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Gertrude Rebecca HOOD, Nee WOOLF

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Gertrude spoke of her childhood as a poor one ••• she talked of going
home from work and finding no food in the house at all.
Her emigration to Canada brought hopes of a brighter future.

She

told her daughter, Elizabeth, that she had a very sad life.

After

her marriage to James Hood in Vancouver, British Columbia, she
realized some of her hopes for a better life and finer things.
husband ,worked very hard to provide well for her.

Her

She dressed to

the teeth with great taste and had a lot of her clothes made for her •.
She always looked her best, and dressed her two daughters the same.
That, plus the mortgage payments on the big house, taxis, etc., just
broke her husband and they eventually lost their house.
At one time she was engaged to another fellow in Scotland ••• after she
came to Canada and married, he followed her out here; she introduced
him to another woman and they married.
t

She at one time met Lawrence of Arabia ••• one of the family went around
with him--one of the brothers.

She had empathy for the Arab people,

always saying that they were the same as her people with only a
religious difference.
Of her ancestry--she related stories told to her of when the Cossacks
raided villages.

One story was about an old lady of the village who

went into a coffin and pretended to be dead (the Cossaks respected or
were afraid of death/funerals) so they lit the candles, etc.

When they

finally left, the old lady really was dead.
She was superstitious and therefore a believer of the 'supernatural'.
Her superstitions led to her once dropping an 'idol' off a bridge-it was an object brought to her in Vancouver from a visiting neice
from Scotland.

It was an object Gertrude's father picked up from one

of the boats overseas, and she always believed it brought bad luck to
their home in Scotland.

She was very upset by the object.

Shortly

afterwards she became very, very ill and, in fact, died not too long
after.