My mother was born at St. Paul’s Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Later she would insist on having all of her babies in St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. (She appreciated having the nuns around). Ruth’s mother Margaret was a nurse. Margaret worked at that occupation on and occasionally off for 50 years.

A few years after Ruth was born, her father packed the family up and moved in with the wealthy relatives in North Carolina. My mother first learned to speak with a Carolina accent. My mother’s younger sisters were born in North and South Carolina.

After the stock market crash of 1929 Ruth’s father looked at his shrinking investments and headed back to Canada. After walking into a grade one classroom in Saskatoon my mother quickly forget that Carolina accent and learned to speak like a true Canadian. Most of her school years were in Saskatoon with many summer trips out to her grandmother’s farm in Perdue, Saskatchewan.

Ruth’s final year of high school was in Winnipeg. It was 1940 and war was raging in Europe. Mr. Gibson packed up the whole family and headed further west. Once she arrived on the West Coast, Ruth had no desire to return to the places of her childhood. Other than a single train trip to Expo 67, my mother never again ventured east of the Rocky Mountains.

Ruth loved to swim and hike. She would walk up Grouse Mountain from the Lonsdale Streetcar to go skiing. She met my father, Milton Melle, when he arrived here in uniform at the end of WWII. My father was from Montreal but he had spent some early childhood years in Vancouver and out west is where he wanted to stay.
They both looked very happy in their early photos. Unfortunately, there were some deep incompatibilities and my parents divorced more than thirty years ago.

Ruth lived with her children in Vancouver and North Vancouver.
She lived almost 20 years in Vancouver's West End followed by 17 years in Richmond, BC. After her pneumonia at Christmas 2003 she remained in hospitals and extended care.