Collins Bay's 'Aunt Maude'

Permit me a slight departure just west of downtown, but still along the water! On May 4, 1970, Harold R. Clarke, Aunt Maude, are shown with the Rev. Ray Milley. The two are being honoured with testimonial plaques and Bibles to mark their long service. The occasion is the tenth anniversary of Edith Rankin Memorial United Church in Collins Bay. Previously, services were held in the 1872-built Collins Bay United (formerly Methodist) Church on Hillview Road in Collins Bay. Familiar names like Bustard, Rankin, McCullough, Renfrew, Britt surround that of Aunt Maude in accounts of church doings in this era. (Top photo - Queen's University Archives, V142-7-285, Whig-Standard Fonds)

Some knew Aunt Maude as 'the post lady' started delivering mail by horse-and-buggy, assisting her father throughout an area bounded by Gardiners and Collins Bay Roads, Highways 2 and 33. At that time, that made her a rural mail carrier, though this is now a developed suburban part of Kingston. Active in many church and charity events in an era when women were referenced by their husbands' names i.e. Mrs A.E. Rowley, and when women still wore hats in church! She taught Sunday school at Edith Rankin for 56 years, beginning in 1922 at the former Methodist Church on Hillview Road. The superintendent of the Sunday School was 'Bert' Rowley. 

Albert Edward Rowley was born in Somerset, England, living in Collins Bay for 70 years. He was section foreman for the Grand Trunk Railway at Collins Bay in 1919, and contracted the Spanish Flu in November, 1918, requiring hospitalization at Kingston's Hotel Dieu Hospital. One sordid story involves him finding a dead trespasser who'd been walking the tracks west of Collins Bay. Likely a World War I veteran, the train killed him even though a bullet war wound found at autopsy did not. Bert was known to drive an old '29! Retiring in 1946, he was an award-winning member of the Kingston Stamp Club in the mid-1950s. 

He married Gertrude Maude Waller in October, 1930 and though they had no children, she was 'auntie' to over 500 children that passed through her Sunday School classroom. Their golden wedding anniversary was celebrated at Edith Rankin on October 19, 1980. Bert died at 98 years old on May 18, 1986. Aunt Maude died on February 18, 1988 at the age of 90. 

I remember Aunt Maude. She may even have been my Sunday School teacher. She was recognizable by what I believe was a thyroid goiter that gave her a hoarse voice. Regardless, she was a kindly lady and beloved by many. My Mom followed in her footsteps and later became a Sunday School teacher at Edith Rankin. Here we are after church in the fall of 1973 with the long-gone CN Collins Bay station: