(1855-1944)
There have been many poems and ballads written about her heroic deed.
However, not many people are aware that Canada has it's own 'Grace Darling' of sorts; Roberta Boyd, whose father, like Grace, was a lighthousekeeper, and also made a daring and dramatic rescue.
Despite protests from her mother, Roberta pulled a shawl over her head and rushed toward the sounds of the men's cries. Her little sister Mary followed, but turned back because of the weather, so Burta took out the station’s little boat and rowed out alone into the darkness.
She made it out to the two men, who though weak, were still clinging to the overturned sailboat. She first grabbed the younger of the two by the shoulders, and was able to help him slide onto her skiff, but the older man was much heavier, and his feet had become tangled in ropes from the sailboat. Determined not to let him drown, she worked ferociously, eventually pulling him free and somehow managed to deposit him to the safety of her own boat.
She then rowed directly into the wind and current and brought them back to the safety of the lighthouse. As one newspaper reported: “her stout heart upheld her, and she made it home safely with the two rescued men. Her mother said that she had never experienced so long an hour as it was from the time Bertha left us till she came back, and when she drew up to shore with her burden how we shouted for joy.” Roberta’s mother described the two men as “crazy with thankfulness.” With hot drinks and warm, dry clothes; they both made a full recovery.
In recognition of her heroics, the Dominion Government presented Roberta Boyd with a gold watch inscribed “in recognition of her humane exertions in saving life in the St. Croix River.” And the Department of Marine and Fisheries sent her a new boat with the words, “Roberta Grace Boyd, Grace Darling of the Saint Croix”; on the stern.
When her father died a few years later, Roberta Boyd became the official lighthouse keeper of Spruce Point, an able successor, and though she was often commended, she herself would say modestly, “Please don’t speak of it. Indeed, I did nothing worth describing.”
On October 18, 1900; she married Herbert Leroy Hannah, who was wodowed from Agnes Marianne Garcelon; and became stepmother to his little boy, Henry Jr. Roberta Boyd Hannah died on January 10, 1944; and though the lighthouse has long been closed down, people from the area still talk of the 19 year old Burta Boyd and her daring rescue.
