Lilly Li Yen Huang, age 95, passed away peacefully on September 2, 2023 at home in Willowdale, Ontario.

Lilly Li Yen Huang loved and was loved by the people around her. She was generous, quick to laugh and easy to talk with. She was ahead of her time, an intelligent and confident modern woman. She was a wife, a mother, a sister, a friend, a business owner, and a community leader.

She was born in Kaohsiung to Yang, Jin Hu and Lin, Yu Hua, the second of 6 children with two brothers and three sisters. An excellent student, graduating from the top high school (建國中學) and going on to National Taiwan University where she started studying medicine then transferred to foreign literature. At National Taiwan University she met her future husband Michael Tsu Ching Huang and got married in Tainan on February 10th, 1953. They were married for 68 years until Michael’s passing in 2021. They were blessed with four children. They lived in Tainan where she actively served in the church and helped manage their private hospital.

In 1971, due to political instability in Taiwan, they began their immigration journey to North America, first to the United States, then eventually settled in Canada, where they chose Toronto as their new home where her sister’s (Jane) family resided.

Having an entrepreneurial spirit, she started a travel agency, Safeway Travels (now, Safeway Tours) with her sister Jane in 1978 at Eglinton and Yonge area, and continued working there until her retirement.

Her faith in God informed her life decisions. She honoured her faith through service to her family and her church. She raised the next generations of her family to be grounded in their faith. Her life of service also extended to the Taiwanese community and in supporting Michael in his medical career.

Lilly’s greatest legacy was her love for her family. To her siblings and their families, she assumed the role of matriarch that held together an extended family spread out through North America. Many of her nieces and nephews would spend periods of time living in their Toronto home. To her children she was an example of determination and perseverance. To her grandchildren she fully embodied her role as “A-ma”, and was intimately involved in their lives growing up.

She is survived by her four children, Susan (Robert), Frank (Wendy), James (Kathy) and Henry, her grandchildren, Walter (Rita), William (Isadora), Andrew (Carol), Victor (Amy), Grace (Matt), Lester (Caitlin), Meagan (Finn), Jessica (Mark), and Naomi, and her great-grandchildren, Casper, Eve, Niko, Oliver, Abby, Annabelle, Brianna, Chloe, Timothy, Wilbur, Aiden, Olivia, Luke and James.