Alice Person
Alice Person nee Montpellier (1924- ) was born near Lockerbie, Alberta. She was raised on a long-held family farm. When it had to be sold in the Depression , Alice’s mother used the opportunity to leave her husband. Alice, her six siblings, and mother moved to B.C. in 1937. Fruit farming was being promoted by governments at that time in the same way homesteading had been on the Prairies two decades earlier. Mrs. Montpellier bought a small farm near Websters Corners in Haney, 50 km east of Vancouver, for $500, but had little luck being self-sufficient. Their mother fought for the right to collect welfare and the children took on jobs in the community, on farms and as domestics. When the war started Alice found employment in the forestry industry. She and her sister were in the first group of women to be hired on at Hammond Cedar in 1942. Equal pay as a woman’s right was her primary motivation to join the union. Mrs. Person served as a steward and a warden on the executive.