John 'Jack' Yoshinori Matsui
Jack died peacefully Friday Dec. 30. at son Bill’s home after a wonderful Christmas surrounded by family. Born in Vancouver, B.C. on July 11, 1920, he was the eldest of Yoshitaro and Misato [Shinto] Matsui’s 11 children. Jack will be greatly missed by his beloved wife Mary [Yano], children Jacqueline (Don Davies), Ellen, John (Judy Harrigan), Bill, and Susan Slupik, grandchildren Scott (Rosa), Will (Karen), Danny (Meaghan), Vanessa (Kourosh), Melissa (Nick), Mary Ellen, and Jacqueline, and seven great grandchildren.
Jack lived his formative years in Port Alberni, B.C. His incredible agility, lack of fear of heights, and dead reckoning at dropping a tree came from working in his father’s logging camp from an early age.
When World War II broke, like other Canadians of Japanese descent, Jack and family were placed in an internment camp in the interior of B.C. While in Tashme, he met an attractive former Vancouverite, Mary Yano.
The couple married after the war and moved to Toronto where they raised five children.
Jack took up electrical studies at Ryerson and received his journeyman electrician’s license. He worked briefly for Ontario Hydro as a linemen and then at Wellesley Hospital as an electrician before he joined Crown Life Insurance where he worked until his retirement in the early 1980s, finishing his career in management.
After Jack’s retirement, he and Mary moved to Huntsville. Jack winterized and expanded the family cottage on Lake Vernon as their retirement home. They spent many happy years in the tight-knit Norvern Shores community with friends who shared a love of the outdoors and the rugged beauty of the Muskokas.
In recent years, Jack and Mary moved back to the GTA but remained on their own in the Westminster Court Seniors Residence in Mississauga.
Friends are invited to a visitation with Jack’s family at the Simple Alternative,1535 South Gateway Rd, Mississauga on Wednesday Jan. 4, 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. A celebration of Jack’s vibrant life will be at Simple Alternative Thursday Jan. 5 at 11 a.m. Please direct gifts to Huntsville Hospital Foundation or Trillium Health [Mississauga].