Ruth Isobel Emery, 103 years. January 1, 2018. North York, Ontario. Born July 22, 1914, Toronto, Ontario; daughter of William Mark and Isobel Ettie Jackson. She was the beloved wife of the late Roy W. Emery; predeceased also by their beloved son, John R. Emery.
She will be greatly missed by her many friends and large family: son Alan Emery and his wife, Frances; daughter Nancy Geisler and her husband, Hans; daughter-in-law Nina Emery; six grandchildren: Kitty Emery-Keller (Kyle Keller), Timothy Emery (Dian Emery), Matthew Geisler (Jane Geisler-Lee), James Emery (Julie Han-Emery), Robert Emery, and Gwen Geisler (Alex); and by her four great-grandchildren: Sarah Emery, Alec Emery, Alana Keller, and Jayden Han Emery.

Interment will be held privately. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Parkinson’s Society of Canada may be made.
The family extends our grateful thanks to the management and staff of the Gibson Nursing Home, who cared so kindly for Ruth during the many happy years when she called it home.

Ruth was a talented artisan, recognized especially for her beautiful pottery, but also for her prodigious output of knitted items, with new sweaters for every family member for birthdays and Christmas. She was quite athletic when she was younger, but loved swimming most of all, and swam every day well into her 80s and even her 90s in the big swimming pool that she and Roy had built onto the rear of their house in York Mills Valley. She was generous in every way, loving to host friends and family at dinner, and inviting them to the family cottage most weekends. She believed if nothing was left over at the end of a dinner that she had not cooked enough goodies for the party!

Family and friends were always welcome, and the swimming pool was always open for her swimming friends. She taught her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to swim.

She and Roy travelled the world together, mostly on business for Roy’s company. She was a busy volunteer, chairing the board of the local branch of the Victorian Order of Nurses for several years. She wrote letters to family members when they were away, keeping them in touch with home.

Most especially, she was a brave and devoted wife, having travelled alone by train to northern Ontario to join Roy who in the depression of the 1930s had got a job with Little Long Lack Gold Mines, then again, when he’d obtained a better job building a railroad in Trinidad during the war, she braved the high seas alone on her way to join him there when several months pregnant with Alan. Later she moved her little family to British Guiana, where she gave birth to John. After the war, they returned to Canada, where Nancy was born, then further north once more, where for several years they lived in various mining towns, often where she had to carry their food supplies home in the children’s little wagon, and to teach school to Alan. Roy said that she never complained of difficult conditions. In that way as in so many others, she was a great example to us all.

This photograph was taken on her 102nd birthday