BY KAREN BLISS
Friends call Marnie Strath the Energizer Bunny. She has an outgoing personality, an instant-friend type of disposition. She’s always on the go, whether off to a local event in Winnipeg, on an adventure abroad with her husband of 30 years or volunteering for scores of organizations and charities. Many of her friends are in their mid-40s and 50s.
“I don’t feel 72, more like 30,” Strath says.
On the board of the Winnipeg Chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons since 2020 and now Chair, Strath says she is presently advocating for the ear of the soon-to-be new Independent Seniors Advocate in the Manitoba government, and also produces the CARP Winnipeg newsletter. “I’m constantly looking at ways for seniors to improve their lifestyle,” she says.
To that end, both within CARP and elsewhere, boy is she busy.
The one-line bio on her Instagram describes her in a nutshell: “love throwing parties, love to travel, foodie and consummate volunteer.” She even posts a martini-making video every Friday on TikTok, which she has been doing since the pandemic and has attracted about 2000 followers.
“I can’t just sit here and play Wordle all day. That would drive me nuts,” says Strath, who grew up on a farm in small town Souris, Manitoba, northeast of Brandon, but was born with a big city curiosity.
“I sometimes think that retired people are busier than people that work because they leave themselves open to be invited to join committees and boards. Right now, I’ve got five projects on the go that I am committed to volunteering for. It’s almost more like voluntold.”
Strath is working with the Canadian Football League’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers on November’s Grey Cup, in charge of the volunteer greeters at the airport. She is helping to organize the 65th anniversary gala of the Metro Business Club of Winnipeg (she is a past President) by contacting former members and planning the dinner and the table centres. She is also behind the Agape Table’s Give A Cup of Kindness, developing and promoting the capital campaign to build a permanent facility for the food assistance program, which provides soup and a bagged meal to 600-1000 people daily.
On top of those four, she is also organizing her 55th high school reunion for 2026 (“ we didn’t want to wait until 60”). “I consider the reunion the fifth, as it takes a lot of time,” she says.
That is not everything, though. She is volunteering for the iDE Canada gala, a Winnipeg-headquartered entrepreneur organization that creates income and livelihood opportunities in developing countries. She is a board member for the Field of Dreams Foundation with the Winnipeg Goldeyes, the city’s professional minor-league baseball team, and still produces the newsletter for her condo board, consults with new board members and attends the meetings. To top it off, she’s a wedding officiant.
“If I have a down day, I don’t know what to do with myself,” she explains, adding that after the CARP interview she’s off to Taste of Manitoba to sample food and drink.
She has always been a social butterfly, as they say, and a go-getter.
At 18, she went from Souris High School to living in Paris with a family as au pair. There, she studied French and attended Alliance Francaise and the Sorbonne University. She earned a diploma in pedagogy teaching.
She returned home, married and had three daughters. Her marriage to Bob in 1995 was the second for both of them. “I couldn’t find the right guy. I guess it took me a while. Our 30th anniversary cake said, “We can’t believe we made it.”
Strath started working at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1999, retiring in 2010 from her position as Director of Marketing. During that decade, she was also on the board of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce (2006-2010), President of the Metro Business Club of Winnipeg (1999-2009), event planner for the United Way (2005-2008), in charge of the board for the Special Olympics – Manitoba (2009-2010), and board member of Riverview Health Centre (2009-2014).
“The hardest thing for anybody who does retire is the fact that you lose your identity,” she says. “Because I was identified as the Director of Marketing at the Winnipeg Free Press, I was known across the city. All the charitable organizations had to come to us for support. All the music that came to town would come to me and say, ‘Can you promote us?’ So I had an identity. And as soon as I left that, I felt like I didn’t have an identity anymore. So I had to re-establish myself in another way, and that is through either my charitable contributions or through event planning. So, I used my contacts to reach out and do something other than be bored and sitting at home.”
In her late 50s, her husband, Bob Friesen, still had his car dealership, so she started getting paid to do event planning. Retirement over. “That was a lot of fun because I did some really super big events here in the city,” she says.
But in 2014, Bob sold his business and nudged her to finally retire, for real. “There’s no point in me being retired and doing nothing and you’re working all the time.”
So, she stopped, and the pair started to travel everywhere, more than 30 countries together, including a safari in South Africa; Killing Fields and Angkor Wat in Cambodia; Dubai in United Arab Emirates (“that was fun”).
They live in a condo in Manitoba and maintain one in British Columbia, so they can visit two of their three daughters (the third lives in Winnipeg) and four grandchildren (the eldest is 20). “We go back and forth,” she says. Her father is 97 and is still living on his own. “I hope longevity is part of my history,” Strath says.
This October, she and Bob will be in Paris for three weeks, “and live like Parisians,” she says.
“The reason I retired is we wanted to travel, and you can’t commit to anything because you want to be able to pick up and go whenever you want to. That’s why I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to go back to work, and I’m going to keep my volunteering to my schedule, not to their schedule. That has worked really well, although I must admit that this schedule, this next few months is pretty intense,” she laughs.
When she returns from holiday, she’ll get right back to her volunteering and is even considering adding something else to fill the clock:
“I was actually thinking more about taking some medical classes,” she reveals. “I’ve always been very interested in that. I don’t have a squeamish stomach, so if somebody’s sick, then I’m usually trying to figure out why they’re sick and what’s the matter. I haven’t got my CPR. I’ve always thought I should do that. So if anything, some medical courses, which is odd now that I’m saying it out loud; I thought it in my head but never said it.”
Link to the martini TikTok page
https://www.tiktok.com/@marniestrath
