By Andrea Dujardin-Flexhaug

There is sad news to report to our Okanagan Falls readers… one of their longtime residents, well-known author and former local publisher Margaret Hayes, passed away peacefully on February 25, at Andy Moog & Friends Hospice in Penticton.

Margaret first came to the small community of Okanagan Falls in 1980 with her third husband Charles from Africa. Shortly after they settled in, the couple started the South Okanagan Review newspaper,  and ran it successfully for 15 years.

When Charles passed away in 2000, Margaret turned to publishing non-fictional books, recounting her wide range of adventures, from a life growing up in wartime England, to a move with her second husband and four children to Africa in 1958, to raising a family and pursuing a journalism career in Kenya.

When the Hayes couple had the South Okanagan Review, I would send them articles and photos from time to time. Although we never met back then, I did come to know the now retired and widowed Margaret when the Okanagan Sun newspaper started up in 2006. Our newspaper covered not only Osoyoos and Oliver, but also Okanagan Falls (as we still do with our monthly magazine), and Margaret would invite me over for lunch sometimes. Her home was located up windy, scenic Green Lake Road, where it was perched on a quiet hillside overlooking Green Lake. Inside, Margaret’s home reflected her many years spent in Africa, with framed photos, furnishings and mementos. She would always greet me warmly, and she would regale me with her stories about her 23 years spent in Kenya.  I would also interview her about her books, of which she wrote eight in total.

If I had to use three words to describe Margaret, it would be elegant, cultured and gracious. She had an air of worldliness about her, yet she was down-to-earth and quiet spoken.

Margaret always tried to stay true to her routine of writing two hours every morning. The last time I saw her in 2012, she told me she planned to spend the winter delving into her boxes of handwritten notes and photos, to develop new stories and revise old ones.

Fortunately, Margaret’s memory will live on in the books she has written, and the stories and photos within them. As her daughter Janey Volden of Okanagan Falls notes, “She was one of a kind and will never be forgotten.”

Special thanks to Okanagan Sun Magazine owner Brian Highley