After months of dead ends, an Okotoks woman collected enough history and anecdotes about a former manse to pen a 47-page book.
In The Manse’s Voice, Kelli Radford takes readers on her 10-month journey researching the history of the 125-year-old clapboard house surrounded by a white picket fence at the northeast corner of McRae Street and Alberta Avenue.
The two-storey home with two brick chimneys caught Radford’s attention while she and her husband were walking through the neighbourhood shortly after moving to Olde Towne Okotoks in 2016.
“I liked the way it looked,” she said. “I’d never seen a house look like that before. I was not sure if it was lived in or not lived in and I wanted to know more.”
Radford’s journey began in July 2016 and lasted almost a year, during which time she collected information from the Okotoks Museum & Archives, history books and people who previously lived in the home while it served as a manse for Presbyterian and United Church ministers and their families from 1894 to 1959.
One of the first details Radford collected was a journal entry the museum had in its archives from Elena Young, a Presbyterian minister’s wife.
The next several months were met with dead ends as Radford searched for more details in locally published books and asked every Okotokian she met if they knew anything about the intriguing house.
“I thought it would be a lot easier than what it was to find information,” she said. “I showed a picture of it to everybody I met and I thought somebody would say, ‘I know that house, so and so used to live there.’”
The mystery of the house made Radford even more curious and she began digging deeper.
“I was having dreams almost every night about being inside the house,” she said. “It just felt like something was nudging me or tapping me on the shoulder. I felt like something or somebody wanted me to do this story. I wasn’t going to be able to rest easily until I found enough information.”
Frustration turned to elation when Radford heard back from one of the people she reached out to who had lived in the home as a child.
It was William Samis, Reverend Frank Samis’ son, who shared stories with Radford via email about his memories of the house while living in it for four years in the 1940s.
“When I first got the email from Mr. Samis I wept for probably half an hour I was so happy,” said Radford. “I just couldn’t believe it.”
Shortly after, Radford heard back from Mary Loree, who had arrived in Okotoks in 1955 to teach at Okotoks Lower School, and met and later married Reverend Bert Loree.
The school was located across the street west of the manse.
The Lorees had lived in the home a short time before moving to Québec.
Having documented every step of her research process, Radford decided to write a book using that format.
“Once I got the information I thought, wouldn’t this be an interesting story,” she said. “I had a lot of people in Okotoks tell me they’ve also been curious about that house. They wanted to see what I came up with.”
Radford also wanted information about the house after it was sold as a public residence, but was unsuccessful.
“It would have been nice if I had found some information after 1959, but I felt satisfied that I’d done what I set out to do. I still dream about the house every now and then. I would still love to go inside. I would give about anything for just five minutes.”
Radford had the book published in 2017, which was followed by a book signing event at Lineham House Galleries.
Radford said she still walks by the former manse on occasion.
It appears under renovations and abandoned, she said.
For copies of The Manse’s Voice and an opportunity to meet Radford, attend the Okotoks Public Library’s spring fling fundraiser March 15 from 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The book costs $13 and is also available online at McNally Robinson.
In January, Radford published The Name’s Enough Time; I’ve Come For You, which sheds light on universal standards of the westernized and modernized world of time passage and provides alternate and applicable approaches to present contexts, offering humorous narratives and personal anecdotes.
“Writing has always been fun for me,” said Radford, adding she’d won creative writing classes as a child. “I love writing.”
