Mary Skipp was born on Christmas Day in Williams Lake in 1929, the same year the city was incorporated.
“It was lovely,” she said of having a birthday on Dec. 25. “We were devout Catholics and we went to midnight mass.”
Her parents, Matthew and Anne Latin, had four children - Frank, Martin, Mary and George.
Matthew arrived in 1917 and hauled freight for Gang Ranch until he got a job with the Pacific Great Eastern Railway in 1919, where he worked for the rest of his career.
“We lived in a railway house on the wrong side of the tracks, as I say,” Skipp said, smiling. “My older brothers, mom and dad, and I lived in a bunkhouse for a while and I don’t know what age I was when we moved into the one we lived in until I was 21.”
Growing up one of her best friends was Libby Abbott, who grew up in the Station House, where the gallery is today.
In Grade 1, Skipp was in a small classroom with students in Grades 1, 2 and 3. There was a partition made of plywood down the middle of the room and a potbelly heater on each side. Grades 10,11 and 12 were on the other side of the partition.
“When my brother Frank graduated from high school there were three graduates - Austin, Gordon and Frank. When my brother Martin graduated it was Martin, Robin Blair and Libby Abbott.”
Her household was happy, she recalled, with very nice parents and a comfy house.
Any friends of the children’s who were hungry often visited the Latin home because Anne made her own bread and doughnuts.
“We always had a flock of kids. She fed everybody out of our back door.”
Anne also knitted up a storm and would put toques and mittens on the fence to share.
During the Depression, men jumping on and off the train on the Latins’ side of the tracks would knock on her mother’s door and she would give them a whole meal.
From the Latins’ home they would head down the bank to Williams Creek.
“They camped down there.”
Matthew and Anne were originally from a small town in Croatia called Ribnik.
When she was 12-years-old, Anne worked for a Croatian family in Bellgrade during the war, and often sent them money from Canada.
The son, who was an engineer in Montreal, came to visit her in Williams Lake.
“He couldn’t begin to thank her for their support. He couldn’t believe that my dad was making $95 a month working for the railway and my mom was sending this lawyer’s family money,” Skipp recalled.
In Grade 10, Skipp left school to work in the government-owned telephone office where they were starting 24-hour service for telegraph and telephone.
“I went to the principal and asked if I was going to graduate to Grade 11 and he said ‘yes you’ll pass.’ I told him I was going to take the job and if I didn’t like it I would see him in September for Grade 11.”
She never went back, but at 19 years of age went to the Sprott Shaw Business School in Vancouver.
While she was in school, the receptionist quit, and the staff came around and asked if anyone knew how to run a switchboard, to which she answered yes and ended up working for three days.
Returning to Williams Lake, she went to work for what was formerly known as Indian Affairs, staying on for six years.
One day she was walking home from work when she met Herbert Lee Skipp who had moved to Williams Lake to practice law.
He lived with the Boitanios where he rented a room.
“I said ‘hello’ to him. In a small town that’s how it was done. He wanted me to go out with him, but I didn’t want to go. My brother George was funny. He kept saying, ‘he is a nice fellow, I don’t know why you won’t go out with him..”
She did eventually go on a date and they were married on June 29, 1955.
The Skipps had three children - Liz, Jim and Matthew.
Mary lived in Williams Lake for 44 years, then North Vancouver for 44 years, before returning to Williams Lake in 2018.
She has five grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
Today she lives in Williams Lake Seniors Village.
Every day she wakes up and tells herself “well, I’m still here.”
Williams Lake, she added, is as old as she is.
When asked about the secret to her longevity, she responded “I have no idea. I have had three bouts of cancer. They told me in 1995 I was not going to make it and I had two more bouts after that.”
“She’s tough,” said Liz.
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