(13 or 15 Oct. 1881-18 April 1983), author. (Gertrude Wood, Gertrude Snyder Wood, Gertie Wood) Born at Martintown, GC. Parents: Alexander Snyder and his wife Sarah Jane Robertson. She came with her parents to Williamstown when she was a few months old. Except for a few years when she and her family lived in Montreal, she spent her first quarter-century in GC. She attended public school at Williamstown and high school at Williamstown and in Montreal, her high school curriculum including French, Latin and German at Williamstown and Greek in Montreal; also, she graduated from the model school at Morrisburg in 1899 and attended a business college at Windsor, Ont. Over some years, she was a schoolteacher in GC and Saskatchewan, and an office worker in Detroit, Milwaukee and Edmonton.
At Assiniboia, Sask., in 1914, she married Joseph Addison Wood (Addison Wood), who was born at Bond Head, Ont. (three children) She and her husband were homesteaders. They farmed near Glen Bain, Sask., from 1914 to 1948, when they moved into Glen Bain itself, and from that base “by remote control,” as a newspaper article later put it, using perhaps her own phrase, they continued farming till 1960. In 1972, for reasons of health, she and her husband entered a residential home at Leroy, Sask. Her husband died in Aug. 1973. In April 1974 Gertude Wood retired to another residential home, Echo Lodge, Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask. She died at Fort Qu’Appelle, in her 102nd year, and is buried at Kelliher, Sask. In her early years, her family attended St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Williamstown. In later years she was also a Presbyterian, while defining herself as non-denominational.
A poetry writer for many years, she published several books of poetry, including Sparklets of Rhythm and Rhyme: an Anthology of Her Own Poems (1975). The last was Woodland Echoes (1982?). In 1976, in her mid-90s, she began a correspondence with Ewan Ross in which she included many valuable recollections (well-written, in a highly condensed style) of the long-ago Williamstown life of her youth. Her poem “Reminiscence,” recalling the services at St. Andrew’s, Williamstown, in her early days, has been printed in the MacGillivray and Ross history of Glengarry and in the bicentennial history of Williamstown, 200 Years of Sharing. With some unevenness, it shows an impressive mastery of traditional verse forms. In the traditionally uncomfortable enterprise of historical celebration in poetry, for the most part she gets the tone just right. Even apart from the interest the poem has for the families named in it, it is likely to continue to be reprinted, and not just in Glengarry. In her later years, she took part in various poetry readings.
Letters written by Gertrude Wood to Ewan Ross in 1976 and 1977 in files of present author (mixture of originals and photocopies, but all in her typescript); much autobiographical material including a one-page autobiographical outline * private information * several of her poems are in Ruth Mowat, ed., Under the Bridge: a Small Collection of Verse to Commemorate Our Bi-Centennial (Williamstown, 1984) * MacGillivray & Ross pp. vii, viii, 266, 660-662 * Ross, Lancaster, 238 * “At 97, She’s Still Going Strong,” Regina Leader Post, with fine portrait, ND but c. mid-Oct. 1978 * “Centenarian Is Honored,” Glengarry News 9 Dec. 1981 (celebration of her 100th birthday)