About the Author

Gertrude Partridge moved to Panmure Island, PEI with her late husband, Glen, in 1972. She is active in the Gaspereaux Women’s Institute, The P.E.I. Environmental Coalition, the Island Peace Committee, and runs a popular Bed and Breakfast on Panmure Island. She was the N.D.P. candidate for 5th Kings in the provincial election of 1989 and for the Federal riding of Cardigan in the Federal election of 1988. She successfully campaigned for the first indoor swimming pool in Kings County, P.E.I.

Her daughter Susan and children, Stoney, Echo and Tyler live nearby, and her grandson William Partridge and his wife Denise live in Murray River.

Gertrude was born in 1915 in New Rochelle, New York. She is the third child of Elizabeth Bergen Cortelyon and Merle Cooke, who had moved in 1901 from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Her brother John and his family settled in Maryland, and her sister Johanna (Plaut) settled in Connecticut.

The author attended McGill University in Montreal from 1933 to 1935, and the College of New Rochelle from 1935 to 1938, from which she graduated with a B.A., with honours in Biology. She worked for a year as a secretary with the Student Christian Movement at McGill.

Gertrude married Glen Partridge in October 1938 at the home of her brother John in Connecticut. Joseph Brennan, a professor for the College of New Rochelle, played the piano, and Helen Pennypacker, YWCA secretary, sang “The Eriskay Love Lilt”. James Morton Freeman was the best man and six months later he married Helen Pennypacker, Gertrude’s best friend.

From 1938 to 1942 Gertrude and Glen lived in Kinburn, Ontario, where Glen was the minister of three rural Presbyterian Churches. From 1942 to 1957 they lived in Montreal, where Glen was minister of the Livingstone Presbyterian Church in Park Extension, until he enlisted in the Canadian Army infantry for World War II.

Gertrude was active in politics, and was a candidate for the Federal riding of Outremont for the Labour Progressive party in 1944. She also worked with servicemen’s wives who lost their apartments to their landlords in 1944—45.