Prairie Chicks don Easter hats

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Published on Sunday, March 27, 2016

By Jessie Bell

Sixteen ladies sat around a table in Lee’s Restaurant for a noon luncheon on March of varying sizes in bright colours, adorned with tiny fabric chickens, rabbits, butterflies, shamrocks, ring flowers and ribbon.

The women call themselves Rivers Prairie Chicks, organized as a fun time group after declining to join the Red Hat Society, which meets on a more formal basis with conferences and a membership fee. While Prairie Chicks still wear their red hats, they have no membership fees and meet monthly just for fun. The ladies pair up to plan different entertainment each month, visiting museums, tea houses, art centres, greenhouses, movies, a casino, yard/garden tours, Halloween House and once last year, they visited Bill Turner at CKLQ Radio.

Norma Vandusen and Ann Lines planned the luncheon and Easter bonnet show on Friday, issuing small Easter chocolate treats to the following: Maggie Smallwood (most Easter hat), Doreen Bate (smallest red hat), Ina Hyndman (most colourful), Barb Christiansen and Norman Vandusen (biggest hats) and Jan Brand, daughter of Ina Hyndman, from Owen Sound, Ont. for coming the farthest distance.

On deck for April fun are Sylvia Maloney, Janice and Patty Waterfield. If you are interested in joining these women as your schedule allows, feel free to contact any member who has been listed in this story.

Warning!

When I am old, I shall wear purple

With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired

And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

And run my stick along the public railings

And make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

And eat three pounds of sausages at a go,

Or only bread and pickle for a week,

And hoard pens and pencils, and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

And pay our rent and not swear in the street

And set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

By Jennie Joseph