Cougar Annie
Canadian settler
Ada Annie Rae-Arthur, later Ada Annie Lawson but better known as Cougar Annie, (June 19, 1888 – April 28, 1985) was a pioneer who settled near Hesquiat Harbour at Boat Basin in Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada.
Early years
Born Ada Annie Jordan in Sacramento, California, she moved to the land where she was to live for more than 65 years from Vancouver, British Columbia in 1915 after having lived in England, South Africa and the Canadian Prairies as a child. She arrived with the first of her four husbands to save him from an opium addiction and ensure that the remittance cheques that came from his family in Scotland would continue to arrive. At the time she and her husband settled on the coast, they had three small children. She gave birth to eight more children in this remote location. She acquired her nickname because of her famed marksmanship. She shot dozens of cougars during her long life.
Stories
After the death of her first husband Willie Rae-Arthur in 1936, she advertised in The Western Producer saying "BC Widow with Nursery and orchard wishes partner. Widower preferred. Object matrimony." The new husband she chose from several candidates died at their home in 1944 of an accidental gunshot wound to the leg.
“Cougar Annie” enters the record as canadian settler. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cougar, Annie and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q5176011. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1985, 1915 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cougar Annie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.