Grace Merle Lorraine Davis

Life Story

Grace Merle Lorraine Davis was born at Shellbrook, Saskatchewan, on 13 October 1915, the daughter of Charles Elijah Davis and Emily Robina Elizabeth Campbell.¹ Her early childhood belonged to the Shellbrook and Birch Hills country. A later Birch Hills local-history sketch, supplied by her brother Arnold Davis, says that Grace moved with her family to Birch Hills in 1918.³

The 1931 census gives a contemporary snapshot of Grace in that Davis household. She was recorded at Birch Hills as a fifteen-year-old daughter of Charles and Emily Davis, born in Saskatchewan, attending high school, and belonging to the United Church. Her siblings Peter, Emma, Campbell Arnold, Elmer Joseph, Charles Gordon Goodwin, and John MacArthur were also recorded in the household.²

Grace’s name appears often in small Birch Hills community notices while she was still young. In May 1930, she took part in the United Church Sunday school Mother’s Day pageant, What Makes The Difference.⁴ A week later, the junior C.G.I.T. staged the play Dearies at White’s Theatre before a large audience, and “Miss Grace Davis” was listed among the girls taking part.⁵ Later that summer, the junior C.G.I.T. group elected her vice-president.⁶

By 1933, Grace’s path toward teaching was already visible. That August, a Birch Hills notice reported that a handkerchief shower had been held for Miss Mabel Simpson and Miss Grace Davis, who were leaving shortly for Saskatoon to attend Normal School.⁷ The later Birch Hills local history remembered that Grace had graduated at sixteen and had to wait a year before entering Normal School, and it listed several schools or communities where she taught: Red Deer Hill, Stanleyville, Heatherdell, Readlyn, Shell Lake, and Shellbrook.³

The newspaper record also gives glimpses of Grace’s young adult social and community life. At the New Year’s Eve Legion dance held in the Birch Hills Theatre at the end of 1934, “Miss Grace Davis” and Ralph Leland won the prize for the spotlight dance.⁸ In November 1939, near the beginning of the Second World War, she was named to the executive of the newly organized Fenton Red Cross branch, which was to work with the Birch Hills branch.⁹

Grace married Lowell Leon Simpson in 1939, according to the Birch Hills local history. Lowell joined the Army shortly afterward.³ During his army service, Grace moved to Brantford, Ontario, to be with her sister Emma. After Lowell’s medical discharge, Grace and Lowell returned west. Lowell trained as an electrician, Grace resumed teaching, and the family eventually settled at Shellbrook, where Lowell established an electrical contracting business.³

Family memory adds a more personal view of those teaching years. Grace’s son Bill later recalled that, when he was young, she sometimes took him with her to rural teaching places and teacherages, where he sat at the back of the classroom. He credited that early exposure with helping him learn to read at a very young age and with shaping him into a strong student. During part of that period, according to the same family recollection, his brothers stayed with Grace’s parents on their farm.¹⁰

By the early 1950s, Grace was teaching in Shellbrook during a period of school growth and reorganization. In October 1952, the Star-Phoenix reported that Shellbrook’s public and high school had reopened with 215 students while a new high school was under construction. The listed staff included “Mrs. Grace Simpson.”¹¹ Two years later, a report on the opening of the 1954 school year again listed Mrs. Grace Simpson among the Shellbrook public-school staff, by then in a school system serving 304 students across three school buildings.¹²

Grace also appears in the records as an active member of the regional teaching profession. In October 1954, a report on the Shell Lake Teachers’ Association convention listed “Mrs. Grace Simpson, Shellbrook” as the association’s secretary-treasurer.¹³ In December 1955, the Star-Phoenix reported that Grace Simpson had been appointed vice-principal of the local junior school, effective 1 December. The article called her “Miss Grace Simpson,” a title that conflicts with surrounding records identifying her as Mrs. Grace Simpson, but the appointment itself fits the Shellbrook teaching pattern.¹⁴

Grace’s life in Shellbrook was not limited to the classroom. The Birch Hills local history remembered that she had been active in sports during her school years, and a 1971 Star-Phoenix golf column shows that sport remained part of her life much later: Mrs. Grace Simpson was reported to have scored a hole-in-one on the No. 7 hole at Shellbrook Golf Club.¹⁵

Grace’s teaching career ended with public recognition in Shellbrook. An undated Shellbrook Chronicle clipping reported that a retirement party was held for Mrs. Grace Simpson at the Shellbrook Legion Hall on May 31 and that she was retiring from teaching on June 30. The evening brought together family, school officials, colleagues, former pupils, and friends. Bill Housen, Superintendent of Schools, thanked her for her dedication to the teaching profession, and Shellbrook School principal Mike Kinnaird presented her with a gift from staff and friends. The program included a reading on the “Life History of Grace Davis” and a skit called “Flashbacks in Teaching.”¹⁶

Grace was widowed in 1981. Lowell Simpson died in a Saskatoon hospital on 2 October after a brief illness, and his obituary identified him as the husband of “Grace Simpson of Shellbrook” and named her more fully among the survivors as “Grace (nee Davis).” The same obituary named their three sons and summarized Lowell’s electrical work and the Simpson Electric business in Shellbrook.¹⁷

After Lowell’s death, Grace remained based in Shellbrook. Family recollection remembers her continuing to live there while spending winters in Phoenix, Arizona, a later-life rhythm that kept Shellbrook as home while giving her time away from the Saskatchewan winters.¹⁰

Grace Simpson died at Shellbrook on 30 June 2001, at the age of eighty-five. Her funeral service was held three days later at Knox United Church in Shellbrook, with interment at Shellbrook Cemetery. The funeral program remembered her as the widow of Lowell Simpson and named her parents as Emily and Charles Davis, linking the final record of her life back to the Davis family in which she had been born.¹