Mr. Speaker, today I am honoured to pay tribute to the life of Lucy Mieske, who passed away Monday at the age of 98.
A life as long as Lucy's, when it is lived as well and as fully as she lived, is something to be celebrated. Lucy was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a great-grandmother of 10, and here is something we do not hear very often, and a great-great-grandmother.
As members can imagine, family was important to Lucy and she was important to her family.
Today I want to commemorate Lucy's contribution to her community. She lived her whole long life within a few miles of her birthplace in beautiful Vennacher and like a tree that spreads its roots and canopy every more widely with the passage of the years, she provided a rootedness and a foundation for the entire community and a sense of continuity between the past and present.
Across Canada communities are defined by people like Lucy Mieske, and carry on, richer with each passing generation, because of people like her. We honour Lucy today and pray that she will always be remembered.