Patti Fleury, 1937–2023
At a loom, individual threads cross and connect, slowly becoming something stronger than any one thread alone. Patti Fleury spent much of her life making connections of another kind.
Trained in Physical and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto in 1958, Patti began her career helping people participate more fully in everyday life. She and her husband, Bruce, met while working at a camp for children with disabilities. In the 1960s, they acquired the Coffey farm on Galway Road and later established Connemara Camp and Centre there, bringing children with and without disabilities together in the experience of summer camp.
The farm eventually became their permanent home, and Kinmount became the community to which Patti and Bruce devoted much of their later lives.
Patti was also a maker. She quilted, sewed, knitted and wove. In 1984, she and Bruce were among the people who established Kinmount's Pioneer display, preserving and demonstrating the skills and objects of earlier generations. They later helped establish the Kinmount Artisans Marketplace, where Patti spent years supporting the work of other local makers.
And Patti recorded the community around her.
For years, her Around the Town column in the Minden Times captured Kinmount's everyday life — its gatherings and celebrations, organizations and fundraisers, familiar names and ordinary moments.
Those small threads matter. Together, they become the record of a place and its people.
Patti didn't simply observe the social fabric of Kinmount. She helped weave it.
Photos provided by Janice Stange of the Kinmount Historical Society.