1913-2018: Ethel Currie, a volunteer for the ages

By Collin Gallant on July 20, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @Collin Gallant

Ethel Currie, who had enough life in her to fill 105 years, has died.

Known for her more than eight decades of volunteer work in Medicine Hat, which included founding the local United Way and other groups, Currie passed away at Valleyview Care home.

A mainstay at the local Red Cross, Liberal party associations and a host of causes, she may be best known by younger Hatters as the colour commentator for local broadcasts of the Medicine Hat Stampede Parade.

“I’m a perpetual volunteer,” she told the News in 1989. “It’s a learning experience, and I’m just curious I guess.”

Those who knew her personally remembered her as a spark, a lively and interesting booster of community spirit.

“There was never a whimper, she was always interested in bettering people — what can we do to help?,” said Carol Ann Ross, who first met Currie through her parents when the couples met to discuss Christian science lessons.

After Ross’s parents passed on, the friendship continued.

She described Currie as physically well and mentally sharp until her passing, but life in a care facility didn’t seem to suit Currie.

“She’s skipping through the fields right now,” said Ross.

Currie was born on June 26, 1913 at her parent’s house on First Street, the daughter of ranch magnate Mac Higdon and her mother Mattie.

Currie was an only child and had no children of her own, but a small number of cousins in the area.

“She really was an exceptional person,” said Leora Murray, a second cousin by marriage, who lamented that most of Currie’s peers have passed on.

She expects a small memorial service will be held next week. Details should be included in an obituary in this edition.

“She was incredibly strong willed,” said Murray. “She never gossiped and never forgot anything.”

In early life, Currie became was one of Canada’s first certified female bush pilots in the 1930s, was treasurer of her family’s vast ranching interests, and eventually ran a local meat packing plant with her husband Austin.

He had been her flight instructor before the romance took off, and the couple worked together mapping Canada’s north before settling down, according to a biography included when the couple donated artifacts to the Esplanade Archives.

Here, Currie was an active member of the John Howard Society, YWCA, Hospital Auxiliary, Victorian Order of Nurses, Canadian Club, Stampede Queen contest and a life member of the Order of the Eastern Star.

That group recently awarded her an 80-year service pin.

In 2013, she received the Queen’s Jubilee medal for 60 years of work with the local Red Cross office.

In the mid-1950s Currie was a member of the Council of Social Services, an ad hoc group that publicized the need and work of local charities.

It formed the basis of the United Way, then known as the United Fund, which helped 17 local groups raise $36,800, in its first doorknocking campaign in 1958.

Today, the annual campaign brings in about 20 times that.

Well into her eighties, Currie worked a camera on Cable 10 broadcasts of city council meetings and produced feature segments about Medicine Hat.

Former Monarch Cable mobile producer Pat Cook remembered Currie as “always very kind, but a real force of nature when she had a project.

“There was no ‘we’ll get to it later,'” he said Thursday. “When she wanted something done, she got it done.”

27
-26

Comments are closed.