Estella Marjorie Day was born in Guelph, Ontario, on 1 November 1907. She was the eldest child of William (Bill) Henry Day and Ethel Emily (Williams) Day. Her father was a professor of physics at the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC, later to become the University of Guelph). He held strong opinions on many subjects including education and Stella did not attend school until she was eight. It is quite possible that she had some home schooling from him. She had a sister Ida and two younger brothers, William and Harold.

Stella’s mother, Ethel, wrote poetry. The notebooks she filled with wonderful poems are scattered amongst her descendents. Stella’s father, Prof. Bill Day, was an excellent teacher and his students were fond of him. He became an expert on lightning rods and on the drainage of fields. The family summered on Sturgeon Lake and on their way there passed by the Holland Marsh, near Bradford, Ontario. Bill could see the potential in the marsh for a market garden. He obtained backers, left the University, moved to Bradford and drained the marsh, only to die of a heart attack in 1938 before his work was finished. After her husband Bill died, Ethel worked as a librarian in Bradford.

During the late 1920’s and the early years of the 1930’s Great Depression, Stella matriculated in Bradford, attended Normal School and was teaching in a one room school while putting her sister through two years of Home Economics at MacDonald College, a part of McGill University. Then with Ida’s help Stella attended McGill for two years to study Physical Education. Upon receiving her diploma Stella worked at the YMCA/YWCA in Montreal. During her summers she worked at a Y-camp in the Laurentians…except for the summer of 1932 when she became the manager of room service at the Algonquin Hotel in St Andrews, NB. There she met a local lawyer, Earl Thomas Caughey. When she did not return to work at the hotel the next summer, Earl went to Montreal and proposed to Stella. They were married in Brantford on 22 September 1934.

For a wedding present, his father gave Earl and Stella a building lot at the corner of Water Street and the Mary Street road allowance. It was within sight of his parents’ home. An inter-family loan allowed Earl and Stella to start building their home. They spent their first winter in the house next door which his mother owned and rented to summer people.

That first winter, 1934-35, was so cold that Passamaquoddy Bay froze over and some fool-hardy men walked across the ice to Deer Island. When Earl and Stella moved into their own home, only half the down stairs was habitable. Over the years, they finished it bit by bit as they could afford it.

David Michael (Mike) was born on 1July 1935 and Sheila Elizabeth, on 1 September 1936. Stella was quite sick with her second pregnancy and they were strongly advised to have no further children. Although they didn’t know why at the time, it was because Stella had 0- blood and Earl, A+, a deadly combination if her offspring inherited A+ blood.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND HOBBIES

By marrying Earl, Stella had been totally uprooted and transplanted. Like most converts she became more pro-Maritimes than most Maritimers. She came from a farming background and had the greenest of thumbs. Her flower garden was a riot of colour and purposely visible for passersby to enjoy. She grew her own vegetables and canned both them and other produce in season. But she needed more of a challenge and she missed her career and her students. She offered to teach Physical Education for free in the local school and was turned down by the St. Andrews School Board. She then taught dance classes to children and adults (mainly young matrons), charging only enough to pay Mrs. McLaren, the pianist.

Stella was one of a group of people to organize the Music, Art and Drama club (MAD club) which put on pageants that always included dance numbers. She and Earl were participants in a Garden Club that had floral shows. She refused to play golf or curl, perhaps because, unlike his brother David, Earl was an impatient teacher. If she went to bonspiels, she would be knitting while she watched the curling.

Stella’s hands were never idle. She could knit while reading books or watching TV. She took courses at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre, one of which was weaving. She bought small looms and a large floor loom and wove plaids that she sewed into jackets for Earl’s curling team. She also wove drapes, bed spreads, and so forth. In later life, she took up petit point embroidery.

GIRL GUIDING

Before Stella came to St. Andrews she had been a member of the senior Girl Guide group called Rangers. She did not introduce Guiding to the County or the Town, but she did lead the first Brownie Pack in St. Andrews in 1939. Soon she also took on the role of District Commissioner. When she became Division Commissioner she began to travel around the county finding and training new leaders to start Guide Companies and Brownie Packs.

She strongly believed that Girl Guides should have camping experience and she helped with a local Guide Camp at Todd’s Point and, another year, helped organise one at Gibson Lake.

On Lake Utopia there was a Boy Scout campground owned by Alan McLean, President of Connors Bros., of Blacks Harbour. Stella approached him about letting the Girl Guides operate week-long , County-wide Girl Guide camps there when the Scouts were not using it. He agreed. Then she had to recruit and train leaders. Mrs. Hoyt from St. George was a marvellous cook. [Alva] Nicholson from St. Stephen was one of the swimming instructors and the life guard. Kay Walsh of St. Andrews may have been one of the nurses, to name just a few of the leaders. It was a magical time for the girls who got to know other young women from around the County. You could only reach the camp by boat or by a trail around the lake, along which was strung a wire connecting two “walkie-talkies” for emergency calls. Dr. McLean hired the captain of the launch which made daily trips to the camp. Stella was Commandant of these camps for perhaps a half dozen years.

