Traveller.
Born in the McKenzie Duplex in Winnipeg on 13 October 1906, daughter of Margaret Jane Hedley (1878-1961) and railway worker Robert Edward Welsh (?-?), after a move to British Columbia, her mother married Herbert Cecil Victor Hall (1887-1917) at Salmon Arm on 16 October 1909. She appears to have adopted his surname.
In 1922, at the age of 16, she responded to a newspaper ad seeking a woman to join a five-year driving trip around the world in Model T automobiles. Hired as the expedition’s translator, driver, and filmmaker, she became the first woman to drive around the globe.
Along the way, she married the expedition’s leader, Walter Wanderwell, who had been born in Poland as Valerian Pieczynski. She adopted the name Aloha, supposedly a childhood nickname. Unfortunately, the couple’s time together was short. In December 1932, Walter Wanderwell was murdered aboard their yacht, a day before they were to embark on a voyage to the South Pacific. The murderer was never caught and Aloha remarried, continued to globetrot, wrote books, and made films about her adventures.
She died in California on 4 June 1996. She was predeceased by a half-sister, Margaret Vernon Hall (1912-1993).
See also:
Historic Sites of Manitoba: McKenzie Duplex (77-79 Hallet Street, Winnipeg)
Birth registration [Idris Welsh], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Death registration [Margaret Vernon Hall], British Columbia Vital Statistics.
Aloha Wanderwell: The Border-Smashing, Record-Setting Life of the World's Youngest Explorer by Christian Fink-Jensen and Randolph Eustace-Walden, Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2016, page 22.
This page was prepared by Jennifer Maxwell and Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 20 August 2026
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