In the early 1970s, my maternal grandparents, Leo Burgess and Helen Lerner, were more than happy to rely on what seemed me to be horribly outdated and obsolete technology. My grandmother still used a wringer-washer and my grandfather used a push mower that to me seemed to be older than Methuselah.
These were both very much like the implements my grandparents used. I remember they each let me have a try at using them. Needless to say, both were hard work. I’ll stick to our modern gizmos, thanks. [Images shared per Creative Commons licences 3.0 Unported and 2.0 Generic, respectively. Links: washer; lawn mower.]
My mother still has the scrub board my grandmother used. She used to keep it in a spare room, which is where I photographed it. A few years ago my folks built a new house, so it now sits in a place of pride.
As can be faintly seen on the washboard, it was manufactured by Fraser Western Broom and Woodenware Ltd. in Vancouver, B.C. I see that the Museum of Vancouver, which is less than a half hour drive from where I live, has one in its collection. Based on the information on the item on its website, this washboard could not have been manufactured any later than 1950. That means my grandmother’s washboard must have been at least 25 or 30 years old when I first saw it.
While it may seem my grandparents clung to the past, they did not eschew more modern technology. Ever since before I was in kindergarten, my grandfather always used an electric razor. We always loved it when he would hold it up to our cheeks so that we could have a shave, too. I have the last electric razor my grandfather owned before he passed away in 1995, a Philishave 765. Not only does it still work, but to my surprise I’m still able to buy replacement blades for it. I rarely use it, however, because I still prefer to use a manual razor; plus, several years ago my wife bought me a new one.
This razor must be at least 30 years old, if not older, but it still works!
March is Women’s History Month and March 8 was International Women’s Day. From the International Women’s Day website:
Celebrate women’s achievement. Raise awareness about discrimination. Take action to drive gender parity.
My mother’s aunt, Adeline (“Addie”) Lerner (1930-2023) was a strong advocate for women’s rights during her lifetime, starting in the early 1970s. She was a founding member of one of the first women’s groups in Lethbridge, Alberta, which opened up a women’s centre. Addie also participated in establishing one of the first daycare centres in Lethbridge. She was also a member of the Alberta Status of Women Action Committee – Lethbridge Branch and served on the provincial board as a regional representative in 1989-90.
Adeline Lerner 1930-2023
Sometime around 2017, the Alberta Labour History Institute conducted a series of “Interviews Relating to Women and Work in Alberta”. This was part of the ALHI’s “Moving Forward” project. Its goal was:
“…to record and recognize the important work carried out by women throughout Alberta’s history, and to honour the achievements of women in various areas of work and the labour movement. The project involves the gathering and recording of the stories of and about women and work, and making this history available to the public.”
The ALHI interviewed a number of women as part of the Moving Forward project. My Aunt Addie was one of them.
YouTube video of the ALHI interview of my great aunt, Addie Miron (née Lerner). A transcript is available on the ALHI website.
Addie noticed the inequities as a child:
I can remember one time when I was a little girl, my mother did let me run around all over the place, I was free that way. Some relatives came to visit. They came in a buggy and horse, and they had three rowdy boys with them. When they drove up I had a rim of a wagon wheel and I was running around pushing it with a stick. The lady said to my mother, isn’t she a little old to be running around like that with that wheel? Suddenly I felt like I was doing something wrong, but I never would’ve though of that. I guess she was referring to me being a girl and here I am running around like a tomboy. She herself was also indoctrinated to think that way. I don’t think people tried to make you feel bad, it’s just the way they thought.
Adeline Miron
One of Addie’s foundational steps in her participation in the women’s movement was when she took a course called “What is a Woman?” through the University of Lethbridge:
I’m going to find out what is a woman, and I took the course at the university. I don’t think I realized what it was going to be all about, but it was nice to take the course and have these experiences with all these other young women and the odd man in there who was resentful… We’d try and argue some of these things we talked about when we were being put down and the ways we were being treated in society. Some of these people could not see that. But most of the women who took the course took it for the same reason I did. They wanted to know more about why they feel repressed and what they could do about it.
Adeline Miron
Soon afterwards, Addie and some friends decided to start a women’s movement in Lethbridge. In the early days, there were about 35 to 75 women involved.
