“I can’t believe it, but I guess I am 88 years old,” said Francis Peck two days before she officially celebrated her birthday on August 17.
“I was born in 1925,” Peck said, “and other than for a brief period spent in New Westminster, I’ve been a Keremeos resident all my life.
I’ve always come back to Keremeos.”
Peck’s family home still stands at the end of Liddicoat Drive. As a child, she attended school in Olalla along with that community’s long time resident, Auntie Doll.
“Keremeos has changed, becoming a retirement community,” Peck observed. “It’s ideal - not far from the border or from Penticton.”
Peck served as Keremeos mayor from January 1973 to November of 1981, during a time when female mayors were not common.
“I was the first female mayor in B.C.,” Peck said proudly. Through the years she has also performed other community service, most notably fundraising to build the Senior’s Centre.
“It’s a bad time for local politics today,” Peck further observed. “Everybody’s being criticized - nobody seems to be satisfied.
This village has no tax base - only residential. I think they do pretty well - the village is only a mile square and there’s no industry.”
Peck said that something more could be done to Keremeos’ main street business section, saying the business district needs a theme.
Peck remembers her first job. It was in the building housing the Pasta Trading Post, which was once located on the site of the Keremeos fire hall.
“It took days for them to move it,” she recalls, “they rolled it, using logs.
There were no refrigerators back then, and the water table in town was much higher than now.” Peck recalls packing items such as chocolate bars into a space below the floor, accessed through a trap door.
“With the water table so high, it provided a cool place to store things,” she said.
Peck also recalled having to raft over to the neighbours back in the 1940s, shortly after she and her late husband moved into her present home on Fourth Street.
“It was the only way to get around during high water periods,” she recalled.
Peck was looking forward to getting together with family at the Peck’s cabin at Twin Lakes. After all these years, she still appreciates life in the village.
“Keremeos has been good to me,” she said.