On a cold winter morning in 1952, Patsy Lamondin wakes to the day electricity will finally be connected to her small town of Britt, along the Magnetawan River.
Patsy and her siblings buzz with excitement, eagerly awaiting the ceremony being held at the center of town. The Lamondins have lived along the waters of Georgian Bay and the Magnetawan River for generations.
They are a Métis family who love music, dancing and being outdoors, and Patsy ponders how electricity will change all of their daily lives. What she knows for sure is that, whatever changes, she will always feel she belongs here.
This is the synopsis for a new kids' book called “Lights along the River,” based on real events in the life of Pat Lamondin Skene as she recalls the day when electricity came to the small town of Britt.
“Lights Along the River,” which will be released May 14 by Orca Book Publishers, is actually Lamondin Skene’s eighth kids’ book.
Britt is now just over an hour’s drive south of Sudbury, but back in those days, it was a remote town accessible only by a dirt road or train. Highway 69 did not yet exist.
But the advent of electricity in the town caused great excitement for young Pat’s family. She recalls the family going into town just to watch a lightbulb going on at the post office. The real show came when they got home, as their house had already been wired for electricity.
“So we spent the entire time switching lights on and off and jumping on the beds and just having a hell of a time, because it was something very different and very exciting for us,” said the 79-year-old Lamondin Skene, who now resides in Oakville.
Other modern conveniences were to come, including an electric fridge and stove, and, most exciting, a television.
Before TV, her family spent a lot of time around the dinner table, telling stories. She remembers this changing with television.
“We didn't tell many stories around the table anymore,” she said. We went in the living room and watched and listened to other people's stories. So that's what I remember as a child changing, is that we didn't spend as much time talking and laughing about our stories.”
As if releasing her eighth kids book wasn’t exciting enough, Lamondin Skene’s memoirs, “Swiftly Flowing Waters,” (the Ojibwe translation for the Magnetawan River), is being released May 8, published by Plumleaf Press.
It tells the story of her life, from her upbringing in Britt described above to moving to Sudbury, where she lived with her aunt while attending Marymount College, to working for Bell Canada as a telephone operator as a young woman, to her difficult first marriage in Sudbury and the birth of her daughter, to becoming a loan officer with CIBC and working her way up the corporate ladder to the position of vice-president to her exploration of her Métis heritage.
Living with the medical condition of Lupus, and with her second husband Bob having already retired, Lamondin Skene retired from CIBC in 1998 at the age of just 53. She always loved writing, and published her first kids’ book in 2001.
“Swiftly Flowing Waters is a raw reflection of the many experiences women quietly go through in life,” said the book’s online description. “It’s a story about finding courage, overcoming obstacles, and the discovery of joy and fulfillment along the way.”
The author said she decided to write her memoirs after her husband’s 2019 assisted death following his diagnosis of terminal cancer. Lamondin Skene had already survived breast cancer herself several years earlier.
“I held his hand and watched the pulse in his neck stop, and, and it was traumatic,” Lamondin Skene said. “It hit me really hard.”
She said a few months later, she was standing out on a pier in Oakville, and her scarf blew off her neck and into the water. “And all I wanted to do is die,” she said. “The only way that this pain is going to stop is that I have to go with him. It was that moment that I decided that no, I have a daughter and a granddaughter, and that would be very cruel.I decided I just wanted to tell my story. So I went home and I started to write my memoir.”
If you’d like to purchase either of Lamondin Skene’s upcoming books, or any of her past works, they are available online through major bookstores or through the publishers’ websites.
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.
