Adele taught English at Souris Regional High School from 1962 to 1977. In the last five years of teaching she offered a course in Theatre Arts, and with her students, explored all aspects of the theatre, from writing to presenting the play. One of the projects which the class presented was about Souris Physician Dr. Gus MacDonald, who once sewed on the feet of a four-year-old who had had them cut off by farm machinery. The Doctor's Decision was taken by the class to the Provincial Drama Festival, as was the play Down To The Sea in Ships, which was based on the wreck of the Sovinto, near her cottage in Priest Pond.

She wrote The Lady's Slipper, a one act play, in 1962. It was based on Acadian history and won first place in the Women's Institute Tweedmuir Competition. The inspiration for the play came from the little Acadian cemetery about two miles from her home, at Fortune Bridge. The second play was also a one act play, For the Love of a Horse, also set at Abells Cape in Fortune. It took second place in Ottawa Little Theatre competition. Also based on historical fact, it is the story of an Irish settler and his conflict with a landlord. Be my Wedding Guest, the third one act play, was written in 1963. It was later renamed Forgotten Heritage. That play, the story of the Mik' Maq won honorable mention in Ottawa Little Theatre competition.

In 1964 Adele wrote a 70 page pageant script for the P.E.I. Centennial in Confederation Centre entitled Two Islands. This play covered the period of history from the landing on the Island of Jacques Cartier to the 1864 Charlottetown conference on confederation. The scenes of the play attempted to point out the reasons for the attitude of the Island. The C.B.C. televised a one hour segment of the pageant and aired it across Canada. Whistle in the Wind is a three act play written in 1967. The play was performed in the Dominion Drama Festival in the Confederation Centre and won an award for a new Canadian play. In 1987 Adele was pleased to launch a history of Souris entitled Ten Farms Become a Town - A History of Souris - 1700 - 1920 from material collected by local historian George Leard. She told this story, in her own words, ca. 1991.

My great-grandfather MacLean came out from Scotland and settled in what is known as Lot 40, just across the Hil1sborough River from Charlottetown. His son John taught school for a while and then he and Uriah Matthew came up to Souris and opened up the firm of Matthew and McLean. I presume that his sister, Mary Adele McLean, came up to work in the store. She married Charlie Sterns who had Stern's Store next door to Matthew McLean's. So, actually, my mother and father are cousins. My mother was Mary Adele Sterns.

I was born in March 1916 in our home in Souris on Cooper Hill. Nobody calls it that now. Apparently, in the early times, there were quite a number of tinsmiths living in that area. I was the second of four girls and, of course, my father was looking for a boy. I can remember them telling the story when my mother was having her fifth baby. Dr. Gus said to the nurse, "Now if this baby is another girl you've got to go down and tell Roy because I can't." But anyway, it was a boy and Dr. Gus was quick to go down and tell my father.

We went to the convent. I went there for ten years and got a very good education. We had a music teacher who had a little portable organ. Two girls could carry it from classroom to classroom, so we had singing. For state occasions, when there was a concert in the music room or when people were visiting, our official dress was black with white collar and cuffs. I think the convent was a very good influence on most of the town. Most of the girls went there. The boys went to grade one and then they went to the public school. I enjoyed those years. I look back on them and am sorry the convent is gone.

Growing up, as I recall, we'd have concerts in our barn loft and charge a cent for admission. We played around the factory which is gone now. It was below the fisherman's monument at the corner of Breakwater Street. We played around the bigger wharves further down. We borrowed dories from the Caraquet fishermen. We'd ask them if we could borrow their dories and usually they would lend them to us. They came into Souris and would be there for days at a time. I remember I was very bold and asked if I could borrow a dory; then I could hear them shouting from the back of the vessel, "You're rowing her stern ahead". I said, "Oh, that's alright". I suppose they wondered if they'd ever get their dory back.

We had a game where we used to go down to the rocks on the shore there and try to get from the factory wharf, that I mentioned around to the beach at high tide. You could go quite easily at low tide. Walking on the rocks was difficult because there was this point and you couldn't get around it. Jessie Bushey said that she'd found a way to get around on her stomach, so that was a great conquest. Jessie was active and an athlete and so much fun. And daring! She was trying to get up the cliff at different places. Some places were easy and some weren't. She was conquering this particular spot one day and broke her nose.

My sister Bob's accident was in 1936 when she was thirteen. She was down diving off the wharf, the one that has disappeared. It was a beautiful September morning and all the kids were down swimming. It was Labour Day weekend. They played there all morning. She said, "I'm going to get wet anyway." She went over the side of the wharf but the tide had gone out. They watched Bob and they said, "Oh, she's doing the jellyfish roll," but two of the boys decided there was a little bit more to it than that. They went out and, of course, she couldn't get her feet under her to get her head out of the water and they rescued her and brought her ashore.

