Skip to content

Bowen's archivist: Lois Meyers Carter

Lois’s caregiver of seven years, Sandra Wank, and daughter Jeanie Thoman sat down with the paper to share some memories of the Undercurrent icon, including her 'letters project'
Lois
Lois Meyers Carter, the Undercurrent's Island Neighbours columnist died Aug. 30. Lois was known for her volunteerism, particularly her involvement with the Bowen Island Library and Bowen Island Museum and Archives. She’s pictured here in the old general store (new library) in 1992.

Lois Meyers Carter loved obituaries. For decades Lois would clip out the obits from the Vancouver papers for inclusion in the Bowen archives. And for the past year, her daughter, Jeanie Thoman, has been getting notes of what to be sure to include when Lois’s time came. 

“She actually wanted me to write it before she even passed,” says Jeanie. “She wanted to edit it, I’m sure.”

Aug. 30, the time came.

So this week, the Undercurrent pays tribute to one of its longest running columnists, author of Island Neighbours.

Jeanie wrote an obituary, which you can read here, and former Undercurrent editor Edye Hanen wrote a tribute story, which you can read here. Cathy Bayly of Lois's beloved archives dug up some photos. And Lois’s caregiver of seven years, Sandra Wank, and Jeanie sat down with the paper to share some memories of the Undercurrent icon. 

“She was quiet,” says Jeanie, “and very proper.

“She was never a gossip and she didn’t ever talk bad about people.”

“She just really she really enjoyed people’s stories,” says Jeanie. “If my mom ever had conversations, she always wanted them to be meaningful.”

On Bowen, Lois, a librarian, was instrumental in getting the library set up in the old general store and was highly involved with Eagle Cliff’s neighbourhood association. She played fiddle in the Vancouver Fiddle Orchestra and in the local musical group, Contraband. As the daughter-in-law of Bowen’s first archivist (Katie Carter), Lois was a staunch supporter of and volunteer with the museum and archives. 

In the last couple years of her life Lois undertook the “letter project” with Sandra. 

Lois would keep everything: Christmas cards, birthday cards, notes, (Undercurrents), and letters. Through those letters, in the waning years of Lois’s life, she and Sandra re-lived the loves of Lois’s life. They read dozens and dozens of letters from Lois’s three great suitors. 

The letters served as historical tethers to a life Lois couldn’t fully remember. 

“She had them dated and all in order,” says Sandra.

They began with Victor. 

Victor was an English merchant who started off as a pen pal in 1946, but gradually became more romantic. 

“They had exactly the same taste in music and the classical stuff, and the stuff they read and going to plays, going to dances,” says Sandra. “They really had a lot in common.”

Victor wrote of his travels through the Mediterranean and the British and Palestinian conflict of the era.

“He was madly in love with mom,” says Jeanie.  Lois did travel to see Victor once, but for some reason or other, he couldn’t get off the ship. Following that, Lois had a choice to make between the merchant and a dashing marine. 

Lois met Andrew Laurence Meyers on a blind date while in university. 

“It’s funny because someone else was supposed to come to the blind date,” says Jeanie. “And that guy couldn’t get off duty or something so my dad came to the blind date instead.” 

“So there’s these letters from when my dad was in the Korean War and away various Marine Corps things,” explains Jeanie. 

While Lois married “Larry” as she called him, Victor stayed in her life in a platonic way, writing through to his death in the early 2000's. Their families even met once or twice.

Lois and Larry had four children and lived in Bothell, Washington.

“My dad used to chase her around the house,” remembers Jeanie. “They really were a fun, loving couple together.” 

“When I was reading [the letters] to her, we’d stop and discuss them because there’d be something like he’d say that was really cheeky, romantic and some of the older ones, the language was hilarious,” says Sandra. “She said she was getting to know herself all over again.”

As a young mother, with four children, Lois went back to university to earn a master's degree in library science. It was there, just in passing, that she first met Ross Carter. It wasn’t until a decade later, when her marriage to Larry was winding down, that Lois and Ross reconnected at a library conference. 

“It was just instant with her and Ross,” says Jeanie. 

Lois and Ross married sometime around 1980. Ross was the son of Katie and Dick Carter, who had long owned property on Bowen. 

“Ross would tell mom all about Bowen,” says Jeanie “And once they came over here was like, this is where we’re going to be.”

The librarians built a house in Eagle Cliff, covered it with books, and, for the most part, lived out their days on Bowen (Ross died in 2008 but Lois moved to a care facility a couple of years ago.)

“It’s like her three loves of her life in all these letters,” says Jeanie. “And Mom, just, I think that really, really helped her stay engaged. She revisited so many times of her life through the letters.”