September 30, 2022
In Loving Memory ~
It is with deep sadness that we report the death of our mother, grandmother, and great grandmother Bernice, on September 30th, 2022, of natural cause at the age of 93, at the Ridgeview Care Home in Kamloops.
Bernice and her partner, Jack Conklin, moved to Barriere in the early 1980's for their well deserved retirement from quietly remarkable lives. Bernice's life began in the pioneering settlement of Fort Fraser, BC in 1929, as the youngest child of Charles and Rose May (nee Peacock) Flegg.
With her father unable and her brothers fighting in WWII the fifteen year old Bernice was in charge of running the family's quarter section farm. This she managed with a beautiful team of horses and her own attributes of inventiveness, determination and sheer, pigheaded obstinacy.
She often commented on how much she missed those horses in the stories she would tell her children and grandchildren. She scoffed at the idea that she was inventive, saying she was just trying to "work smarter", but acknowledged the determination and (although she rarely admitted it) her eyes twinkled when the phrase "pig-headed" was mentioned.
All three attributes served her well through marriages and widowhood, the raising of children, and work as varied as dairy farming, bucking logs, and waitressing within the communities of Falkland, Cache Creek, Highland Valley, and Hinton.
Bernice is pre-deceased by both her partners, Ernest Oakes and Jack Conklin, her sons Kenny Oakes and Danny Conklin, and her granddaughter Shelley Dilley.
She is survived by her daughters Linda, Rosealee, Brenda, Laurie and Cindy, their partners, and more grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren than can be listed.
She is greatly missed.