Martha Harding, survived by her husband Gage, siblings Elsie and Lawson, children Colleen, Joe, and Bill, grandchildren Sean, Jeannine, Ryan, Shaun, Taylor, Robin, Michael, Clay, and Tenneal. So far she has ten great-grandchildren. She follows her parents, two previous husbands, and her son Clark.
She was raised in a frontier community of mid north BC where chopping her own firewood and hunting her own meat gave her the physical strength to insist on the nickname “Rusty” over “Red” and to put smart-alec grandchildren back in their places. Here she married her first husband with whom she had her daughter before he was killed by a sniper during deployment in WW II. She lived with her second husband, Victor, in BC’s lower mainland and had her three boys.
Throughout the life that I have known her she was tenacious in her opinions and loved the outdoors. I remember her telling a story where she twisted an ankle (or broke her leg) and she told the attendant that he could not cut her boot free but that he had her permission to cut the laces if he needed to.
She suffered a series of small strokes last year which impacted her memory. But she was still able to recognize everyone who came to visit her. She succumbed to an infection that caused a fluid build up in her lungs.