Valerie MacMenemey has been in her prime for 30 years.
The 85-year-old grandmother is adjusting to her new hearing aids having survived skin cancer twice, colon cancer and undergone knee and hip replacements. But the retired teacher and talented children's author says she is feeling good and is optimistic enough to start planning her 90th birthday party.
MacMenemey wrote plays and skits for her students to perform and, after retiring in December 1995 from the Simcoe County School Board, she started a second career as a writer.
First on her retirement agenda though was a road trip out west with her standard poodle puppy, Isadora.
"Each week, I wrote a travel log titled Driving Miss Dora, which I faxed to a local newspaper in Midland. When I reached Tofino, B.C., I turned around and drove back by a different route."
When she got home, she took writing courses and joined a writers' group in Newmarket called The Maple Cookies.
''We met each month to critique work, drink tea and eat maple cookies. This group encouraged and supported my entry to the Writer’s Union of Canada competition, Writing for Children."
Her entry won first place and gave her confidence to continue writing.
MacMenemey moved to Sudbury 23 years ago with her partner, Stephen Redmond, who was the site manager at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO).
She didn't like Sudbury. Or at least she didn't think she was going to like it.
It turned out Sudbury offered many opportunities.
MacMenemey reached out to the only person she knew in the city, Judi Straughan, who, at that time, was education director at the Sudbury Theatre Centre (STC).
"Judi arranged for me to write teacher study guides for the plays at the theatre," MacMenemey said.
It was the perfect job. While teaching elementary school, MacMenemey had inspired her students to write, act and produce plays.
One project was producing a play to celebrate the opening of the Barrie Learning Centre. Another resulted in an invitation for her students to perform at Expo '86 in Vancouver.
One door opened another. She was hired by the STC for Students on Stage, a summer program for young actors.
For the Greater Sudbury Public Library, MacMenemey held story sessions and organized workshops called Books Alive for young people using drama and crafts around storytelling.
"There are many libraries in the Greater Sudbury area and I travelled to most of them including Onaping Falls,” MacMenemey said.
For five years, she was co-manager of a program called Learning Through the Arts alongside artist/educator Pandora Topp,. They worked with artists and teachers in Greater Sudbury, North Bay and Manitoulin Island.
She organized workshops for teachers with the Rainbow District School Board that demonstrated how to use drama to teach social studies.
Another assignment was a program for drama students at Sudbury Secondary School that involved creating theatre for children.
Students "travelled in a school bus with the set, props and costumes to various elementary schools with a play, Bully for You, that I wrote and directed," she said.
"A similar program was done with a play I wrote called, Pack Attack, which was also supported by the health unit and Rainbow board. It targeted Grades 5 to 8 with information about smoking."
In 2006, MacMenemey was commissioned by the Sudbury Mining Week Committee (now known as Modern Mining & Technology Sudbury) to write a play about mining for young people called Mining Rocks.
"I knew nothing about mining and had to learn quickly. I was taken down a mine in Falconbridge and put in touch with a retired miner, Hans Brosch, who gave hours of his time to tell me what I needed to know,” she said.
"The cast was from both Sudbury Secondary drama department with Alison Witty and some elementary students from the STC Students on Stage group.”
Mining Rocks was revived in 2022 by YES Theatre.
MacMenemey, who has two sons with her first husband, married Stephen, her second husband, in 2012 on the beach in front of their home.
That same year, Year of the Dragon on the Chinese zodiac, she and granddaughter, Lily, both "dragon people," celebrated by travelling to China.
Lily has inherited her grandparent's love of theatre and is an actor and professional dancer.
About four years ago, MacMenemey began writing books for children.
"My illustrator is one of the Maple Cookies, and other Cookies helped edit … . I used the company We Make Books to print and publish The Magic Snow Globe and then Sailing Away."
Both books involve time travel and the stories combine fiction and historic facts.
Currently, she is working on three other books, including one about a child coping with her grandmother's cancer journey titled My Gran Wore a Cowboy Hat.
If that wasn't enough for someone half her age, this fall MacMenemey took courses with the Sudbury Kennel Club in Lively and studied abstract art with Georgian Bay area artist Sharon MacKinnon.
The woman whose last name is a mouthful was born Valerie Wright in Bristol, England, at the start of Second World War. MacMenemey is her first husband's surname.
"If I was a woman of a different generation, I would have kept my maiden name," she said.
And she has in a way. Her SUV's licence plate reads "WRIGHTER."
Vicki Gilhula is a freelance writer. Prime is made possible by our Community Leaders Program.
