Cloe Day rides 33 miles by horseback to her first job as a teacher in remote Athabasca, Alberta, and later becomes a share cropper when she receives a multi-acre homestead in lieu of her teacher’s pay. The day after the birth of her first child, Cloe rides 30+ miles home over The Muskeg with her baby tied around her neck.
When she moves to Gibsons in 1946 to teach English in a one room basement, she is greeted by her students, taunting: ‘Your predecessor had a nervous breakdown!’ Tough, fiesty and outspoken, Cloe wallops, throws wastebaskets, and holds her students over the side of a boat as they upchuck in a storm. This and other tales will surprise you and have you smiling at a memorable woman who toughed it out in the West.
“Your predecessor had a nervous breakdown!” is an episode of THE PODCAST “SOME KINDA WOMAN, Stories of Us.” The character and monologue were part of the show called The Life We Lived, gathered, edited and performed by Caitlin Hicks, and remembering the early early days on the Sunshine Coast.
