Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I stand in celebration and remembrance of a great citizen of Yellowknife, Wilma Finlayson. A familiar, hard working and rock solid member of this city's business community left us on September 13th, Mr. Speaker, after a brief but final bout of illness due to cancer.
In remembering Wilma, I think the word pioneer comes to mind. She and her husband Doug came to Yellowknife in 1951, migrating north from that other far flung northern outpost at the time, Fort McMurray. They came with their two-year-old daughter Susan to take up the opportunity to buy into the then fledgling Sutherland Drug Store. A few short months later their son arrived.
In the years that followed the Finlaysons established the (inaudible) and their business as a reliable, welcoming and caring part of this community. Friends will recall Wilma's ready smile, sincere laughter and her sense of giving. The business could always be relied on, Mr. Speaker, to have your fundraising raffles, your dance tickets, or donation jar always at their counter.
If you go into that store today, the thank you notes on their bulletin board will be a testimony to the groups and individuals that they have helped.
With the sudden death of Doug in 1975, Wilma carried on with new business partners, and that included the operation of one of the first sport fishing lodges on Great Slave Lake, still running today. We know that as Trophy Lodge, Mr. Speaker. Friends say that this is where Wilma really shone. She was a natural hostess with a rare gift for making you feel welcome and for making you feel like you were the most important person in her life, whatever your story or your situation.
She was a prairie girl, one of 15 children on a farm near Sully, Saskatchewan, and those prairie values stayed with her, especially her passion for curling and the success of her beloved football team, the Saskatchewan Rough Riders.
Of course her good humour and inner strength helped her with her first battle with cancer in 1999. She remained active and involved in the community until she succumbed last month in British Columbia. Friends and relatives gathered there a few weeks ago, and yesterday here in Yellowknife, in celebration and remembrance of a friend and a fellow Northerner.
Her legacy lives on in her family and that familiar business we still know as Sutherland Drugs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.