On her 100th birthday in February, Selkirk College gave Lydia Kania an honorary diploma in human services. But she doesn't understand why.
"Why did I get it? Surely to goodness there's more interesting people than me," she said in an April 30 interview with the Nelson Star.
Her longtime friend, the Slocan Valley writer Rita Moir, begs to differ, and says Kania is easily accomplished and inspiring enough to have a book written about her. And Moir has done just that.
I Had Visitors Last Night: The Storied Life of Lydia Kania, with hand-sewn binding by Linda Crosfield, was launched at the Nelson Museum, Archives and Gallery on April 15.
The book is a short (96 pages) chronicle of the decades-long friendship between Kania and the one-generation-younger Moir, and of Kania's community-building efforts in the Slocan Valley since her arrival there in 1962.
It's also a gentle tribute to rural community life. The reader is never far from fruit and vegetable preserves, flower gardens, quilt-making, recipe-exchanging, fundraising, community halls and sharply differing opinions.
In the 1960s and 70s, residents of the valley reacted aggressively against the arrival of young back-to-the-landers, some of them draft dodgers. Moir and her husband moved to the valley from Alberta during that time.
Kania, who had already lived there for a decade, was one of the few locals who did not rage against the newcomers or scorn them. Instead, she taught them about gardening, food preservation, fruit trees, chickens, cattle and hunting.
Kania, asked about this at age 100, said, "Yeah, those kids didn't know much about country living."
She had lived rurally her whole life, first in Alberta, then in the U.S., and then in the Slocan Valley where she added hunting and trapping to her repertoire of skills.
"We bought cow's milk and eggs from her," Moir writes. "She divided her beautiful flowers and bulbs to help us start new gardens, gave them generously, found out who we were, came to our new community hall (the Vallican Whole)."
Moir explains that there were several community halls in the valley each attended by different factions of the community. Kania broke convention by attending or planning events at the new hall and inviting her friends. If they valued their friendship with her, they had to show up to a hall they might otherwise avoid.
"She was stubborn, and she forced people to make choices," Moir writes.
"I guess I did," Kania responds. "I kind of knocked heads."
In defiance of convention and local biases at the time, Kania held a baby shower at her house for a lesbian couple who had adopted a child from Guatemala into a mostly white community.
Moir writes that Lydia would say, "Why wouldn't we celebrate this family? These are good people. If they are good parents, what difference should it make who they love?'"
Moir cites many other examples of Kania as a bridge between different communities in the valley, including her friendship with the Sinixt leader Rick Desautel and with members of the Doukhobor community.
Kania's most well-known accomplishment was her leadership in fundraising and coalition-building for seniors housing, culminating in the fundraising for the construction of Passmore Lodge in the 1990s.
She led the nine-day, 236-kilometre Hike for Housing — from Passmore to Nelson, Balfour, Kaslo, Silverton, Slocan and back to Passmore. Many others walked with her, but she was the only one to complete the entire circuit. They raised $33,000.
"We owed so much to Lydia...," Moir writes. "She hosted the meetings, she pounded the backroads for support, she hiked in the walk-a-thon, she worked the door welcoming people to every event, and she staked her reputation and good standing on working with all of us."
Moir started out decades ago as Kania's friend but now she is also a care-giver, helping Kania move into residence at Mountain Lake Seniors Community, trouble-shooting lost documents and hearing aids, acting as Kania's fixer as she navigates the frailties of old age. Moir notes that she is not far behind her older friend, and her book includes a brief, graceful meditation on her own aging, and that of her whole community.
One day Moir panicked when she learned Kania had been taken to the emergency ward after a spell of dehydration and dizziness.
"In the end, the ambulance crew gave her a ride home because everyone wants to help her and she is frail and tough and charming. I have heard first responders say that over the years. She has grit. She makes them laugh."
Moir illustrates that grit in a story from Kania's early days in the Slocan Valley when her husband was away and she was alone with young kids in a remote house in the winter. She discovered that someone was looking into her window at night.
Kania tracked the footprints to a nearby cabin occupied by a solitary man.
"I didn't know what came over me but I had kids to protect. I set fire to his cabin. Just the corner burned, but he got the message."
I Had Visitors Last Night is infused with genuine affection not just for Kania but for rural community – the gardens, parties, dances, community halls, the aging of everyone, and the give-and-take of community decision-making and projects among people who don't always agree.
It is largely a book about women, as Moir writes in her description of the group that raised money for Passmore Lodge.
"Largely we were a coalition built on years of women who had exchanged plants and recipes. made quilts for babies and worked together at the Women's Institute or the Womens' Centre, the community halls, made trips together to the casinos, and written the press releases for every community fundraiser or fire benefit going."
Moir puts Kania at the centre of all of it all.
"The stories of her unite us; she is our touchstone, lodestar, polestar, exemplar."
Correction: In an earlier version of this story, we wrote that author Rita Moir and her husband originally arrived in the Slocan Valley as draft dodgers from the U.S. This is not correct. Moir’s husband is an American veteran of the Vietnam War and Moir was born in Canada. They moved to the Slocan Valley from Alberta.
