By Dorothy Isted
Special to the Pioneer
When community minded Kathi Shaw, a valley resident from the age of five, read Chief of Staff for the Invermere & District Hospital, Dr. Mannheimer’s letter asking for people to make masks at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, she decided to volunteer. Little did she know that a year later, she would have sewn 3000 masks, which have been distributed free by stores in the Columbia Valley. 3000 and counting.
In 2010, while participating in an Invermere clean-up day called Pitch-In, she was bitten by a tick. She became ill but was not diagnosed with Lyme Disease until the following year. Kathi says she was lucky, as she had developed a big red circle, which helped doctors decide what her condition was. Not all people with Lyme Disease have this symptom, and it makes it hard to diagnose conclusively. Illness forced her to leave her 35-year career at the Bank of Montreal in Invermere and also give up her volunteer jobs, like coaching girl’s softball and Loop the Lake.
In spite of the current isolation society is experiencing now, having been ill for a decade, Kathi says her circumstances didn’t change much. She said, “I really miss people, but when COVID-19 hit, I was used to it.”
When her daughter was in dance, she used to sew a lot of costumes and realized this was something she could do. Her limit one year ago was two masks per day. But she had a six-month course of treatments which helped Kathi to feel better, and now she makes between 50 to 100 per week, depending on how many out-of-town doctor appointments she has to attend.
Starting with patterns obtained through Volunteer Columbia Valley, she later found a few on the internet. She uses five different patterns now, made from donated material. In the evenings, she cuts out and pins the masks, sewing them in the daytime.
In Invermere, Valley Foods, Lambert-Kipp Pharmacy and Pharmasave distribute her masks for free. It is important for Kathi that others know the masks are available for them. She thinks she is the last valley person making them in our community. Also, if there are people with “some extra cotton kicking around at home,” she could use it to make sewing masks.
Regarding her new occupation, Kathi said, “It gives me a purpose, because when you’re stuck at home and not well, you feel pretty useless. When I see someone wearing one of my masks, it makes me feel really good. It really has helped me feel like I’m doing something useful for my community.”
