With the approach of International Women’s Day on March 8, I’ve been thinking about strong women from the past who didn’t make it into the history books, including my maternal grandmother Louie Carnegie Reeder, who raised 11 children on the prairies through the Great Depression.

During the recent bout of frigid weather, I huddled under the beautiful flower petal patterned quilt she’d made out of old flour bags and scraps of fabric left over from the dresses, pyjamas and shirts she’d sewn for her family.

Always wearing an apron, Grandma went through about 100 lbs of flour a month, an unbelievable amount these days, working to bake eight loaves of bread every other day, along with all the buns, pies, muffins and cakes to feed everyone on the wheat farm. For school lunches, she used to make bran muffins, called graham gems, spread with honey and placed in a........

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