Memoirs of Susan Louisa (Moir) Allison – Part 1
Susan Louisa Moir was born in present-day Sri Lanka on August 18, 1845 the youngest of three children of English-born tea-merchant Stratton Moir and Susan Louisa Mildern. Following her father’s death in 1848, Susan and her family returned to England.
In 1860, Susan, her mother, step-father Thomas Glennie and sister Jane Shaw Moir (who later married Edgar Dewdney) left England and set off for British Columbia, where Susan would spend the rest of her long life.
In 1865, on the advice of a friend, Susan and her mother – her step-father having earlier disappeared – moved to Hope, BC, where they started a small school.
On September 3, 1868 at Christ Church, Hope, Susan Moir married John Fall Allison (1825-1897), who was 20 years her senior. Theirs was a happy marriage, producing fourteen children.
Beginning in 1872, the Allisons wintered their cattle at Sunnyside, now located in West Kelowna. Their log home – now part of Quail’s Gate Winery – was constructed near a rattlesnake den. Each spring the family was overrun with snakes, but fortunately no one was bitten.
The Allison family spent five seasons at Sunnyside, where Susan knew and learned from the local Indigenous people.
Susan Allison died at Vancouver, February 1, 1937 at the age of 91 years.
The following article, “Aurora in the Okanagan” is on page 63 of “In Her Words, Selected Works of Susan Louisa Allison”:
To me, it seems very strange that the Encyclopdaedia Britannica should question the fact that the Aurora emits a sound. I have heard it frequently and very plainly...
When we were living at Sunnyside near Westbank [in the early 1870s], on OkanaganLake, I heard the Aurora quite frequently, over the mountains across Okanagan Lake from where we lived. Great columns of light would appear and remain stationary, butvibrating and then, with a swishing sound, they would move over to Okanagan Mission, which is east of Westbank, and then back again. As I recollect it, the sound heard [when I was living] in Scotland was a crackling sound, but at Sunnyside it was more of a rustling or swishing sound.
Once, when we were living at Allison near Princeton, I saw one of the grandest sights imaginable. My husband [John Fall Allison] was away from home and I and the children had been in bed for some time when I was aroused by the sound of voices and someone tapping at the window. I went to investigate and there stood R.L. Cawston, Harry Hobbs, William McKeown and William Elwell. They said, “Come out; please do; you must not miss this sight.”
I slipped on my dressing gown and slippers and joined them and witnessed a sight never to be forgotten. Above us was a vast dome of rosy light with shafts of gold and crimson darting through it; the whole was of varying colours and vibrating – a dome of living light. I sat with the boys and watched it for more than two hours.
There was no sound but the awed voices of the men. It was like a glimpse of the “Beauty of the Lord”... and we all felt it as such...
Having read her vivid and descriptive account of the aurora, I look forward to next winter so that I, too, might experience what Susan Allison witnessed 150 years ago.
Next week: Susan Allison story about Ogopogo.
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This article is part of a series, submitted by the Kelowna Branch, Okanagan Historical Society. Additional information is welcome at P.O Box 22105 Capri P.O., Kelowna, BC, V1Y 9N9.