The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Whether it's clean living, good genes or an unadulterated sense of humour, Evelyn Russell is doing something right. The woman believed to be the Flin Flon area's oldest resident turned 102 at the Personal Care Home earlier this month. The happy-go-lucky centenarian has led an active, largely independent life, having only moved to the PCH within the past few years. And it's been a life replete with change. Very little about society is the same today as when Russell was born in Poland on September 7, 1909. Fanciful idea Television was merely a fanciful idea. Life expectancy was just 52. Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death. And Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the man now on the five-dollar bill, was Prime Minister. Russell's early life did not seem overly promising, even after the family relocated to Elma, a tiny town outside Winnipeg, when she was still an infant. Her parents had no money, and years later that same scarcity of cash would make Russell one of Flin Flon's earliest residents. She and husband Jack moved to the fledgling mining town in 1929. It was the start of the Great Depression, and Jack considered himself blessed to land work at Hudson Bay Mining (smelting was still a year away). See 'Well...' on pg. 7 Continued from pg. 1 Russell lived in a tent for the first three years, raising her two eldest children, Dave and Duncan. During that time, she spent countless hours walking from Channing to Flin Flon. She and Jack later moved into a well-deserved home at 68 Hill St. as Evelyn lived the quiet but noble life of a housewife. Russell eagerly supported her husband in his career as a timberman and guided a family that in the 1940s grew to include a daughter, Bettyann. Not long after Jack passed away in 1967, Russell moved into an apartment on Church Street and, as she got older, to Rotary Court. The Reminder joins the rest of the community in wishing Mrs. Russell all the best in her amazing life!