In 1951 Stella became the Skipper of the first Sea Ranger Company in St. Andrews. The meetings were held in her home and sometimes on their waterfront. They all learned rudimentary rowing and sailing, knots tying, semaphore signals, and some nautical lore and terminology. Some went to Provincial, National and International Camps. At a time when school trips were unknown and Home Economics was not part of the local school curriculum, Guiding truly enriched the girls’ lives. It gave them new skills to use and a creed to live by. Many later became guiders themselves.

Stella finally became Provincial Trainer and Provincial Ranger Adviser. She was chosen to represent Canada at a Guider’s Conference in Mexico where she met Guiders from across North and South America.

In 1953 Stella took it upon herself to organize an international Guiders Camp at Lake Utopia, again with Dr. A. M. A. McLean’s blessing and support. It was a very successful camp, despite the challenge of organizing it long distance through the head office in Toronto

In 1957 Stella was named a Life Member of the Girl Guides of Canada and in 1959 she was awarded the Order of the Beaver, the highest award of the Canadian Girl Guides.

The stain glass window to her memory, which Earl commissioned for the Wesley United Church in St. Andrews, shows Jesus with his arms outstretched to a Guide and a Brownie, with the inscription, “Be thou my Guide”. Stella, a Methodist prior to the formation of the United Church of Canada, taught Sunday School at the Wesley United Church.

THE LIBRARY

When Stella’s mother-in-law, Madeline Coughey, needed help with the Town Library, Stella would fill in for her. The library was in the upper floor of the fire hall (now the town hall) across from Market Square. It was open on Friday afternoons, and Maddie had volunteered there for years.

When Maddie turned the job over to Stella altogether, Stella, at her own expense, went to New Hampshire to take a crash course on Library Science for volunteers. When she came back she wanted:

To accession all the books
To obtain more books and shelving
To relocate the library to store-front quarters with few stairs
To catalogue all the books with a recognized system compatible with the Regional Library
To mark the books properly and shelve them in the right order
To increase the hours of operation by finding and training more volunteers
To make the library accessible to children, especially those that came into Town by school bus.
To join the Regional Library System

One by one she and her team accomplished all but one of these goals. With help from the Town and others, the library eventually contained 1000 books on a wide range of topics. In 1969 the library was moved to the building that had been Viola McDowell’s ladies clothing store (now Honeybeans) near the old liquor store (now Olde Tyme Pizza). She trained some 20 volunteers, mainly women, who took shifts according to a roster, keeping the library open for four part-days a week. She arranged with Randall Gleason, the barber who drove the school bus, that he would bring his passengers to the library one lunch hour a week without charge. She met with the Regional Librarian but was not yet successful with her quest for regional library status, when disaster struck.

In 1973 disaster struck, the library building was heated by oil and the tank under the building had a slow leak. When the pipes froze a local plumber went into the crawl space with a blow torch to thaw the pipes. He barely escaped with his life. Stella had to be restrained from entering the building to rescue the books. Those that weren’t burned were smoke and water damaged. It was heart-breaking for her.

Sometime after the fire, the money bequeathed to the Town from the Ross Estate became available to build a new library. Although Stella had put a lot of thought into what the Town needed for a library, she was not appointed to the Library Committee or Library Board.

Near the end of her 15 year library career she was named Citizen of the Year in St. Andrews.

Estella Marjorie (Day) Caughey declined into dementia and died in her 77th year on June 11, 1984.

Besides her husband, her daughter and son and their spouses, Stella was survived by seven grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren and by the many young, and not so young, people whose lives she touched by dance, Girl Guiding and books. Her photo hangs over the entrance to the children’s section of the Ross Memorial Library.

The Argosy Weekly is an independent student newspaper by the students at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. This paper was created by Mount Allison’s Eurhetorian society, a debate society founded in 1841. The paper itself began publication in 1872, which makes it one of the oldest official student publications in Canada. The goal of this newspaper is to provide articles of interest to Mount Allison’s student population. The types of articles that can appear in the Argosy include news related to art, science, and politics, reviews, society and sports news, as well as creative writing, opinion pieces, and humor. It is currently maintained by its parent organization, Argosy Publications Inc., which is overseen by a Publication Board of faculty and student representatives.

Canada’s United Nations Association was established in 1946, they describe themselves as a national charitable organization which aims to educate and engage Canadians on global issues and the work of the United Nations. This organization was one of the founding members of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, a global non-profit organization which represents and coordinates the efforts of all the United Nations Associations around the world. The United Nations Association in Canada aims to bring educational resources on current issues to citizens and especially youth across Canada and other poorer countries, with the aim of growing global citizens who embrace the principles of the U.N. Charter.

The Anderson family were descendants of Thomas Sr. (1745-1841) and Mary Anderson, who emigrated to Sackville, New Brunswick, from Yorkshire, England, in the early 1770s. Settling at Cole’s Island, situated on the Tantramar Marsh near Sackville, the first two generations engaged in farming. Titus Anderson, grandson of Thomas Sr., became a master mariner, the first of many seafaring men in the Anderson family of Sackville.

