Elspeth Alley
REV. ELSPETH ALLEY (nee McAlpine), one of the first six women ordained into the priesthood of the Anglican Church of Canada, died in September at her Vancouver home after a series of health problems. She was 75.
“It is hard to be the first in anything,” she wrote when she was still a deacon. “If ordination to the priesthood should come to me, it will come because it is the will of God.”
Born in Vancouver, she studied at Mills College, Oakland, Calif. and at the Vancouver School of Theology. She served several parishes in the Vancouver and Richmond area. Her husband, Jack, died in 1974. She leaves three daughters and three grandchildren.
Isabel Florence Scott
ISABEL FLORENCE SCOTT (nee Brannan), 86, wife of former primate Archbishop Ted Scott, died in September after suffering a seizure.
Born in Fort Francis, Ont., the youngest sister to five brothers, she worked as an accountant in Prince Rupert, B.C. during the Second World War. She and Archbishop Scott were married in 1942.
He served as primate of the Anglican Church of Canada from 1971 to 1986. In addition to her husband, she leaves four children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Her death notice in The Globe and Mail read: “She reached out to the usually younger women who were also priests’ wives and she welcomed the first women who were priests in their own right.”
