Thanksgiving 2020 + One

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

My mother Elizabeth Ann (Rannie) Tripe would have been 100 today. She was a fan of L.M. Montgomery and named me for Anne of Green Gables – Anne with an “e”. I did have auburn hair when I was younger but not red hair like Anne.

My Mom was a woman of her time. She kind of spanned two generations of those women who worked outside the home and those who stayed home to look after the household. I remember her telling me once that she was very lucky not to have to go to work. She was smart. She read. She decided she would go to university when she was in her 60s and get a B.A. in English in North Bay.

She raised 5 children starting in England, a few more in Canada and the last one on a U.S. Air Force base in Germany. We all turned out pretty good! Some of us were a tad more difficult than the others but we made it in the end.

She had a good sense of fun. She was game for anything. She came to visit us in Rankin Inlet and rode on our three-wheel ATV around town with her purse on the handlebars. She met people easily. She went to a service at the Glad Tidings Pentecostal Church just behind us and had a great time.

She came to visit us in Inuvik and we flew to Tuktoyaktuk in a float plane. Here we are at the cemetery with the Beaufort Sea in the background. On the trip up we kept saying things like "Can you see that caribou down there?" And would answer "Oh Yes!" First of all it might have been a reindeer and second, she told us later that she was going to be having cataract surgery when she got back home!

She came to visit us at our “ranch” in southern Alberta when our house wasn’t quite finished and she spent Christmas with us one year.

She loved dogs and was a great friend to her own dog and our dog.

She would have loved coming to visit us here in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley. She would have loved the history and the stories.

I am here and am able to tell her story and that counts for a lot.

Thankfully.

Onwards!