SHIRLEY JEAN DONOVAN (RAY)

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SHIRLEY JEAN DONOVAN
(nee RAY)

Peacefully, on December 6, 2022, at the age of 91. She will be fondly remembered by many relatives, friends, neighbours, colleagues and former students.
Shirley was born in Neepawa, Manitoba, on April 27, 1931, and grew up in Neepawa and in Dauphin, Manitoba. After graduating from high school, at the age of 17 she began a long teaching career, starting out as a "certificate teacher" licenced by the government of Manitoba to teach in the one-room schoolhouses of the small towns and hamlets of southern Manitoba. In this capacity, she not only taught but wore all the various hats of a small-town teacher on the Canadian prairies in those days: baseball coach, informal guidance councillor, school fund-raiser and distributor of the government bounty on prairie-dog tails, to name but a few. In due course, Shirley attended Normal School in Winnipeg, and later earned her bachelor's degree in education from the University of Manitoba, teaching full time and raising a family all the while. She developed a specialty - teaching children with speech disorders and related challenges, over the course of a career that spanned decades.
It was while teaching in Churchill, Manitoba in the 1950s that Shirley met her future husband Peter, who was on assignment with the Canadian Armed Forces. Shirley remembered this as a happy time and often told stories of adventures such as spending the night in an igloo she built along with her students, sleeping in a canoe tied to a tree while on a fishing trip on the Churchill River, or getting lost in the bush with Peter and finding their way back to the railway by the sound of gunshots fired by the railway men to guide them. Shirley and Peter were married in Peter's hometown of Toronto, and they lived together in Saint-Catherine's, Victoria, and Ottawa, before settling permanently in Winnipeg. They were married for more than 50 years, until Peter passed away in 2010. Together they had four children, Brian (Sîan), Allan (Mona), Janine and Francis (Natalie).
After Peter passed away, Shirley moved to the Amber Meadows retirement community, where she made many new friends and lived for several years with her beloved cat Tom. There she enjoyed activities such as daily exercise classes, watercolour painting and knitting with the "knit-wits" with whom over the course of time she produced hundreds of stuffed toys, socks, tuques, scarves and mittens, that were donated to those in need. She also enjoyed spending time with her new friend Armand, with whom she went on many outings to Stonewall to play bridge and savour a hot bowl of borscht.
Shirley loved to read, and seemed to have read everything, although nobody knew where she found the time, with which she was generous. She was especially fond of children, and was always ready with a story, a game or some other form of entertainment for her own children and grandchildren, and those of the neighbourhoods she lived in over the course of her long life. A calm and caring person, she was most content when those around her were happy.
Shirley remained active until well into her 91st year, when a series of strokes left her greatly diminished. She spent the last year of her life at the Tuxedo Villa personal care home and passed away after recent visits from her sons, Allan and Francis along with his wife Natalie, and with her daughter Janine by her side.
Shirley will be sorely missed by her brother Mervin, her children, Allan, Janine and Francis, her daughters-in-law, Mona, Sîan and Natalie, her grandchildren, Natasha (Sky), Beth, Jesse (Antonella), Katy and Riley, as well as the many other people whose lives she enriched in one way or another. She was predeceased by her sister Margaret, her brother John, her husband Peter and her son Brian.
A celebration of Shirley's life will be held by her relatives and friends at a later date, and her ashes will be interred at Thompson in the Park Cemetery, alongside those of her husband Peter and her son Brian.

THOMSON "IN THE PARK"
204-925-1120
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As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Dec 24, 2022