Evelyn Elizabeth Marion[Bradley] Wright

1919-1999

Evelyn Wright, nee Bradley, was born 5 August 1919 near Folkestone, England. She was the daughter of an English mother, Dorothy Cordery and Stewart Bradley, a fifth generation Canadian, an instructor in the Royal Flying Corps. When Eve was five weeks old, her father was repatriated. He brought his wife and infant daughter to Calgary.

 

Eve attended Calgary school graduating from High School in 1937. From her grandmother Elizabeth Bradley, nee Bowen, she learned that the family was of Loyalist descent, but whether from Shaver or Carmen was not known. After the family moved to Vancouver, Eve attended the University of British Columbia. She graduated BA in 1943 and from Teacher Training, first class, the next year. Then followed none successful years at Kamloops High School, including a year as an exchange teacher in Folkestone! She was active in professional and literary circles. In 1954 she married Christopher Wright.

 

As his career took the family around British Columbia, Eve expanded her talents particularly in rearing their four adopted children. She was active in art, literary, political and religious circles. Eve was a founding member of the Armstrong Sketch Club, Girl Guide Commissioner in the East Kootenays, a founder of the Salmon arm Arts council and an active member in the Anglican Church.

 

In 1980, Eve began fulfilling her grandmother’s wish to prove the loyalist connection. Research, both by mail and by visits to Ontario, she soon learned that she was descended from three loyalists: Luke Bowen, Michael Carmen and Philip Shaver, all soldiers in the Colonel’s Company, First Battalion, The King’s Royal Regiment of New York.  In 1982, she received her first certificate under the name of Michael Carmen, through the Vancouver Branch. After the Thompson-Okanagan Branch was formed in 1985, Eve readily proved descent from Luke Bowen, and Philip Shaver, and from Michael’s father Michael Carmen I; the senior Carmen , a successful farmer, had aided Loyalist spies and lost all. Eve’s later certificates were under the names of John N Shaver and Michael Myers, both Royal Yorkers. Her seventh certificate was in the name of John Hartle I, another successful farmer who lost all because his sons served in the KRRNY; born in 1718, he was the son of a Palatine German

 

After the United Empire Loyalists annual Conference in Vancouver in, many felt there should be a UEL branch in the interior of BC. At one of the gatherings that discussed the possibility, she asked the crucial question “When do we start? ” Eve, charter member of the Thompson-Okanagan branch, she was its first librarian. Just before her fatal illness, she was elected branch treasurer.