Bertha McCarthy Turnbull
The Turnbull Family (summer 2001)
Bertha Margaret, 1910 -1970
Bertha attended Campbellford High School with her sister Fern. Bertha pitched for the Keene women’s team that won a cup at the Norwood Fair in 1925. She was a registered nurse, training at St. Michael’s in Toronto on the advice of her Aunt Gill from Rochester. She won a prize for being the best-looking nurse in the program. She continued to work as a nurse after her children were older. She married John Turnbull, 1911-1970, who was a purser for Canada Steamship Lines. She was a friendly woman who had lots of self-confidence and was a great storyteller. In fact there is a reference to this in her graduation book Who will we have now to tell us stories? It is said she gained this skill through years of regaling her younger siblings with stories.
I well recall being invited for dinner at their gracious home in Toronto at 1 Lamport Avenue in Rosedale and later to 68 Chudleigh in Lawrence Park as a university student. Uncle John would sit in his chair with their greyhound dog, Tippy, at his feet. I have great memories of Aunt Bertha inviting me to go to see St. Mike’s play on Sunday afternoons at Maple Leaf Gardens.
Bertha died of pancreatic cancer in April 1968. John died in September of the same year, and at the same age-58. Bertha and John are buried in Peterborough.
They had four children:
