BARRY’S BAY – On the March 25, Helen Conway passed away after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
Helen was born in Bancroft in 1938 and grew up in Maynooth Station, where her parents owned the General Store for many years.
Helen was a Cannon until she married her husband, Phil Conway, in 1957. They had both trained as teachers and met at a school in Whitney.
Having married at 19, Helen had four children by the time she was 25 including Michael, Elizabeth, Colleen and Peter. By that time, they lived in Peterborough where Phil Conway made the transition from educator to selling life insurance.
“My mother stayed at home with us until we were old enough to be farmed out to school,” her eldest son Michael Conway said. “Women stayed home in the 60s and 70s.”
When her children were beginning to leave high school, Helen decided she wanted to cut hair, said Michael. She went to a famous hairstyling school in Waterloo, Ontario to learn the profession.
After cutting hair for a while, she was made the manager of a hairdressing salon.
“She was working her fingers to the bone for other people,” Michael said.
Get your April 6, 2016 edition of The Valley Gazette to read the full story.