Swanson, Blanche Henderson

Born at Kingsville, ON; family moved to Alberta in 1902 when she was 5. While they were traveling on the train to their new home, she contracted scarlet fever, followed by ear infection and mastoiditis, leaving her deaf. Rural Alberta public schools up only to grade 4. Met and married deaf man Alexander David Swanson (q.v.) in 1926 and ran a farm with him. After he died in 1943, she sold the farm and moved to another one closer to her children's school, remaining there for 37 more years. Her last years were spent in Calgary; she died there of heart failure.