We decided to start a women’s movement in Lethbridge. We applied for a grant the fall of ’73. We received our grant in ’74 and we opened up a women’s center. I think we used to meet at each other’s houses for a while. There was a building downtown where the birth control center was, that was a new place too, and we rented a couple of rooms in there. It was nice when we got a house all to ourselves. We became quite active, even before we had a place all to ourselves, we gave courses at the library on things to do with women, like women in male oriented jobs, women in female oriented jobs, women in health, and so on.
Adeline Miron
One of the important issues at the time (as now) was childcare.
We lobbied city council. They didn’t seem to fall for it to begin with but eventually we talked them into allowing us to open up a public daycare in Lethbridge. After awhile I worked there for about five years. Some of us that were lobbying were also running the daycare and helping with the children. The children were between two and six. We also had a kindergarten.
Adeline Miron
Addie worked at the childcare centre from 1980 to 1985. Among other things, she worked with toddlers aged 19 months to three years old, and sometimes cared for children with disabilities.
I think Aunt Addie believed her work and the women she worked with made a positive change. However, there was still a lot of work to be done:
There needs to be a lot of improvement but things have really become better. There’s still room for a lot of improvement, don’t you think so? There’s an attitude that hasn’t gone away completely anywhere – it’s still a male oriented society, more or less.
Adeline Miron
Aunt Addie remained active into her 80s. After her husband Ross passed in 2009, Aunt Addie continued to live on her own in the same house until a few years ago. Sadly, in her last days, it was necessary for her to move into a care home. She passed away last summer, at age 92.
Ross Miron and Addie Lerner
I was fortunate to know Aunt Addie quite well and always made a point of visiting her when I visited Lethbridge. I also had the wisdom to – or dumb luck to think about it -interview her about her life. During one visit about 10 years ago she told me a story about going to her grandmother’s every day after school. It dawned on me that she was talking about someone born in the 1860s. I made a point of asking to visit her again a few days later to interview her. I managed to ask all sorts of questions I should have asked her years ago!
Me with Aunt Adeline
Aunt Addie’s advocacy and work definitely contributed to the achievement of women that we celebrate every International Women’s Day!
As I’ve written about before, my family are avid board gamers and card players. Something else many of us love are puzzles. Jigsaw, crosswords, logic puzzles, trivia, cryptograms, sudoku, and, of course, word search puzzles. Our youngest child not only loves doing mazes, he has been creating his own for the family to solve ever since he was six years old. Heck, the way I studied for the LSAT was by working my way through a stack of Dell‘s Logic Problems and Word Games. I was essentially just continuing to do something I was doing anyway, and I did very well on the exam. (Dell was also was the origin of the modern-day sudoku, which ran in its magazine under the name “Number Place” in the late 1970s – which was where I first saw the game.)
While he was primarily a card player – especially cribbage – my maternal grandfather, Leo Burgess, loved the Wonderword, a word search puzzle.
Google Image Search for the Wonderword. I was quite surprised to learn that it’s still a thing!
He did it every day. Unfortunately, his local paper, The Lethbridge Herald, stopped publishing it. However, we were living in Saskatchewan at the time and the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix continued to publish it. So I diligently clipped it from the paper every day. When I had what I considered to be enough, I’d mail him a small collection.
I loved doing it for him. I kept it up for a few years. I only stopped when we moved to British Columbia and our new local paper didn’t publish it.
Maybe my love for puzzles and word games is why I love genealogy. It’s essentially one perpetual puzzle!
I’m one of five siblings. My sisters and I live in British Columbia, both of my brothers live in Alberta. Until a few years ago, both my brothers lived in the same town as my parents. During the first summer of the pandemic, the elder of my two brothers moved to another town, about 90 minutes away from my folks. As a result, it was a couple years until I saw his new home.
In October 2022, my father’s younger brother passed away. That same week, my father ended up in hospital with a broken hip. I flew out to Alberta for the memorial service and to see our dad. On my return trip home, I spent a night at my brother’s new place.
I was completely flabbergasted to discover that in his living room, under two upholstery covers (they have a lot of pets!), was the armchair that belonged to my great grandmother, Emelia Anton. I have no idea how old it actually is.
I know my grandmother acquired it from her mother sometime in the late 70s or early 80s and had it reupholstered. I thought it was disposed of after my grandfather passed away. I never realized that it ended up with my brother someway, somehow. It was really cool to see something that had once belonged to my great grandmother, which I remember well from our visits with her when I was a kid.
Update: Talking to my mother in August 2025, it turns out that this chair belonged to her other grandmother, her father’s mother, Hazel Nelson.
A Deck of Ancestors 
