Female Archives | Page 2 of 3 | Applebox Belles: The Women of Lake Country’s Packinghouses

Marjorie Brixton

Marjorie Brixton with daughter Eleanor, 1948

Ivy Malpass Fallow

Ivy Malpass Fallow Photo montage. Narrated by Herb Fallow, November 13th, 2015 Ivy Malpass was born in 1907 in Lansdowne, BC. As a teenager, she worked at the […]

Applebox Belles at the Woodsdale packinghouse, 1940s

“We really got on with each other, even though there were so many different characters. There were so many memories.” Winnie Heyworth, 2012

Jimmie Price Kobayashi Medvedeff

Jimmie Price Kobayashi Medvedeff Interview October 28th, 2015 Eleanor ‘Jimmie’ Price traveled from Red Deer, Alberta in 1947 to work as a ‘Summer Girl’. She was twenty years […]

Summer Girls

Left to right: Bea Smorden, Joyce Bell, and Eleanor ‘Jimmie’ Price, 1947.

Bea Smorden Taiji

Bea Smorden Taiji Interview September 29th, 2015 Bea Smorden Taiji was born in Slocan Park, BC in 1930, the daughter of a Doukhobor family. Bea began coming to […]

Applebox Belles, 1940s

Applebox belles on the packing line at the Vernon Fruit Union, Oyama 1940s.

Dorothea Allison, 1912

My job at present is apple-packing. I rush over the cooking washing etc in the morning — have one of the pickers in to dinner, wash up and […]

Vernon Fruit Union packinghouse, Oyama, 1940s

The sorting line at the Vernon Fruit Union packinghouse, Oyama, 1940s.

Bernice Gunn, 2007

Bernice Gunn demonstrates apple packing.

Bernice Gunn, 1956

Bernice Gunn packed at the Winoka Cooperative Exchange packinghouse in Okanagan Centre for thirty five years until its closure in 1974. Bernice mentored many of the younger belles, […]

Winnie Draper and Alice Draper, Winfield, 1937

“We used to get 3¢ a pack. Now they wouldn’t even put one apple in for 3¢. Well, in those days, they were the big apple boxes and […]