Ellen Joyce McKenzie (nee McMenemy) was born February 10, 1935, passed away peacefully at Cawthra Gardens Long Term Care in Mississauga, Ontario on August 15, 2020. She met and married Joseph Addison McKenzie in 1957, who pre-deceased her on June 3, 2016. Joyce grew up in Windsor, a small farming community in Ohio where her father, Robert Lloyd McMenemy, ran the General Store. Her parents were Canadians who had left their farms in Clarkson, west of Toronto, and headed South to the US during the Depression. They wanted to give their daughter a Canadian education. Joyce met her Trinidadian immigrant husband-to-be, Joe (Addy) at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. They were married in 1957. Joyce had a full life. She graduated with Honours with a degree in English and Philosophy from McMaster. At the age of 41 she returned to school to add a Bachelors of Education from the University of New Brunswick Fredericton to her education. She and Joe settled in Fredericton for over four decades in 1968. She went on to become a loving and selfless mother and grandmother, a prolific public school music educator and private violin teacher, as well as a dedicated adult choral conductor. Music was her joy and passion in life – her father used to drive her one and a half hours each way in a model T Ford for violin lessons when she was a child. Joe and Joyce relocated to Guelph in 2002 and ultimately Mississauga in 2006. In the end, Joe and Joyce returned to Clarkson where they lived in a condo steps from her parents’ and her elder sister, Lynnette’s final resting place (now hers and her husband’s) at Springcreek Cemetery. Joyce’s brother, Robert Weston McMenemy of Macomb, Michigan, pre-deceased her in 2018. Joyce leaves behind two daughters: Jennifer Ellen McKenzie-Boone (married to Robin McKenzie-Boone, and mother of Alaric and Ellathea) and Heather Heidi Marion McKenzie, married to Ali Kazimi.

Donations may be made in her memory to the Fredericton Music Festival online http://www.frederictonmusicfestival.org/ or to Parkinson Canada https://www.parkinson.ca/.