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In memory of those who have Crossed the Bar
WISHART, Norah (Norie) (formerly SIMMELHA, née WILSON) - Born near Shanty Bay, the youngest of the five children of Verner and Bessie Wilson. Her brother Tom died early on; her three sisters were Isabel, Mary, and Nancy. Her family had long been in the area: her great-grandfather was a settler and her grandfather built the church, St. Thomas Anglican. Norah attended a one-room school and that was her earliest memory, it seems. For high school she went into Barrie to Barrie Collegiate Institute, commuting by train or, sometimes, being driven by her father. She enlisted as a WREN in WWII. After the War the family place became an inn, “The Woods,” where she worked with her parents. It was here that she met a visiting Dane, Eigel Simmelha. They were married and off she went to Denmark to live with him and his two sons, Jan and Finn. They spent six years near Copenhagen. Eigel was in business; she just “took it in.” Back home, they built a dream house on Lake Simcoe and bought The Candle Shop on Highway 11. Norah travelled after Eigel’s death: to St. Pierre to study watercolour art, for example. About 1990 she remarried. Bill Wishart was someone she had known years earlier when he was stationed at Base Borden. They went to BC and lived in Victoria. Bill died and Norah returned to Barrie, where she lived at Barrie Manor for some ten years. Early in 2010, at the age of almost-95, Norah came to live at GPH. She retained an excellent memory of her long life and varied experiences. Thanks to382 Ted Bigelow, of Stroud, for providing a copy of a clever poem called “Norie: A Ditty for A Dame,” recited on the occasion of Norah’s 90th birthday. (Grove Park Home 04 Feb 2010)
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