Born ‎± 1875, died ‎before 1966‎

Married name: Robinson, born ‎4 Dec 1877 Amaranth Township Source: Birth Certificate - photo attached, died ‎1966 Muskoka Pines Home, Bracebridge, Ontario‎, 88 or 89 years. Occupation: Cook in lumber camps, Muskoka and Manitoulin Island, Ontario, ‎1st marriage to: Joseph Warren Robinson, ‎2nd marriage to: Charlie Herman
HONEST IRISH CANADIAN
21 December 1992, by H.J. Suter, Regeneration: The Suter Saga, page 34

Halena was born in the wilds of the Huron Tract of an Irish mother and a father born in England. The Irish prevailed.

She was born in 1877 of a mother whose own mother, Helena's grandmother, died in childbirth in 1874, just two days after Christmas. Helena's grandfather also died in February of that same winter, leaving Eliza, her mother, one of 8 surviving children, the eldest of whom was a daughter Jane, 19 years old. Her sisters must have looked after the children for a time. Young Johnny was only six.

Helena Grace's mother married the son of a well to do contractor in that same year. I suppose the wedding day was accelerated by this tragic event since she was only 16 years old.

When Helena was a very young teen-ager, she was driven by her parents to visit a widow in the neighbourhood. With no warning whatsoever she was left at this near stranger's home to help look after her family. The widow may have been a relative of their family. From that time, she looked after all that family's needs, cooking, laundry - the works. It was a very hard life for a young girl, but it must have been excellent training for her life's work. Home making for a large family was the only choice for most young ladies of that era.

Miss Myers married Joe Robinson and they had 8 children who survived to adulthood. She was a strong lady, both physically and will power wise, who spoke with a Northern Ontario drawl. She appeared very gentle and never raised her voice, although she must have possessed an iron will to raise such a large family in those times. During the Depression, she operated a boarding house for railway section hands in Severn Bridge, Ontario.

She attended, and packed her family off to the Gravenhurst Baptist Church on Sundays. Her husband would not attend, and quite often partied with the Fire Hall Gang on the Sabbath, to her chagrin.

She was a serious member of the Ladies Orange Benevolent Association and rose to become Grand Matron of the Number 501 Silver Leaf Branch in town.

My grandmother was a no nonsense farm wife who worked hard her whole life but who could not chop the head off one of her chickens for Sunday dinner. She was wonderful with her grandchildren but nagged her husband incessantly, possibly for good reason.