====== Ostrom, Ethel Louella ====== 
 (23 Feb. 1882-7 May 1982), teacher. (Ethel Ostrom, Miss Ostrom) Born at Martintown. GC. Parents: Isaac Brock Ostrom and his wife Margaret J. MacGregor. Ethel Ostrom attended public and high school in Alexandria, a business course in Ottawa, Queen’s University (B.A., 1905), and teachers’ college at Hamilton, Ont. She taught at Alexandria High School from 1908 to 1910. Afterwards, she taught public school at Yellow Grass, Milestone, and Yorkton in Sask., and experienced the difficult, primitive life of the rural West in the homesteaders’ days. Next, she was a high school teacher at Haileybury, Ont., and she then taught at Alexandria High School from 1916 till she retired in 1940 at the age of 58. During her retirement years she lived in Alexandria till she moved to Maxville Manor, where she spent the last 8 years of her life. Ethel Ostrom died at Maxville Manor at the age of 100. At the end of her life she was the oldest living woman graduate of Queen’s and third on the Queen’s seniority list. She was unmarried. Remembered as a personality, and for her hospitality, she was also a reserve of information on GC area history, and the guardian of her late brother Clarence Ostrom’s historical collections. At least twice in Alexandria, on Dominion Day 1920 and Victoria Day 1930, she directed a pageant called “Canada, Yesterday and Today.” (//Glengarry News// 2 July 1920, 30 May 1930) She was interested in literature, but did not aspire to be an author. Ethel Ostrom’s recollections of student residence life at Queen’s near the beginning of the 20th century were published in the //Queen’s University Alumni Review// of May-June 1973. In 1976, at the age of 94, she was paid $100 for a children’s story (about a baby dinosaur in Alexandria) which was published the next year in a book of children’s stories called //Leapfrog//. (For the dinosaur idea, see also [[mcdonald_donald|Gerald Mcdonald]] the Alexandria barber) As a note on Canadian literature, it may be mentioned that in 1937 we find J.T. Smith and Ethel Ostrom act as local agents for sale of books by Wilson MacDonald the poet. (advert., //Glengarry News// 29 Oct. 1937) Dorothy Dumbrille may have been the force behind this somewhat surprising venture.

<tab>See also [[lauzon_leonard|Leonard Lauzon]].


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<fs small>//Glengarry News// 19 May 1982 & //QAR// March-April 1983 * biog. tribute to Ethel Ostrom, by Harriet MacKinnon and Ewan Ross, GHS, //15th Annual Volume 1976 and Yearbook of 1975 Activities//, repr. //GN// 24 Feb. 1982 * //Alexandria High School 1894-1954: 1981 Reunion// (1981), biog. information, includes youthful portrait, later portraits * MacGillivray & Ross p. vii * “Books from Ostrom Home Being Added to Public Library,” //GN// 8 Aug. 1974 (closure of Ostrom home after Miss Ostrom moved to Maxville Manor) * honoured on 100th birthday , //GN// 24 Feb. 1982 (portrait) * //Leapfrog// (1977): //GN// 7 Oct. 1976; //Bibliography of Glengarry// 115 * //Bibliography of Glengarry//: index for further publications by Ethel Ostrom * teaching in Sask., //GN// 2 & 23 Aug. 1912, 31 July 1914 * to teach at Haileybury, //GN// 8 Jan. 1915 * visits Europe, Britain, //GN// 22 June 1934, 27 July 1934 * intends to retire, //GN// 5 July 1940 * on local ration board, //Glengarry News// 20 Nov. 1942 
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