Margaret (Jones) Baltimore

Margaret (Jones) Baltimore was born in Galahad, Alberta, on October 1, 1934. She grew up on a farm in Hastings Coulee with her mother Louisa, siblings Roger, Sidney and Eunice and her father, Arwyn.

After graduating high school, she lived briefly in Edmonton with her mother while they both worked as telephone operators. Marg supplemented her income playing what she humbly called “semi-pro” softball.

She met Ken Baltimore on the softball field and their friendship bloomed into love and marriage. This led her to the Yukon in 1955 for a nearly forty-year residence. They began their married life living in an Airstream trailer in Destruction Bay followed by a decade in Haines Junction and a quarter century in Whitehorse.

She flourished as a mother, a community social spark plug and an athlete in the communities in which she lived. She helped establish and head Girl Guides in Haines Junction. She also attended four national softball championships with teams from the Yukon. Margaret was always ready for a game of curling at any opportunity.

Marg began her teaching career while still in high school by sitting in for short term teacher absences in schools. She subsequently home taught kindergarten to two of her children, then more formally taught local children kindergarten in the Whitehorse United Church basement.

She took every available night course for some years before attending summer classes and two semesters at the University of Alberta where she earned her teacher’s degree at 45 years of age.

Her tenure at Whitehorse elementary schools gained her respect from colleagues and students. She was sought after by parents and administrators until she and Ken retired to Red Deer in 1993.

Her many talents included proficiency as a pianist, an organist, and a chorister (she loved showtunes). Marg was also a carver and collector of carvings. Another talent was making rugs. She was a birder and botanist and collected, preserved, and displayed flowers and butterflies. (Picture her burly husband weaving through a field wielding a butterfly net!)

Marg was not all serious. In telling a joke she would get laughing so hard she could not speak, which was funnier than the punch line she couldn’t get to. She loved a game of “spoons” (a sort of combative version of musical chairs). Another antic of hers was paying out a $10 bet with a thousand pennies frozen in a huge block of ice. She also liked practicing the shivaree (spoons drumming pots and pans to announce an early morning demand for breakfast for those suffering a birthday). She once served a dinner to her husband’s siblings and their spouses on a bare, plastic-covered dining room table without benefit of cutlery or china. Her nutty behaviour displayed her goal oriented, single-minded, get-it-done approach to life

Marg and Ken enjoyed extensive travel through Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, often with one child or all, which broadened their perspectives with pleasures and challenges.

She demonstrated to her children her inherited Christian values of kindness and respect. All of her family have deep sorrow at her leaving this world, but her burdens have passed. She knew she would be joyously re-united with loved ones.

To her family and to those who knew her, she lived every day as a gift, an opportunity. “Weekends aren’t for doing nothing. They’re for doing something different,” she would say to her sometimes-reluctant children. She loved gatherings, the more the merrier, and strangers were friends she hadn’t met yet.

Margaret is survived by her husband Ken, her children Anne, Glenys, and Kevin and their families.

The following is a description by Marg of her years in Destruction Bay and Haines Junction. She wrote this in 1997 for the occasion of the 48 Mile Reunion.

We were married in the Whitehorse Presbyterian Church on February 16, 1955. Our honeymoon was driving to Destruction Bay in a dump truck the next day. Our first home was the “honeymoon shack.” It was a quonset hut with an addition, and all of it covered with green tar paper. It was terribly cold and draughty in the winter. There was an incident in later years, where Anne spilled her milk at supper one night and Ken suggested we finished our meal before we cleaned it up. By then it had completely disappeared between the divided floor of the quonset…the slant of the kitchen floor helped quite a bit too!

Picnics and softball were the summer recreations. Christmas Bay, the gravel pit down by Kluane on Lewes Creek, Sheep Mountain and Silver City were favorite spots to picnic. Softball was unisex, come one, come all. The men needed us for numbers!

Lloyd Carlin made us a toboggan we could steer and we had a lot of fun with it. Four adults could ride on it at once. We’d take it to Boutillier Summit and it would go a long way down that long hill, all the while we’d have to watch for traffic and hit the ditch if necessary. A child’s sleigh (at Destruction Bay camp) was good for two people to start from the highway, go through camp, and down to the lake. One would pull the sled back up to the highway and the other would check on the sleeping children after each ride. Ken and I ruined a sleigh every year by splaying the runners from our combined weight (starter having to jump on the one lying prone).

Playing cards was also popular. Smear was the game of the time. We must have played thousands of games in those years at Destruction Bay.

I was on Howard Brookbank’s curling ream for the first three years we were in Destruction Bay. Couples tried to not curl on the same team to reduce the necessity for babysitters (there were virtually none). We just traded with other parents mostly. We curled at least twice a week in a league and went to a lot of bonspiels. Brookie (Howard Brookbank), Ken, Tommy Patterson and I won the Haines Junction bonspiel several times. I seemed to be able to have our babies in early fall, so I didn’t lose out on the curling!

The entertainment committee for the recreation hall was two couples each month. It was expected that there would be a dance, bingo and one other organized activity. Each committee needed plenty of lead time because it took six to eight weeks to get the bingo prizes from the catalogues. Seldom did I stay much past midnight at the dances. The regular routine was dance, eat and then fight! Quill Creek was being developed in 1955. Those men always made for an exciting time at the dances. One very short man could jump over backwards from a standing position. The more inebriated he got the more times he did the backward flip. I never saw him miss!

When we first arrived at 1083, the first man I danced with was Johnny Hayden. One could see the teeth marks on his chewed off ear! Coming from a very staid background, I was terrified but he and I became friends in a short time. He and Ken had been friends in their bunkhouse days.

When we first arrived in 1955, we ordered our groceries from Woodward’s in Vancouver. It was difficult for me to order as I didn’t know what quantities were needed and my cooking skills were minimal. We always had enough to eat, but I remember borrowing salt from Addy Jackson once. There were surprises some months…one time we had a whole case of instant Jello pudding sent with our order. It was pretty bad! When someone went into Whitehorse there were small orders from everyone in camp. It was certainly a rush to get everything done, but everyone returned the favour. I still keep a big can cupboard and a freezer. Old habits die hard! I think the thing I’ll never eat again is whipped cream made from Pacific milk. It tasted like burnt wood.

When we moved to Haines Junction in the 60s things were much easier. We were in Bill Brewster’s house for the first few months. We had to haul water. On day Ken went to work and I thought I’d shower first thing. I had just shampooed my hair when the water ran out. I had to run over to the lodge and get a pail full to finish the job!

Betty Karman and I got reacquainted after our move to Haines Junction. She and I were in the same maternity room in the Whitehorse General Hospital when Anne and Bill were born. It was nice to have a church and a store in the village. Our children were now older and we all had bikes so we spent a lot of time down the Alsek. We were always going to build a cabin down there but never got it done. Another dream! I’d drive the school bus from M.P. 1026 and stop in for coffee at Andy and Butch Nygren’s at McIntosh Lodge. If Andy needed a hand I’d spend the morning cleaning hotel rooms. Ken and I would go up the hill behind McIntosh Lodge in the fall to shoot grouse or go down to the Kathleen River to fish after the morning bus run.

Moving to Whitehorse in 1970 started a new way of life…fast food restaurants, no more ski-dooing, three children in two schools, Ken still working and living at M.P. 1026 and commuting to town on his days off. Also, Anne and I were able to join the ladies’ softball team together.

Red Deer is another step. We’re happy here but we do miss our Yukon Friends. You are all welcome in our Alberta home.