Sheila Paynter publishes column compilation
Sheila Paynter, who wrote the Slice of Life column for the Westside Weekly and The Daily Courier from 1998 to 2015, has published a compilation of her columns in her book A Slice Of Life.
The Westbank pioneer and Paynter McKay clan matriarch was born at Kelowna General Hospital in 1920. She married Henry Paynter in 1946 and moved to Paynter’s mixed fruit farm in Westbank. Henry kept a daily diary for 50 years. Each entry started with weather and then moved on to whatever was important to him at the time in his farming life. Sheila used many of Henry’s diary entries as inspiration for her Westside Weekly column. The result is a snap shot of Westbank’s agricultural roots and history.
“These stories need to be told,” said Sheila. “I found them easy. They were basically what was going on in my life. I wrote what I saw.”
Henry and Sheila’s six children left when they grew up, but they drifted back and they found themselves farming.
The book also included a photo of Sheila with Mayor Doug Findlater and a photo taken when she donated 10 acres to the Central Okanagan Regional District for Paynter McKay Trailhead in Glen Canyon Regional Park.
“The land had belonged to Henry’s family from early days and we didn’t want to lose it to development,” she said.
Sheila has also written First Time Around, Reflections on the Lake and Okanagan Golf – Points of View.
Slice of Life costs $20 and is available at Paynter’s Market, the Westbank Museum and the University Women’s Club.
Money from sales of the book will go to Project Literacy