Calder, Doris Ethel (Patterson)
- 1
- Person
- 1941-
Doris Ethel Calder (née Patterson) is a resident and historian of the Kingston Peninsula. She was born on November 3rd, 1941, and currently lives in the Patterson family home in Long Reach with her husband, John. Both her mother, Winnifred Ethel Crawford, and her father, George Gordon Patterson, are direct descendants of Loyalist settlers.
Calder is as an authority of local history with a natural gift for storytelling. This disposition can be traced back to her childhood, when she would tell stories to captivated peers in the woodshed behind her school. Much of the rest of her childhood was spent working and playing on the family farm.
After high-school, Calder left the Peninsula for a few years. She graduated from Acadia University in 1963 and received a B.Ed. at the University of New Brunswick the following year. In 1964, she married John Calder. The young couple then embarked on an adventure, hitch-hiking through Europe and Africa, where they worked and explored. When the grand tour came to an end, Doris and John settled in Long Reach, where they have remained ever since, serving as keen-eyed witnesses to patterns of life and their generational transformations.
In addition to being an oral historian, Calder is the author of All Our Born Days: A Lively History of New Brunswick’s Kingston Peninsula (Percheron, 1984). All Our Born Days is the definitive account of life on the Peninsula. This book stems from more than forty-five interviews conducted by Calder, documenting the memories of local residents.