EDITOR’S NOTE: For the next several weeks, this column will feature this year’s recipients of the Order of Collingwood and the Companion to the Order of Collingwood.
Her volunteer efforts in Collingwood may have started with perusing headstones, but since then a local volunteer has expanded her work into preserving history and providing fresh food to people who need it most.
For this week’s edition of People of Collingwood, we spoke with Mary Lou Dunn, 79, recipient of the Order of Collingwood.
Q: For how long have you lived in Collingwood? If you weren't born in Collingwood, when did you move here and why?
A: I moved here in 2009. I came from Brampton. We moved to this area because my son was serving (in the military) in Meaford. He now has a farm out in Singhampton.
Q: Where did you go to school?
A: I have a college diploma as a community development worker from Humber College. That was a long time ago.
Q: Did you always know you wanted to go into social services?
A: I was just trying to get a job. I was a single mother at the time. I had been a truck driver prior to that and I earned enough money to go back to school.
I worked in the criminal justice system for a long time. I retired from that once, then I went back, then I retired a second time.
It was sort of a case of survival. I took a job that I could do to get money so I could live and bring my son up, which I did.
As a retired person, I’m busier now than ever.
Q: Could you outline your volunteer efforts in town, and how you got involved in those efforts?
A: I got involved in the Georgian Good Food Box in 2013, and came on the board in 2017. I’m passionate about the food security stuff. I do paperwork for that, and I work with a team. It’s basically a food-buying club. We buy and sort 10 items for $21... like potatoes, carrots, apples, onions and others. The purpose is to make it easy for people with low incomes to afford fresh fruit and vegetables. Anybody can buy it. The more people that buy, we can get a tiny bit of profit that goes into donating some of the boxes to people in need.
The volunteers in this town are absolutely incredible. I have 24 drivers.
My church is a big thing. I’m the president of the Anglican Church Women with All Saints’ Anglican Church. We do lunches and funeral services.
I’m on the board for the Collingwood and District Historical Society, and am on the cemetery committee for All Saints’.
I do a lot of stuff on my computer because I’m not physically able to run around.
Q: What makes you choose to lend your time to these causes in particular?
A: Well, the cemetery committee is one of my favourites. When I first moved to town, I had just written a genealogy book about my family. In doing that, I did a lot of cemetery crawling.
This probably sounds nuts, but that’s what I did.
When we moved to Collingwood, I thought I could get involved by photographing the Collingwood headstones and uploading them to the Canadian Headstone website. It was out of that that I joined committees through the church.
We have been able to get a digital map set up and I keep records of every burial done through the church going back to the 1800s and co-ordinated all that into one spreadsheet.
The church just needed help and I pitched in to help.
Q: How did you feel when you learned you had been chosen as a recipient of the Order of Collingwood?
A: I was honoured. I do this stuff, not because I think anyone is really interested. I just do it because it has to be done. I’m from the old school – if there’s a job standing in front of you, you just do it.
Q: Do you have other hobbies outside of your volunteer efforts?
I crochet prayer shawls, too, as if I don’t have enough to do. (laughs)
The shawls go to the local nursing home for people who are ill. There is a team from the church that will go and pray with them and they take the shawls with them. It comforts them.
My arthritis is making it a little bit harder now.
I love my family. They are wonderful. I have the best husband in the whole world. If it wasn’t for him, I couldn’t do one half of what I do.
We have a blended family. The kids just adore him.
Q: What does the future hold for you?
A: I do what I can.
With the Georgian Good Food Box, we’re trying to arrange succession planning. If I dropped dead tomorrow, somebody’s gotta do this job. The lady I do this with is also 79, and we’re not getting any younger.
We need people who are going to be able to handle these jobs and keep it going.
What you see is what you get with me. It’s a big deal to me, and this is my life.
For our feature People of Collingwood, we speak with interesting people who are either from or are contributing to the Collingwood community in some way, letting them tell their own stories in their own words. This feature runs on CollingwoodToday every weekend. If you’d like to nominate or suggest someone to be featured in People of Collingwood, email [email protected].
