a small mixed farm and grew oats and raised chickens. There was no electricity at the farmhouse or indoor facilities, which came later.
“I had a garden of my own,” she said in which she also grew strawberries.
Their eldest son Tom was born and the young family lived on the farm. Next came their second child, Caralyn - now deceased. The couple would eventually have five children including Liza, Joseph-deceased, and Rhonda.
They then moved from the farm to Sault Ste. Marie where Jack worked as a tool and die maker with a company connected to the steel mill.
Evelyn took a job selling Avon products and eventually became Avon’s highest seller in Canada.
“I even got an invitation to Montreal, the head office, when all this happened,” which she attended.
Jack left the steel mill job because of breathing difficulties from the dust.
He would eventually get a job picking up and delivering the Toronto Globe and Mail in Sudbury and delivering the papers from Sudbury to Sault Ste. Marie and communities in between which included Elliot Lake. She would help her husband on his daily runs.
“We got the job of picking up papers every day. We went to Sudbury every night of the week except for Saturday night when he was off. We did that for 30 years.”
Still in the Sault, the jobs allowed them to move into a home on Ferguson Avenue which they arranged to purchase for $30 a month for 30 years.
“Jack made a beautiful house out of it,” she recalled.
She said her husband put in a rec room, toilet and laundry room on the basement level.
He would also build a bar downstairs in the tv room, “which we used and had lots of fun with.”
They lived in the house for 30 years.
Their journey would see them move to Serpent River where they built a house and then on to Elliot Lake where they lived in a condo on Washington Crescent. Jack got cancer which he succumbed to just before he turned 65.
Today she lives in a cozy apartment on Warsaw Street where her son Tom will host a birthday party for his mother on her birthday on Monday, Nov. 8.
She is best described as a fit and feisty centenarian and that attribute comes through when she talks about specific experiences of her full life.
Her friend Anne Brant helps her out on weekly shopping trips to the grocery store. She currently drives her after the centenarian had her licence suspended when she was 97. The pair met at a shuffleboard game six years ago. Evelyn was an active shuffleboard player until three years ago when she suffered a broken hip.
The Reids had a trailer in a seniors’ park on Quirke Lake, off the old Panel Mine Road and joined as one of its first members. Today, she is an honorary member.
She credits her longevity to the many diverse jobs and activities she has undertaken.
In her own words:
“Just give yourself a kick in the ass and keep going,” she advised with a grin.