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Vol. 7
No. 1
YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL NEWSPAPER - LANARK, NORTH LEEDS & GRENVILLE
JANUARY 2020
After 30 years Pauline Anderson says goodbye to Welcome Wagon
Pauline Anderson says goodbye to Welcome Wagon visits. Photo credit: Sally Smith.
Smiths Falls - Sally Smith editorial@pdgmedia.ca Nothing deterred Pauline Anderson — trapped cats, icy driveways, sliding into snowdrifts. For over 6,000 visits, she took it all in stride, carried on like Welcome Wagon women do, and visited newcomers to Smiths Falls. But after 30 years she thought it was time to stop. “I’m getting too old,” she shrugged, very matter-of-factly, but it’s clear looking at her, while she might have stopped Welcome Wagon, she hasn’t stopped being a whirlwind in the community. For this moment, though, she stops and remembers a bit, recalling some of the people she’s met and the beginnings of her time with Welcome Wagon. “The first question I was asked was if I had a typewriter,” she says, smiling a bit, adding that “today all the reporting is done in 10 seconds” by email. Anderson arrived circuitously to Smiths Falls — starting from England, then on to Summerside PEI, to Cold Lake Alberta, and landing eventually in Smiths Falls. “My husband was in the military,” she explains. When she saw an ad in the paper recruiting Welcome Wagon ‘visitors’, and with three young children at home, Anderson decided to give it a try. She was also travelling back and forth to England where her family was. “With a job you
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can’t take off at a moment’s notice.” So she joined. After a two-day training course in Brockville she started her rounds initially picking up tips from real estate agents where the newcomers were. That’s not possible today because of the Privacy Act; today it’s word-ofmouth. Her area covered from Smiths Falls, halfway to Perth, halfway to Carleton Place, towards North Gower covering Toledo and Elgin and then to Merrickville which was the dividing line with Kemptville.
At first, Welcome Wagon women also went to hospitals to see new moms — “great”, a wide smile — but, again, because of the Privacy Act, this isn’t done anymore. It comes back to word-of-mouth. “We were paid a commission — not very much,” she adds quickly, but it covered expenses. Anderson always made an appointment to see newcomers figuring if she had to drive to the country she wanted to be sure they were there. She does remember one long snow-covered lane early one
morning that no one else had been down, wondering if she could make it and who would meet her at the end. It turned out well. She carried a basket of goodies containing gift certificates and little gifts — “maybe 25 or 30 sponsors.” With a newcomer to the area, she tried to spend at least an hour; with a new mom (when she started with moms), she’d spend a half hour. And when it became known that she was the Welcome Wagon woman, new moms would call her. She remembers one call at 1:30 in the morning from a new mom requesting a visit. “I had a baby. Can I have a Welcome Wagon?” asked the caller. All her visits really brought home to Anderson that the world is small; at one visit she met a woman who was “a neighbour of a girl [she] was at school with in England.” Over her visits she also met a United Nations of people, too — from Brazil, Trinidad, England, the Dominican Republic, the U.S., India, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, to name a few. She was hosed down by a child at one visit, sat in the mud outside at several visits, got lost more than once as the 911 numbers weren’t yet up when she started, and was given wrong directions many times. Anderson, during her visits, made a point of ignoring dogs, not because she was afraid but because it was a good practice. At one home
“the dog came and sniffed me over. Its owner said ‘he must like you because he hasn’t bitten you.’” At the end Anderson saw he liked something about her. “He chewed a hole in my purse,” she laughed. Better her purse than her ankle… And she also discovered many head-scratchers in addresses. A Gillies Corners woman had a Smiths Falls phone, a Perth address and her children went to school in Carleton Place. “She was a nice lady. She offered wine,” Anderson said. That was the only time wine was offered during her visits. Her first visit, 30 years ago, was to Mike and Susan Adams; her last visit — 30 years and eight days after her first — was to Brittany Hunter, a new mom. So, she’s saying goodbye, but she’ll always remember the people she met and the fun she had along the way. And the people she met will always remember the friendly face at the door welcoming them to their new town. Gloria Foster, on the other hand, is just beginning; she started her visits with Welcome Wagon on October 16. She admits she has some big shoes to fill but has already met some new faces and greeted some new babies. Foster is a Smiths Falls girl and is looking forward to welcoming newcomers to ‘her’ town. You can reach her at gloriafoster@live.com
FireDawgs get big boost from the Polar Bear Plunge Perth - Terry O'Hearn editorial@pdgmedia.ca The annual Perth Polar Bear Plunge attracted 131 participants, who took the icy plunge into the Tay River at the 27th annual plunge on New Year’s Day. The Perth FireDawgs Youth Initiative Program will benefit from the $13,809 taken in this year. The best year so far was 2018, when The Table Community Food Centre raised $35,000. Shortly after 10 a.m. the first plunger went in, and the rest quickly followed in groups of five or less. Chief Polar Bear Dave Lavery was in the first group to
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jump, and still had enough left to jump again at the end. Lavery also came from the greatest distance – Kabul, Afghanistan – which is approximately 10,500 km from Perth. The event began in 1994, as a novelty event, and as a fundraiser for the local Crime Stoppers organization. Founded by Lavery, Stan Munro and others at the Perth Legion, it quickly grew into one of the safest and most successful true Polar Bear Plunges in Canada. A total of $342,462.00 has been raised through the 2020 event. Each year the plunge is staged by a standing committee of volunteers known as the Perth Po-
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Chief Polar Bear Dave Lavery takes the first plunge on New Year’s Day. Photo courtesy Derek Holbeche.
lar Bear Plunge Committee, and members of the current year recipient group. For more photos of this year’s plunge visit: www. perthpolarbearplunge.ca, or visit
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