Bertha A. MacLean

Island story

Bertha A. MacLean, commemorated at Pioneer Cemetery memorial R4-005 as 1914–1953, was Bertha Alexandra Rankin before her marriage. Her original marriage registration records her marriage to Howard Wallace MacLean at Pictou on 26 July 1934. Both were Island-born and resident there; Bertha was twenty and Howard, a fisherman, twenty-eight. Her parents are named as George Rankin and Christina Whiteway. Her 1953 death registration independently names her husband Howard, father George D. Rankin and mother Christena Whiteway, supporting the existing Rankin family identity. Christina and Christena are retained as source variants. The death record reports a February 1914 birth, but the overwritten day remains uncertain and is not calculated from her age. It records burial on Pictou Island on 26 December 1953 without identifying an exact plot. Doris Anne (MacLean) MacDonald’s 2022 family obituary names Howard and Bertha (Rankin) MacLean as her Island parents, corroborating the family setting already recorded for Alfred H. MacLean. Doris’s later work at Magee’s Pea Factory and Hamilton’s Biscuit Factory followed her departure from the Island; those jobs are part of an off-Island working life and do not locate either factory on Pictou Island.