After decades away from Bermuda, Canadian Shirley Spence Fry had a few things on her agenda upon her return to the Island this week.

The 79-year-old wanted to visit the Mid-Ocean News where she worked in the 1950s, she wanted to visit Trimingham Bros. department store, and she wanted to have a lobster.

Lobsters are still available. The Mid-Ocean News and Triminghams are both closed.

The Royal Gazette recently sat down with Mrs. Fry to talk about old times. In her 20s she was hired to be the advertising manager for Mid-Ocean News. Upon her arrival in the 1950s, the staff were less than pleased to have a young, fresh-faced woman from Canada leading them.

"During my first days at Mid-Ocean News, they tried to sabotage me," said Mrs. Fry with a laugh. "At that time they were still setting in metal in Bermuda. At one point they dropped the whole front page which meant we had a big problem to get the paper out the next day. So we had to work until the wee hours of the morning to get it out."

Mrs. Fry introduced newfangled printing techniques that no one in Bermuda was familiar with at the time, such as colour separation.

After weeks of frustration and working seven days a week always behind schedule she walked outside the office late one night and found that one of the older staff members, Bea Trott, had ordered her a taxi.

"The taxi driver said: 'Mrs. Trott says I'm to take you home. You're not to be walking by yourself at night'."

And after that there was always a cup of coffee waiting for her on her desk when she arrived at work in the morning.

"From that point on it got better," said Mrs. Fry. "I was finally accepted. I developed many friendships at Mid-Ocean News."

She is still good friends with Irene Noble, a Bermudian who also worked in the advertising department. Mrs. Noble is now in her 90s.

During Mrs. Fry's time at Mid-Ocean News, the paper was located on Burnaby Street, and was owned by Seward S. Toddings, who died last year. "At that time Toddings really wanted to go into politics and didn't pay much attention to the newspaper," said Mrs. Fry. "So he just gave me carte blanche, basically."

Mid-Ocean News was purchased by The Royal Gazette in the 1960s, and closed last year.

"It's a shame," said Mrs. Fry. "One of the items on my to-do list was to see the Mid-Ocean News again. But I understand it has closed.

"They say you can't come home again. That era signalled the biggest changes in my life. I came from Vancouver and I had never gone to the beach for swimming, other than to be seen. I was brought here by Nancy Lyons who was at the Bermudian magazine. Our circle ended up with Bylee Lang, a sculptress who was living here."

She stayed with the parents of David and Frank Gamble. The Gambles introduced her to the ocean for the first time.

"I was hyper," she said. "I still am. The Gambles would take me out fishing with them. One day they put a snorkel mask on my face to stop me from talking and scaring away the fish. Once I went under [the water] I just fell in love with the sea. It was the colour around me."

Through her friendship with Bylee Lang, she learned how to translate her new-found passion into art. "Watercolours didn't work very well for me," said Mrs. Fry. "She introduced me to using pastel chalks and washing it with water, and highlighting it with Indian ink. I sold a lot of my pictures here."

She married an American reporter at The Royal Gazette, Jack Fry. The couple eventually settled in Victoria, British Columbia.

Using the skills she had gained in Bermuda, Mrs. Fry started a business in Canada called Oceanic Publications.

Her company put together brochures and magazines for various companies. She also worked for a travel agency for a time. "I did freelance journalism on different things," said Mrs. Fry. "Mainly it was always the sea stuff."

When she moved back to Canada, she quickly found that there was little information about the fish in the waters around Victoria. She began to fill a niche by painting and cataloguing them. She was asked to put up several displays of her fish paintings for tourism and educational purposes.

"That led to doing prints and cards, which my daughter is doing now," said Mrs. Fry. "I am not painting fish anymore because I ended up in the tourist industry. I always loved to travel."

Because of her knowledge of travel, and experiences in Bermuda she became a travel sales rep.

"I became known as the travel lady," said Mrs. Fry. "I was on television and radio and wrote articles for the weekly paper."

She started her own travel company and had up to 12 employees when she sold it recently.

"I am a certified adventure specialist," said Mrs. Fry. "I have been all over the world. I have been on all sides of the Amazon. I have been all through Thailand.

"I was going to Indonesia about a year ago. I was taking typhoid pills. I had an adverse reaction and fell and fractured my pelvis.

"That stopped my trip to Indonesia. But it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. Where I was going was where the earthquake and tsunami hit. One of the villages on my agenda completely disappeared. I was leaving on 12 September and all that happened on September 16. It was a wake-up call."

So she returned to Bermuda this year, for the first time in a while.

Among the more doable things on her list was to have fish chowder at the Spot Restaurant which was a frequent hang out when she worked at Mid-Ocean News.

She plans to do that soon. "It is fascinating how much things change," she said.