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Picked Up In Passing by Jamie Nesbitt - Bulletin Editor |
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There are literally stacks of old photographs in my office and elsewhere in this building that I find most interesting every time I sift through them. It’s like going through old issues of The Bulletin—you can get lost for hours reading about the old days.
I came across an old photo the other day of a very distinguished looking gentleman whose name was Bob McKelvie. It was taken in 1958. I looked him up in the Obituaries Index published by the local branch of the Alberta Genealogical Society (one of the most valuable publications we have) which gave me the date of his death and subsequent obituary.
Bob McKelvie was born in Dorchester, N.B. and like many Maritimers he headed west just after the turn of the century, landing in Winnipeg in 1905. Three years later, most likely attracted by the CPR’s promise of wide-open skies and jobs in the construction of the irrigation system, he came to Brooks. He worked in the Bassano area during the construction of the Bassano dam, freighting supplies from that town to the dam site and also contracted to move dirt for part of the railway grade between Bassano and Makepeace on the CPR branch line.
He later served in the First World War and was a life member of the Royal Canadian Legion. He was also active in the Masonic Lodge and was a lifelong supporter of the Conservative Party. His first wife Alberta was born at Kettleby, Ontario in 1883. She married Bob on January 31, 1920 when he was back that way and came to Rainier with him that year. Disaster struck on March 2, 1939 when she succumbed to an illness she had suffered for close to 10 years; she had spent the last six weeks of her life in the Bassano Hospital.
Bob continued to reside in Rainier and although I don’t have a date, he remarried, this time to Mary Jenkins, a native of Nova Scotia.
They were together until Bob’s death at the Colonel Belcher Hospital in Calgary on October 31, 1963 at the age of 83. He is buried in the Field of Honor at the Brooks Cemetery.
Mrs. McKelvie left the area and went back to Windsor, Nova Scotia where she died in May of 1973.
Like Bob, she was also 83. And while Bob’s obituary listed four nieces and six nephews as survivors, there were no children from either marriage. |
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