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- Ruby Magee and Wilbert Alger were engaged twice. Margaret Pike has the original engagement ring , 3 pearls in a setting and inscribed inside "WA to RM" the second ring is a diamond which Margaret Pike retains.
After her parents left Eastern Canada and moved to Viscount Saskatchewan, she remained in Parry Sound, for a time where she worked as a ladies tailor. She decided to follow her parents to Viscount and at that time or directly afterwards she returned the Pearl engagement Ring to Wilbert. She was seeing an old boyfriend from Lindsay, Roy Gillis, who had left Lindsay and was then living in Viscount. Wilbert Alger by then had left Lindsay and gone north to work as an operator at Hound Chutes near Cobalt.
Following his establishment in North Bay and subsequent to a first visit to Viscount, Wilbert wrote to ask if he could visit again but this time with the intention of proposing marriage. She apparently pondered the problem for some time but finally gave him permission to visit and at that time she accepted the Diamond Ring. He did not give her the Pearl ring again until after they were married, on Dec 30,1914.
She came as a new bride to North Bay and took up housekeeping in an apartment in the Angus Block on Fraser St. between Main and McIntyre.
Ruby became a stalwart church worker for the Methodist church which later became Trinity United, where she sang in the Choir and worked all of her spare time for the Trinity Women’s Association. She was a lifetime member of Nipissing Rebekah lodge No. 152 and progressed through all chairs in the local lodge, going on to hold office in the Grand lodge of Ontario. She was honoured by the Lodge by the confering of their highest order The Grand Degree of Chivalry.
By: Cliff Alger
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