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Cynthia May Rees
September 20, 1922 - May 12, 2012
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<div itemprop="description">Cynthia May Rees, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother passed away&nbsp;peacefully Saturday, May 12 at Tall Pines Long-term Care&nbsp;Centre in Brampton, Ontario. <br /> <p> Born in Rangoon, Burma on Sept 20, 1922, Cynthia&nbsp;was, no doubt, a delight to her parents, Anne &amp; Cyril Gregory. </p> <p> After graduating from the&nbsp;Methodist English Girls High School in 1940,&nbsp;she took&nbsp;further&nbsp;studies in&nbsp;shorthand and typing and&nbsp;started her first job as a&nbsp;stenographer for&nbsp;Universal Studios in Rangoon.&nbsp; Cynthia and her family escaped to the country side from the advancing Japanese army, but were&nbsp;confined to the village&nbsp;during the Japanese occupation of Burma during World War&nbsp;II. <br /> <br /> After the war she worked as secretary to the Business Manager at the Rangoon Seventh-Day-Adventist Hospital and later worked as&nbsp;the personal secretary to T. K. Boon the principal partner at Soorma and Boon,&nbsp;one of the leading law firms in Rangoon from 1957 to&nbsp;1965.&nbsp;The death of Mr T.K. Boon coinciding with&nbsp;growing&nbsp;nationlism and socialism in Burma made finding work for persons of eurasian descent&nbsp;next to impossible. </p> <p> In 1966 Cynthia&nbsp;made a courageous decision to risk&nbsp;everything, she&nbsp;purchased&nbsp;one way&nbsp;tickets to Toronto Canada for her and her two boys, Wynford and Philip.&nbsp;&nbsp;Since she had no visa for Canada, she booked the tickets with a stopover in New Delhi, India so she could apply for a landed immigrant visa at the Canadian Embassy.&nbsp;&nbsp;With her two boys in tow she boarded a Pan&nbsp;American Airlines&nbsp;filght to New Delhi in February&nbsp;1966 against&nbsp;the&nbsp;advice and wishes of her family and friends.&nbsp;&nbsp;She put her faith in God, but worked tirelessly to get a landed immigrant visa to Canada.&nbsp; Finally in November 1966, after 9 months of trials and tribulations, she was provided a special ministers permit to come to Canada.&nbsp; She booked a stopover in London, England to visit her daughter Jennifer, who left Burma in May 1960,&nbsp;and sister Marjorie who she had not seen since 1948&nbsp;and her family,&nbsp;arriving in Canada December 6, 1966, nearly 10 months after leaving Burma.&nbsp; Talk about a slow boat to ... </p> <p> Cynthia loved traveling, entertaining, and her role as a Sabbath School teacher to children 4&ndash;10 years old at the Rangoon &amp;&nbsp;Willowdale Seventh-Day-Adventist churches. She was very active in her church and would not dream of missing a service no matter what. Cynthia especially loved to tease her children &amp; grandchild with always a mischievous twinkle in her eye. Oh, did we love that mischievous twinkle! <br /> <br /> Cynthia&rsquo;s love of travel took her from the&nbsp;East to the West Coasts of Canada and the U.S., Europe,&nbsp;Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and Thailand to name a few. </p> <p> Cynthia leaves behind&nbsp;her children, Jennifer, Wynford &amp; Philip; granddaughter Andrea &amp; her husband Christian; great grandchildren Dylan &amp; Evan; brother Ralph, sisters Noelene &amp; Marjorie and many, many nieces and nephews.&nbsp; <br /> <br /> She will be very much missed by her family and friends and all who knew her.&nbsp; We will be eternally grateful that our lives were touched by such a sweet and gentle, kind &amp; loving soul with such a free spirit. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> </div>