Annual General Meeting 2010

A Love Affair with Dolls

June 1st is our Annual General Meeting. After a short business meeting, we have dinner and are entertained by a special speaker. This year our speaker will be Rita Leddy who will showcase her fabulous doll collection.

Dinner and entertainment is $20. It is at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Elmvale. Watch the website for more details in April.

Rita Leddy, born in Flos Township, Ontario, was one of ten children. In those days there were no buses to take to high school so she had to go to private school in Toronto. She went through nursing at St. Michael’s Hospital. A few years later she married and moved to St. Bruno, Quebec, 20 minutes from Montreal.

Rita found culture everywhere, which inspired her to take one day off of work every week to volunteer at the Chateau Ramsey, where she taught ancient methods of cooking, weaving, and carding wool to schoolchildren in grades 7 and 8.

While teaching at Chateau Ramsey, Rita met a good friend who was a doll enthusiast, and her love affair with dolls was born. She joined a large doll club and even took a turn at being president. This club held doll shows and sales once a year, with a large number of ladies entering their dolls for competitions to win ribbons, and Rita had a truly wonderful time.

When Rita moved to Barrie, she couldn’t find any doll clubs, and her dolls have been in limbo since then. She knows her “little people” well, and looks forward to talking about them at the Annual Dinner. Pictured here is a  'Hippie Mom and Child' from her collection.

Ingi Gould will be assisting Rita.