PUBLICATIONS
"THE PLACE WHERE THE SUN RISES"
​Chapter 1 of
Finding a Familiar Stranger
by Betty O'Hanlon
Betty O'Hanlon was born Elizabeth Gilliatt on Bell Island, NL, in 1918 to Jean Ruggles (1887-19??) and John Burton Gilliatt (1880-1956). Her parents had come to Bell Island from Nova Scotia in 1916 when J.B. Gilliatt was hired as Assistant Chief Engineer with the Scotia Company. He became Chief Engineer not long after that and remained in that position until his retirement in 1952. Betty was the second of three daughters born to the Gilliatts on Bell Island. She and her older sister were home-schooled by their mother before starting formal schooling in Grade VI at the Church of England Academy on Bennett Street in the building that would later become the Union Hall. She attended Bishop Spencer College for Girls in St. John's for the higher grades and then Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, where she completed a B.Sc. in Biology. During the Second World War, she joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps as a private, and ended her tour of service as a lieutenant in the Canadian Army Medical Corps. During that time, she met and married Harry O'Hanlon (1916-1996) of Edmonton, AB, and they "began a life of constant travel and adventure." At the time of the writing of her 1988 autobiography, they were living on a ranch in southern Alberta. Betty died May 30, 1993 at age 75 of cancer at Calgary's Rockyview General Hospital. The following excerpt is Chapter 1 of  her book, Finding a Familiar Stranger,​ published by Plains Publishing Inc., Edmonton, 1988. Chapter 1 deals with her childhood on Bell Island. If you would like to read Betty's life story, the book is available on Amazon.