Hat lady turns 100

By Jack Krayenhoff

Lilly Milljour turns 100! The day is December 21st. She does not walk the streets of James Bay any more, but her address is the James Bay Lodge on 336 Simcoe. But here is the surprise: if you know her by name, chances are that she not only will recognize you, but know your name as well. She is in good spirits. Her daughters will organize a party, but as they are living out of Victoria, she is unable to tell us who is going to be invited, or indeed anything about it. And though James Bay Lodge is an extended care facility she considers it “home,” because - well it is James Bay. She has lived here a long time, her friends are here and they can visit her.

She used to wear hats that were richly decorated with flowers and fruits, even with toy things such as gaily painted locomotives. Why? “The children were intrigued by them. I loved little children,” she says. But my experience was that she harvested many “Hello Lillies!” from adult passers-by too. With her hats, Lilly was easy to recognise.

I ask her what she would like to be remembered for. There is not a moment’s hesitation: “My poetry,” she says. “Throughout my life I have given thanks to the Lord for taking such good care of me. But there is also the smoking. I never smoked, but my husband did. It became heavier, as time went on, so that he was a chain smoker towards the end. He got lung cancer. I wrote a long poem about it. I asked the schools if I could read it. They said I could, and since then I have read the poem to many classes. The kids liked it, and in fact several wrote me to say they have never begun smoking, because they remembered the poem.” 

What about her sense of humor? “I never forgot the funny side of life. Sometimes the serious, then the funny.”

Read Lily's poem, Prayer Changes Things