Lois McCarthy
Lois Elizabeth, 1913 -1995, aged 82
Lois played third base for the Keene Women’s softball club in the 1930s, and played goal in hockey. She went to secondary school at St. Peters in Peterborough. Lois was a registered nurse as Bertha was, graduating from St Joseph’s Hospital, Peterborough in 1937 in the Depression. She told the story of how she bought her nursing uniforms for three years for $60. She used proceeds from the sale of her turkeys to buy material that Kitty Gourley made into a pretty suit. Her dad bought her a lovely white blouse to go with it. She was so pleased with her outfit only to be crushed by hearing the Sister say in front of all her classmates, “Miss McCarthy, where did you get that cheap suit ?”
In the 1930s she worked as a private nurse, sometimes for people who could only afford to give her what they grew, such as a box of strawberries. In the 1940s and 50s she worked at the Sunnybrook Hospital for veterans in Toronto. She generally lived in the nurses’ residence.
In 1967 she joined Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) and worked as a nursing volunteer for three years with her friend Liz Donough at the Holy Family Hospital, North Kawkaw in Ghana, Africa, an experience that had a big effect on her life. I have a copy of a four -page letter she wrote on September 24, 1967, appealing for medical supplies, including cot sheets, diapers, glasses. She told of going to a movie shown outdoors in her town of 15,000, with no microphones to carry the sound. After her return home she sent supplies every year to the hospital in Africa. I remember her loving to sing. She was a person who enjoyed a party, especially in the days when she would bring her nursing colleagues with her to visit at the farm.
After retiring from nursing, she volunteered to work with the St. Vincent DePaul Society in Peterborough. She lived in an apartment with her sister Mary for several years, moving to the Kinsmen Centre in 1993. At her 80th birthday party at Bolin’s in 1993 she stated that her parents would be very surprised that she had made it that long because she had been a very sickly child. She developed Bells Palsy in May 1994 and was forced to move to Extendicare to receive nursing care. She died in May 1995 with six nurses in uniform as an honour guard at her funeral at the Keene church.
