Mary Snider celebrates 100th birthday with friends, family

Highly-respected community member Mary Snider had a long line-up of people waiting to congratulate her at her 100th birthday celebration Saturday, held at the St. Davids Lions Club hall, where she was surrounded by family and friends.

Snider is well-known in the Niagara-on-the-Lake community for her decades of volunteering, going back to the early days of what was then called the Virgil Business Men’s Association and her work for the Virgil Stampede. She was one of the founding members in 1966, and is now an honorary member.

She set a high bar for volunteers in the community, and has received many awards over the years, most because of her decades-long association with the VBA. She has also been very active with Grace United Church.

A table of newspaper articles, photos and accolades set up at the hall Saturday showed just how much of herself she has given back to the community.

She was recognized by both the Chamber of Commerce, and the Town, when it was giving out annual awards to volunteers. She was named  Citizen of the Year in 1982, says her daughter Betty Snider, as she went through the various articles and certificates pointing out Mary’s many awards, and in 1990, she was recognized for the work she did organizing Canada Day Celebrations. That was followed by Volunteer of the Year in 1996, a Volunteer Recognition Award in 2009, and Citizen of the Year award again in 2011.

Betty recalls that although her mother had a small greenhouse business, selling plants and vegetables grown from seed, “once the May 24th weekend came along, we sold flowers and then we all went to the stampede to help out.”

She and her two brothers Allen and Doug are all St. Davids Lions members and continue to help out, she says, a tradition of community service that George and Mary set as an example to them from the time they were kids.

Dave Dick, president of Niagara Motors, was president of the VBA for decades, and also, with his wife Terry, a good friend of Mary’s.

They stopped in Saturday toward the end of the celebration as the crowd thinned out. “We were able to sit and have a really nice chat with Mary,” he says. “She’s amazing. You would never think she’s 100.”

“She is so sharp mentally,” he continued. “We visit her at her home, and when we leave we always say we’ve had a lot of fun. She sits and does those 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, and she is really fun to talk to.”

She asked to come on board the VBA as secretary and treasurer of the VBA, which she did, “and she never took a dime," he says.

He was a school friend of Mary and George Snider’s children through their attendance at Virgil Public School — which Mary attended as well — and says he spent a lot of time with them at their house. “Mary looked after us all,” he says, “and she worked so hard.”

When the group of Virgil business owners decided to raise money to build the Centennial Arena, they decided to move a horse show and fireworks from where they were then being held a the Virgil School, and to invite the community to watch. That was the genesis of the Virgil Stampede. “She said she’d help us for a year, and she stayed for 46 years,” he says, continuing as their secretary and treasurer.

But she was far more than that — there wasn’t much about the stampede she wasn’t involved in, including the popular nickel sale, which she organized and ran. Even as her direct involvement wound down in later years, she would travel around the grounds on a golf cart making sure everything was running smoothly, with a walkie talkie to call for help if it was needed.

“She did all the work, and she made us look good,” says Dick.

The Virgil Stampede quickly became the VBA’s signature event, and over the years Mary was a huge part of it, but she was’t the only Snider — George, Betty, Allen and Doug all helped out, said Dick.

And she was an inspiration to the community. “If Mary asked for help, why would you say no? She did so much work herself, gave up so much time. She knew what would work and what wouldn’t work. She knew how to get things done.”

When she received her Lord Mayor's Award of Excellence from the Chamber of Commerce, it was presented by the late town council member Dennis Dick, also a VBA member. In addition to being the only secretary and treasurer since 1966, she ran the stampede, coordinating  organizations and volunteers, a task that would typically require a five-person volunteer committee, he was reported as saying, "with Mary doing 95 per cent of the work.”

All members would recall receiving the meeting minutes hand-typed, and when it wore out, she wouldn’t accept any help to purchase a new one.

Under Mary’s direction for most of the years of the Stampede, the VBA has raised more than $1.5 million to make the community a better place for all, including most of what can be enjoyed in the Virgil Sports Park.

Mary was 17 and George was 20 when he left to fight in the Second World War, where he served for four years, Mary waiting for him so they could be married on his return, says Betty. Mary still lives in the house she and George built in1946, and intends to stay there. She struggles a little with walking, but with help from her daughter and other family members, and daily home care visits, “she isn’t leaving,” says Betty. “She’s determined to stay in her house. She is not moving.”

No surprise to anyone who knows her —  just as she always has through her many volunteer accomplishments, Mary Snider still embodies the definition of determination.