Jean Sinclair Dalzell, daughter of Samuel and Ella (Miles) Dalzell of Saint John, New Brunswick, lived much of her life on Grand Manan Island. She was raised from the age of 9 years old, by her sister and brother-in-law, Clarence and Minnie (Dalzell) Newton after the death of her parents. She trained for a nurse at Chipman Memorial Hospital in St. Stephen, NB. During her training period she became interested in missions. Shortly after completing her work at St. Stephen, she applied for a position with The International Grenfell Association to work as a nurse at the Mission Outpost Hospital in St. Anthony, Newfoundland.

She began work at the hospital on 27 July 1925. She enjoyed both her working and non-working hours; however, late in September she became ill, though she would not admit it until she no longer could perform her duties. She died 16 October 1925 of pneumonia.

George Heber Connell was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick, in 1837. He was the son of Charles Connell and Ann Fisher and the grandson of Charles Connell Senior, a Loyalist who arrived in New Brunswick in 1789. George Heber Connell was a businessman and a politician. He was elected to the House of Commons as a member for Carleton County in 1878, a position that his father held from 1867 until his death in 1881

George H. Connell married Isobel C. Barnaby in 1857, the daughter of John Barnaby of Digby, Nova Scotia. They had ten children: Heber, Eloise, Anna, Kathleen, Charles, Norman, Georgia, Alice, John, and Mary Louise. George H. Connell died in Ottawa in 1881, while the House of Commons was in session. He is buried in Woodstock.

The St. Andrews Navy League is a branch of the New Brunswick Navy League, itself a part of the larger Navy League of Canada. The Canadian Navy League was formed in December 16 1895, as part of a response to a growing concern within Britain and its colonies over the readiness of the Royal Navy to defend the widely separated British colonies and the trade routes they had come to depend on. The primary focus of the Canadian Navy League during this time was to draw in support from ordinary people to ensure a strong naval defense for Canada and its trade routes. This was done by promoting the need for naval reserve training programs within the Canadian government, and by supporting youth training programs meant to encourage and prepare young men to join the navy.

During the first and second World Wars, the Canadian Navy League primarily concerned itself with recruitment and support for naval personnel through hostels, welfare services for dependents, and the rehabilitation of naval veterans. The Navy League Sea Cadets were also formed around 1923 with the goal of training young men to join the navy or merchant marine. After World War II the Canadian Navy League shifted its focus almost entirely to youth training through the Sea Cadet program, as well as the Navy League Cadet program aimed at children under 12.

The history of the St. Andrews branch of the Navy League begins in early 1986, when a committee sponsored by the Royal Canadian Legion Passamaquoddy Branch 8 was formed in St. Andrews with the goal of establishing a cadet corps. In the fall of 1986, the decision was made to form a branch of the New Brunswick Navy League in St. Andrews, with the goal of sponsoring a local Sea Cadet corps. During the winter of 1986 and 1987 recruitment of trained officers and cadet trainees began, and by February 1987 a group of 11 female and 21 male cadets had been formed. They soon began attending their weekly drill and classroom sessions.

Traditionally, Sea Cadet corps are named after a naval vessel or an Admiral. The St. Andrews Sea Cadets were given the name #303 “St. Andrew”, they were named after a four cannon gun boat which patrolled the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario during the local Fenian Raids of 1866. This corps name was changed in the early 1990s to #303 “St. Croix”, in reference to a U.S. ship that was turned over to the Canadian Navy during World War II. The H.M.C.S. St. Croix was a destroyer which was torpedoed by a German U-Boat and sunk southeast of Greenland on September 20 1943. All of its 147 crew of Canadian seamen were killed, many of whom were from Atlantic Canada, with the exception of W. A. Fisher of Black Diamond, Alta.

The #303 St. Croix Sea Cadets were disbanded around 1996, while the St. Andrews branch of the Navy League still exists today. They currently maintain the #352 Fundy Sea Cadet corps in St. Andrews.

The Hartland Bridge Company was founded in 1898 by a delegation of men from both sides of the St. John river who had petitioned the government to build a bridge at Hartland but were denied. The company sold bonds to fund the building of the bridge, and bridge builder Charles McCormack was elected President of the company and later the superintendent of the building of the Hartland bridge. After construction had finished the company continued to operate, running a toll both on the bridge and conducting and overseeing repairs.

Enoch G. Burpee was born on August 19th, 1834 in Sheffield New Brunswick. He had four siblings, Thomas, Judson, Syretha, and Julia. He married Lydia C. Everett on 13 December 1855, in Wakefield Carleton County. The couple had at least four children, David M. Burpee, Lydia B. Burpee, Mary E. Burpee and Allen W. Burpee. He died on September 19th, 1887 at the age of 43.

The Woodstock Museum Inc. was founded and incorporated under the New Brunswick Companies Act on December 8th, 1955 for “the purpose of establishing maintaining and conducting a museum for the education, benefit, use and convenience of the public, and to acquire by purchase, gift, bequest or otherwise a suitable building for housing historical records, archeological specimens and other antiquities and for the preservation of specimens of North American fauna and generally to offer and afford to the public all the uses, privileges, advantages and conveniences of a public museum.” The company’s head office was in Woodstock. The first president of the company was Fred Brown.