Who was Olave?
This document was circulated to the organisers of the 1961 tour:-
BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND.
THE WORLD CHIEF GUIDE, OLAVE. LADY BADEN-POWELL. G.B.E.
For Use During Cross-Canada Tour, September, 1961.
The girl who was to become Olave, Lady Baden-Powell, World Chief Guide, was born in Derbyshire, Eng., in 1889. Youngest of a family of three ... she had an older brother and sister ... she learned to ride, swim and play tennis, and at the age of 11 she started a diary, which she has kept up till this day.
When she was 23, her father took her on a cruise to the West Indies to escape the English winter, and on board ship she met Baden-Powell, then starting a world tour to visit Scout Troops, They became engaged before the ship docked at Jamaica, and were quietly married in the autumn of 1912.
In the early years of her marriage, Lady Baden-Powell learned how to drive a car, how to type, and how to run the local Scout troop, and in the autumn of 1915, as the War entered its second autumn, she left her two small children, Peter and Heather, with her mother and went to France to help establish a recreation hut for which the Scouts had raised money. Later she suggested that Guides should provide a similar hut for the entertainment of troops and the required sum was soon subscribed© In 1916, she was enrolled as a Guide and became County Commissioner for Sussex. Later that year, she was elected Chief Commissioner. During that summer, the Chief Scout completed a new handbook for Guiding to replace an earlier one written by his sister. In 1917 another daughter, Betty, was born. The World Chief Scout and the World Chief Guide shared Feb, 22 as a birthday, and in 1926, at an International Conference, it was suggested that this date be called "Thinking Day" and kept as a World Guide Day, Since 1932, an important part of Thinking Day ceremonies has been the giving of pennies in all member countries of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts,. Funds so collected are used to promote Guiding and Girl Scouting wherever there is a need. Lady B.P. was active in founding the world Association in 1928, with the
object of promoting, through co-operation, unity of purpose and common understanding, the fundamental principles of Girl Guiding and Girl Scouting throughout the World,
and encouraging friendship among girls of all nations, within frontiers and beyond.
Today there are five and a quarter million Guides and Girl Scouts in more than 50 Member Countries. At the World Conference in England in 1930, Lady B.-P. was acclaimed World Chief Guide. Two years later, she was created a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.
In 1938, the Chief Guide took her husband, whose health was beginning to fail, to Kenya, and the coming of war prevented their return. The Chief Scout died in 1941 and is buried there.
In 1942, Lady B.-P. returned to England and toured the British Isles giving impetus to the war work being done by Guides there. The Chief Guide now makes her home in a grace-and-favour apartment at Hampton Court, but has travelled extensively during the past 15 years, mostly by air, and has now visited Guides and Scouts in nearly 80 countries and territories around the globe. In 1960, she was in Nigeria when that country's political independence was proclaimed, and presented in person to the Girl Guides Association of Nigeria the Certificate of Recognition as a Tenderfoot Member of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Early this year, she visited The Lebanon, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, India, Israel and Italy, and met with Queen Elizabeth on the occasion
of her visit to India and Pakistan.
Lady B.-P. will be in Canada from September 27, 1961 to December 3, 1961 during v/hich time she will visit Guides in every province of the Dominion.
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Olave has her own WebSite here.
