Home Social Landscape Featured Articles Irene Wright, Rimbey's Confidante

Irene Wright, Rimbey’s Confidante

by Fred Schutz

1  |  Page 2 

The church played a very important role in Irene’s life. From their first arrival in the district in 1917, the Wright family attended the Church of the Nazarene, newly established in Rimbey in 1916. At age 13 Irene began playing piano for Sunday school, and she continued to play in the Nazarene Church for well over half a century. She was blessed with what has been described as a “strong, vibrant soprano voice” and a love of music. The piano was her instrument of choice, and she taught herself to transpose music. She could pick up a tune quicker than most. She was in constant demand to sing solos at weddings, wedding anniversaries, birthday parties, house parties and funerals. More than one person who heard Irene sing at weddings and funerals has said that they did not know her church affiliation since she sang at every church in Rimbey, and some outside of the town. She led the Nazarene Church Choir for a time, and sang regularly there.

Irene Wright was born in Manvil, North Dakota in 1910. At the age of seven she came to the Lavesta district west of Rimbey with her parents and two brothers. Later the family moved to a farm immediately south of the village. On accepting the position in the office in 1938, she moved to a house in Rimbey and spent the remainder of her life in the town among a wide circle of friends. Her final years were spent in Rimbey’s extended-care facility, a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. She died October 24, 1992, but she will be remembered in her home town for a long time to come.

Never married, with no dependents of her own, she made the people of the community her surrogate parents and grandparents; her children and grandchildren. If they needed her she treated them as she would her own flesh and blood. Irene Wright was counsellor, consultant and confidante, and a good friend in the bargain, to generations of people spanning most of the 20^th century in the upper Blindman valley. It was good to have known her.

[<<previous]

From: Aspenland 1998 — Local Knowledge and Sense of Place
Edited by: David J. Goa and David Ridley
Published by: The Central Alberta Regional Museums Network (CARMN) with the assistance of the Provincial Museum of Alberta and the Red Deer and District Museum.