Lynn Lau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jun 27/01) - The library at St. Patrick high school has been officially named after a local woman who bequeathed her entire life savings to the school in 1998.
The Agnes Burgess Media Centre bears the name of a woman who died of lung cancer Sept. 14, 1998, at the age of 72.
Principal John Bowden chose not to disclose the size of the fund, other than to say it was "quite sizable." He said the fund will allow the school to buy in excess of $500 of new books every year, in perpetuity. The money will be used to buy aboriginal resource materials, as Burgess requested in her will.
Before Burgess died, no one at the school knew of her. She was such a private person that even her niece, Elaine Woodward, didn't know that much about her life.
What Woodward does know is that her aunt, a Chipewyan was born in Fond du Lac, Sask., on Feb. 22, 1926. She moved with her family to Fort Smith at the age of 14 and went to work at St. Anne's Hospital. Later she worked as a cook for the Wildcat Cafe in Yellowknife and at bush camps throughout the North.
Burgess loved to sing and dance, Woodward says, and was a big fan of the Jitterbug in her youth. Although she likely never finished high school, she loved to read. At some point, she married and raised two adopted children.
Woodward isn't aware of what happened to her aunt's husband and children, but she hints of tragedies rarely spoken.
"My sense was she only liked to only look at the good side of things," Woodward says.
"She didn't speak a lot openly about being aboriginal, but when she did it was often with the comment that she wished more people today had that same traditional upbringing."
In her later years, she lived at Aven Manor, where she and her friend, Betty Stevens would put on musical shows together. Coincidentally, the drama room across from the library was named for Stevens four years ago.
