Taking a Pandemic in your Stride

A Conversation with Louise Denbow, 108-years young on September 1, 2021

Oldest Living Graduate of UBC (Class of 1933)

Louise avoided the Spanish flu in 1918-1920, survived COVID in early 2021, and has stories to tell, always with a smile! She can tell you about her elementary school days, the enticing sound of music at St. Mary's, South Vancouver in 1919, evensong at Christ Church Cathedral in the 1920s, UBC life in 1930, her substitute-teaching in Vancouver in 1933, her first job as Girls Matron at St. George's Residential School in Lytton in 1935, her first full-time teaching position for Grade 6, just for starters ...

I caught up with her after her neighbour had posted a FB video of her swimming in Parksville Bay in mid-August, just outside the front steps of the place she has called her summer home for many decades. Louise has been coming to the Parksville area one way or another since the 1930s, making her our longest-serving as well as our oldest parishioner.