Cathie passed away peacefully in Kingston on July 19, 2023, in her 82nd year. She leaves her husband of 57 years and best friend, Donald (Arts’64, LLM’66); her son, Ian (LLM’02) and his wife, Chrissie Yao (Artsci’93); her son, Colin and his wife, Heather; her grandchildren: Nathan (Artsci’23), Maddy (Artsci’26), Amelia, and Jackson.
Cathie was a devoted wife, loving mother, grandmother, caring teacher and student counsellor, and a good friend to so many.
In 1961 Cathie came to Queen’s to pursue post-secondary studies. She loved her years as a Queen’s student, where she made many lasting friendships. In her final year at Queen’s she met Don on a blind date on Friday, Dec. 13, 1963, and for both of them it was a lucky day since it was love at first sight. For the next two years there was a long distance relationship as Cathie moved back to Etobicoke to attend Lakeshore Teachers’ College in 1964-65 and then started her first teaching job with the Etobicoke Board of Education at Wellesworth Junior Public School the following year. Meanwhile, Don was finishing his legal studies at Queen’s, which culminated in his being awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to Oxford University.
On July 23, 1966, Cathie and Don were married at Islington United Church in Etobicoke. Their married life in Toronto was brief; in early September they travelled to England on a Cunard liner along with the other Canadian recipients of the Commonwealth Scholarship. It was a magical time for them both, as they made many new friends on the voyage, during the first week of orientation for Commonwealth scholars in London, and after they arrived in Oxford. A few months after their arrival, Cathie found a teaching job at the Crescent School (a small private elementary school in the centre of Oxford), where her students delighted in hearing her Canadian accent. Toward the end of their first year at Oxford, they purchased a new VW Beetle, allowing them to travel extensively in the U.K. and make a nine-week camping trip through Europe in the summer of 1967.
In 1968, Cathie and Don returned to Canada and Kingston, where Cathie took up a teaching position at Centennial Public School, which had opened a year earlier. During her two years at Centennial School, Cathie’s talents as a teacher came to the attention of the senior administration of the Frontenac County Board of Education, who persuaded her to become a language arts resource teacher for the following year. During that year, she travelled to every school in Frontenac County to offer advice to classroom teachers.
In 1971, her life took a much different direction when she became pregnant. That year Cathie and Don moved from their apartment on Queen Mary Road, to a new house on Bicknell Crescent in Kingston West. In October of that year, Ian arrived and Cathie threw her remarkable energies into motherhood, homemaking, and making many new friendships in the neighbourhood. Their second son, Colin, arrived three years later.
In 1976, Cathie and Don moved to Toronto after Don was appointed as Chair of the Ontario Labour Relation’s Board for three years. Despite the disruption to her life, Cathie was soon able to form new friendships in Toronto: first, on Wallingford Road in Don Mills, and then on Lynngrove Avenue in Etobicoke for the last two years of Don’s term at the labour board.
Cathie, however, was a Kingston person at heart and was very happy to return in 1979 and make a home in a historic limestone row house at a downtown location on Clergy Street. Cathie loved that home and neighborhood and lived there for almost 40 years.
By the early 1980s, Cathie was looking for a new outlet for her talents and joined the Queen’s School of English as an ESL instructor. What began as a part-time job evolved over the years into a full-time position as teacher and student counsellor. Cathie worked at the School of English until 2001 with a break for a sabbatical year in Australia in 1984-85. Over those years she formed strong friendships with her colleagues and left a lasting imprint on her students, some of whom remained in contact.
Her life took another change at the turn of the new century with the marriage of Ian to Chrissie Yao in 2000 and the marriage of Colin to Heather Cross in 2008. The year 2001 marked a new stage in Cathie’s life, as she became a grandmother for the first time with the birth of Nathan. At that point, Cathie retired from the School of English to assist Chrissie and Ian with childcare. Maddy was born three years later and Amelia and Jackson arrived together in 2009. Cathie loved all of her grandchildren dearly and she put her full energy into making sure that none of them were under-indulged.
Her retirement years also gave her full scope to pursue her love of travel. There were many happy trips over the years with good friends. As a great reader, she also became an active member of a book club and enjoyed the lively discussions and friendships of that group. At the same time, Cathie threw her full energies into community activities, serving as a board member of K3C and participating actively in the Outreach Committee of Chalmers United Church. Her greatest volunteer passion, however, was the Kingston Grandmother Connection, which provided support to both Help Lesotho and the Stephen Lewis Foundation in their important mission to support African grandmothers attempting to deal with the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS upon their families.
Cathie was a beautiful person. Her smile could light up a room. She had a refined aesthetic sense, always making the right choice in what she wore and how she decorated her home. She was a loving mother and grandmother, who took great personal delight in the accomplishments of her children, her two daughters-in-law, and her grandchildren. She was a devoted wife, who encouraged and supported her husband. She was always a kind and empathetic friend, who left a legacy of the friendships she made over the years, whether in Kingston, Toronto, Oxford, or Melbourne.
