Jubilee Bunting

My Jubilee Bunting for today is Alice Olive Bunting, known as Olive, Clerk/Bookkeeper at Oak Bay municipal offices 1915-21. Born on 1 February 1893 in Morton (Boissevain), Manitoba, to English parents Herbert and Mary Ellen Bunting, she moved to Victoria - and Oak Bay - with her family ca. 1910, where her father worked as a building contractor until his death in 1917. Olive graduated from St Ann's Academy aged 18 in June 1911, receiving a Gold Medal for typewriting. She worked as a stenographer (shorthand typist) for Bell Development Co. before taking up the clerical post at Oak Bay Municipal Hall. In 1920 her Oak Bay salary was $115/month.

(An Olive Bunting turns up doing well in school in Greenwood BC in 1908 (British Colonist 14 July 1908, p.7). Could Herbert Bunting have moved his family there from Manitoba before travelling further west to Victoria? I don't have access to a 1908 BC directory, if there was one.)

Olive and her mother experienced a double loss in 1917 - Herbert Bunting died on 29 October, aged 61, barely two weeks before son Archie was killed in action in France, aged 28. Mary Ellen Bunting continued to live in the family home at 1461 Hampshire until her death in November 1936.

In 1921 Olive married James Alexander Munro (1884-1958), Chief Federal Migratory Birds Officer for the western provinces, and went to live in Okanagan Landing, just outside Vernon on the north end of Okanagan Lake. James had been widowed in 1919 and had a young daughter, Isobel Alison (born 1915, later Mrs GN Cull). Together Olive and James Munro had a son, David Aird Munro (1923-2004).

James Munro's ornithological career is outlined in Baillie, below, and his academic papers are listed in the BC Provincial Museum's annual report of 1963, here. The 1926 and earlier BC Directories list James Munro of Okanagan Landing as 'naturalist'; 1927-55 Vernon City & North Okanagan/BC Directories as 'game warden BC Govt'. Olive made her husband's papers available to at least one researcher after his death - did she arrange the disposal of his collections? Particularly given her relevant professional background, was she involved in creating and organizing her husband's records during his career? The relevant museums will have accession records. (Interested? see #ThanksforTyping.)

Olive Munro returned to Victoria in 1967, living only a block from her former school at 1005 Pakington Street (1967-86). By the 1980s her son, a conservation policy consultant, was living in Sidney. Olive Munro died in January 1993, only a few weeks short of her hundredth birthday.

Sources:

James Baillie, 'In memoriam: James Alexander Munro'. Auk (Journal of the American Ornithological Society) Vol 86 (1969), pp. 626-630. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/86/4/624/5209544 on 03 June 2022

'In Woman's Realm'. Victoria Daily Colonist newspaper, 28 June 1911, p.8. Accessed 6 June 2022: https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist53532uvic/page/n7/mode/1up .

'Sergt. Bunting Gives Life For Country.' Victoria Daily Colonist newspaper, 29 November 1917, p.5. Accessed 6 June 2022 https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist59y305uvic/page/n4/mode/1up

Funeral notice for Herbert Bunting. Victoria Daily Colonist newspaper, 2 November 1917, p.7. Accessed 6 June 2022 https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist59y282uvic/page/n6/mode/1up

BC death certificate for Alice Olive Munro. Digital image via BC Archives

BC death certificate for Herbert Bunting. Digital image via BC Archives.

BC death registration for Mary Ellen Bunting, no. 1936-09-520629 . Search at https://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy

BC marriage certificate for James Alexander Munro and Alice Olive Bunting. Digital image via BC Archives

BC City Directories, passim.

District of Oak Bay, Council Minutes 1921, p.2 etc.

Ottawa Citizen newspaper. Obituary: "James A. Munro, Ornithologist, passes here, 74." Digital image via newspapers.com

Victor Lewin, 'The Introduction and current state of California Quail in the Oakanagan Valley of British Columbia.' The Condor, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 1965), pp. 61-66. Accessed 6 June 2022: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1365380

Description of JA Munro fonds at Royal Ontario Museum via Archeion