Community activist.
Born in 1916 at Coniston, Ontario to John F. and Mary Ethel Robertson, she grew up in Coniston and Coppercliff, near Sudbury. She and her brothers enjoyed exploring the wilderness, spending summers at their camp on Ramsey Lake and snowshoing and trapping in the winter. She attended Bishop Stachan School and Ontario Ladies’ College in Toronto but cut her university education short for a stint as a reporter for the Sudbury Star during the war years.
She met Albert Elswood Richards (1914-2004, son of Stanley Crawford Richards) at Sudbury, and they married on New Year’s Eve 1941, going on to have two children. They moved to Fort Frances, Ontario, and then to Winnipeg. There, she became involved with the St. Agnes Guild of the Children’s Hospital, of which she was a member for over 25 years. She was co-founder of the Children’s Hospital Book Market and President of the Board of the Children’s Hospital from 1964 to 1966.
She and her husband had a great love of the outdoors and spent many years at the Lude camp on Lake of the Woods, where the family gathered each summer. They also enjoyed ballroom dancing and playing bridge. She was extremely proud of her Robertson roots, from Scotland to Prince Edward Island to Sudbury, and inspired openness to the world, while instilling in others a sense of compassion and social conscience.
She died at Winnipeg on 16 June 2006 and was buried in the St. John’s Anglican Cemetery.
Obituary [Elswood RIchards], Winnipeg Free Press, 29 July 2004.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 21 June 2006.
“Ethel McLeod Robertson,” Francis Family Tree, Ancestry.
Ethel McLeod Richards, FindAGrave.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 9 March 2024
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