Gertrude was born in the Quaker community of Norwich, Ontario. Her family emigrated to Sunderland, England about 1888. This delightful excerpt from her travel diary describes the visit she and her little sister Maud have when they return to spend the summer with their cousin Will, his wife Edith, and young son Edgar, in Rockwood. They travel to Guelph to shop and see the agricultural college. They help iron and bake, visit other relatives, go boating, and everything is enlivened with laughter and youthful pranks. Alice Treffry, a Quaker woman in Norwich, mentions Gertrude’s family in her diary.