That particular morning, my sister and I and a cousin from Montreal were out playing tennis beside the house. He was a big tall fellow with long legs. They tore off down to the factory wharf when we heard word and he arrived there in time to say, "Look, don't move her". He knew. All four limbs were affected but her arms had one muscle left in the lower part. It meant, for one thing, that she never lost her beautiful handwriting At the convent, we were taught the MacLean method of writing in which you used your whole hand and not your fingers for writing. So she was able to write. She lived from that time until she was 62 and she still had beautiful handwriting almost up until the age of 60. She painted, embroidered and crocheted. I don't know how she did it, really. She was an exceptional person, very exceptional. After she died I had sympathy letters from so many of her girls that worked with her. One ended her letter saying, "I shall always remember her, because she made everything so nice from the beginning."

I wasn't any great student. I remember working hard in grade 8, so hard they worried at home. In grade 10, I didn't do much at all and failed the grade. I repeated it. From there I went over to Mt. Allison Ladies' College and had no problem and went to the University there. When I came out with my degree in 1938, I went up to visit my sister who was in the hospital in Montreal and I went to Canadian Industries Ltd. to look for a job. I remember waiting for hours for my interview, in spite of the fact that we had phoned ahead. Anyway, this woman said, "You have little more to offer the business world than a girl leaving high school". So I came back to Charlottetown and took a business course and worked at Hyndman Co. for five years. I left Hyndman's, for my sister had, by now, come home to Souris and she needed extra care. I thought, "Well, I'll help my mother."

During our childhood, we could go skating up at Norris Pond. The ice would be frozen and the boys would build a bonfire. In the daytime the MacDonald brothers would be cutting ice in a different spot; we made sure we didn't go too near. They cut the ice in the pond: it was lovely fresh water and then the blocks would be loaded on the sleighs and taken somewhere and put in sawdust, because, at that time, nobody had a refrigerator. The blocks would slide in the sleighs going up hill and, naturally, they didn't want us hopping on the blocks of ice. They were scared that we would get hurt. But there would be five or six of us would get a ride home on a load of ice. I don't know where they placed them but they would be stored in sawdust and sold in the summer .We all had a big block of ice in a cabinet so we called them ice boxes. I wish I had the one that was at Grandmother's. I've seen others like it made of oak. Private homes would do that; I remember the ice stored down at my grandmother's in what they called the ice house.

At one time the Cox Hotel had a four door bathing house at Souris beach. Several other bathing houses were along there. We had one, my cousins had one, and the Frasers had one. The beach was beautiful then. The Souris beach was one of the main attractions for the Cox Hotel. They had tourists come there from different places in Canada and the States. The Cox Hotel is gone now and it has been replaced by the Connolly Park across from the town hall. The sand was carted away and, of course, there was only so much sand to replace it.

I don't know why I caught my husband Cliff so easily because he escaped until he was thirty-two. I just don't know how. Cliff and I met at a dance and I guess the chemistry was right. We met a few more times and from the time we were married, I listened to Cliff talking about Island history. I know so very well if I had married anybody else but Cliff, I would never have written a word. I never would have.

We had a Women's Institute here and one meeting there was a competition came up in the Institute program for the Lord Tweedsmuir competition. I said to the meeting, "Let's try to enter the competition". One thing was a one act play. So I knew that I was going to try and there were two others, so three were going to try. At that particular time, I knew quite a bit about the Fortune history from listening to Cliff. When the kids were small, we didn't have much money and my mother would sometimes ask me to go to Charlottetown with my father when he would go in to a potato meeting. I would come home laden down with Island history books. Cliff was keen on this too and we would read these history books. That's how I got started. I knew about the Acadians on the Fortune River. The Acadians in Fortune were driven out to Rollo Bay East so I based my first play on that. And, 10 and behold, it won a prize.

That was exciting so I was looking for more when I saw another competition, The Ottawa Little Theatre. I asked Cliff what I should write on this time. He said, "What about Abells Cape". I sat down and I wrote that play For The Love Of A Horse in six weeks. So that got second prize. Of course, that set me off. I decided this is lovely, I must get a housekeeper and do some more writing. I also decided that I'd teach. I had a BA degree but I had never done anything with it. If I had started teaching earlier, I would have kept on teaching and I probably wouldn't have met Cliff. Later, after we were married and had children, they were looking for teachers and I started. In the summer, I went over to University of New Brunswick and I got my BEd so I was officially qualified. I didn't start teaching until all the children but Walter had started school. Walter was going to grade one the next year, so he was the only one who was left home and Cliff looked after him very well. After he fed the beef cattle he had a hot supper ready for us when we got home - blueberry cake even!