A life footprint of piety

Photo Marc QMI Agency, Desrosiers

Jacques Laplante

Sunday, 30 July, 2017 08:00

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Sunday, 30 July, 2017 08:00

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“My secret is prayer and the Bible. I believe in the power of God, ” says Winnifred Rees, who will soon be 101 years old.

“When it’s going badly, I tell him : oh, Lord, help me, and it works. It helps me so much that I am able to take my shower without anyone’s help, ” she said.

Mrs Rees, who lives on the Manor of Aylmer, this favor is nearly a miracle, given the fractured back she suffered during a fall, there is more than one year.

Divine intervention, according to her, was made so that things are gradually returned to normal, and she resumed her activities, including knitting and reading.

Winnifred Rees grew up in Blackville, New Brunswick, on the farm of his paternal grandfather. What she remembers, above all, of its youth, it is the stock market crash of 1929, which occurred when she was 13 years old.

The Great depression

“With the earth, we had the essentials : vegetables that were stored in the vault at the edge of a mountain, as well as cows, horses and sheep,” she said, mentioning that it is this that has allowed them to survive.

“Really, it was difficult for everyone during the Great depression, even worse for those who had no animals. Them have been a lot more difficult, ” recalls she. His father was nevertheless to combine three jobs to make a living for the family : farmer, carpenter, and woodcutter.

The years have passed, but the situation has not improved in this remote corner of New Brunswick. It is as well that she left her home village to Montreal, where an aunt had found a job at the Douglas hospital. His main tasks were to wash the floors and up the clocks.

In 1939, she married William Stanley Rees, a British graduate in mechanical engineering. They had four boys. Mr. Rees died in 1986.

► The secret : the prayer