The Haldimand Press remembers Anne McAlpine

November 5, 1946 – July 1, 2023

CALEDONIA — The Haldimand Press team has lost one of its own as Anne McAlpine, author of the weekly Kitchens of Haldimand food column, passed away suddenly July 1, 2023 surrounded by her family.

They say the quickest way to a person’s heart is through their stomach, so it is no surprise that Anne found a spot in all our hearts with her tried and true recipes and, if you were lucky, a taste of her own cooking.

Born November 5, 1946 to Doris and Cam Thomson, Anne and her brother Russel would see early heartbreak when their mother passed away in 1956. Their family would regroup as Madeline Weaver entered to be their stepmom, following the death of her husband Cliff in Hurricane Connie on Lake Erie, and bringing new siblings Gail, Sharon, Marie, and Dennis.  

Anne was a Haldimand girl through and through, having been born on a farm at the corner of 12 Concession Townsend and Villa Nova Road before moving to Nanticoke in 1960 when her father remarried. Growing up she attended Porters Public School in Townsend and then Hagersville and Waterford High School. She would make a final move to Caledonia after she met Jim McAlpine through mutual friends, falling in love, marrying in 1968, and building a house on a severed lot from the McAlpine farm.

Together Anne and Jim had two children just 13 months apart – Allison in 1970 and Jason in 1971. Anne regularly mentioned her children in her columns, along with her grandchildren Kally, Camryn, Aaron, and Dominic. While she began her career at Parks Business College in Simcoe and then as a bank teller in Simcoe and Hamilton, Anne chose to stay home with her children until they were in intermediate grades.

Following her love of children, she started as an occasional secretary with the Haldimand School Board in 1981 before accepting a fulltime position as the secretary of Northview Public School in Hagersville. She remained there until the school closed, moving to Centennial Public School in Caledonia for the remainder of her career, retiring in January 2012 after 31 years of service.

Meanwhile, Anne pursued a second passion – sharing her recipes. When The Grand River Sachem found themselves without a writer for their ‘Who’s Cooking’ column, Harrison Martindale asked Anne to step in. She wrote her first food column on May 30, 1980 and wrote 1,672 by the time her final column was published with that paper on January 2, 2014. Later that year, Anne would pick up the ‘pen’ again and write her first From the Kitchens of Haldimand column for The Haldimand Press on November 26, 2014. 

“I assume that she had already submitted her column for this week, which would be her 442nd ‘From the Kitchens of Haldimand’ column in The Press,” said daughter Allison, “for a total of 2,114 columns between the two local papers over 43.5 years.”

“She loved writing the column. Whenever she was sick or laid up, she always made sure I kept it up as she knew the readers looked for it. She prided herself on the fact that she tried the recipes she put in her column (well most of them – not any fish recipes as she did not like fish or the fried mice recipe – although my brother offered to prepare it for anyone who was interested),” recalled Allison. “She was always telling me about a new recipe she was trying or sending samples home with my brother and I for our families to give input on.”

The Press team will always remember Anne for the goodies she shared – sometimes a recipe she knew we’d love and sometimes to get our opinions on a new idea. Our readers have often shared their compliments for her recipes, with many marking her column as a favourite part of their weekly read. Her skills likely came from experience, as Allison noted, “She LOVED baking and cooking. Someone asked if there was ever a day that went by that she didn’t bake or cook. I would say that day would be very rare.”

The Press featured Anne in an article on July 14, 2016. Anne said she had been cooking since the summer before she turned 13 and had a collection of over 2,500 cookbooks. 

“My favourite cookbooks are the really, really old ones,” she said, adding that her favourite recipe is her sister-in-law’s rhubarb pie. 

Anne explained that she cooks because it not only makes her feel good, but makes others feel good, too.

Outside of her cooking, Anne found many ways to give back to her community. Along with judging cooking contests like the annual Knights of Columbus Chili Cook Off, she volunteered with the Caledonia Seniors Centre and would use her crocheting and sewing skills to make blankets for pets at a local veterinary clinic. When her children were in school she could be commonly found volunteering her time at their school, “helping teachers and students wherever she could.”

What many likely don’t know is that “mom loved her birds. The house is trimmed with hummingbird feeders and she eagerly awaited their return every spring.”

As a mom, she had “an open door policy – our friends were always welcome,” recalled Allison, adding, “She was a no nonsense mom who believed in letting us make our own choices, even if that meant dealing with the consequences.”

When asked if there was a particular story that spoke to who Anne was a person, Allison shared, “One thing I always remember is her 50 cent word jar…. The teenagers started using a certain swear word too much for her; she started charging them 50 cents every time they said it. They always paid up. There were times they would walk in and place a $5 bill down on the counter if they had had a bad day to pay their share in advance. Mom used the 50 cent jar money to buy our first VCR – back in the late 1980s that was about $500.”

Allison also recalled when the Caledonia Blue Devils won the championship game when Jason was in his final year; he asked to have a party at the house and she agreed right away, “but shoes off and keys handed in…. The story mom liked to tell was that the boys who broke a table in the living room returned early the next morning to repair it, so how could she be upset about it being broken in the first place?”

Christmas was Anne’s favourite time of the year, with family brunch on Christmas Day and Chinese takeout on Christmas Eve, always ordering too much food. Christmas Eve also had an open door policy, and even for the extended visitors “she would have stockings for them and Santa would be sure to have dropped a gift off for them as well. That’s just who she was.”

Ultimately, family remained at Anne’s core, and her grandchildren were the centrepiece of that love. Allison said, “After her passing we were discussing what was her first love – her grandkids or her cats.  It was decided that they were pretty even, unless you asked her at 6 in the morning when her cats woke her up for breakfast, then her grandkids would be ahead.”

“She would always listen without judgement,” concluded Allison. “Mom was a kind and caring person who thought nothing of doing a random act of kindness to bring a smile to someone’s face.”

The Press team and all of our readers know this well, whether through her request to hear about acts of kindness in the community for her birthday or if you were lucky enough to experience her kindness in person. We will all miss her recipes, her life tips, and her compassion.

To view Anne’s obituary, click here.