Andrew Lewis "Andy" JONES

Andrew "Andy" Lewis Jones died peacefully, at home, on September 13, 2024, after a long battle with cancer. Born to Helen (Brown) and Henry Mason (Mase) Jones in Montreal in 1944, he was the youngest of three boys. He spent his formative years in Grimsby, Ontario, before following his elder brother, Denis, to Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. Returning to Canada after graduation, he took a job at Price Waterhouse in Toronto. Andy would go on to have a successful career, at PW, Olympia and York, and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, but work was never the focus of his life. He'd rather tell you about visiting his eldest brother, Steve, and his family when they lived up in Hudson Bay. Or the lifelong friends he made navigating Paris with his terrible French during the three years he spent abroad. When he retired in 2004, an invitation to sail from Annapolis to Antigua heralded his transition from lake to ocean sailor. For the next 15 years, he fulfilled a boyhood dream, joining friends to sail the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. His last crossing, from Tasmania to New Zealand, was in 2019. More than anything, Andy loved people, his family most of all. His wife, Jo, whom he met upon his return from France in 1978, and married in 1980; his children, Ruth and David; their partners, Jon and Ines; his brothers and in-laws, nieces and nephews, and an ever-growing younger generation. In his last two years, he was overjoyed to get to be Pops to his two grandsons, Patrick and West. Never the most effusive with his emotions, he was still the one everyone knew they could call when they were sad, or lonely, or having a tough time. Behind this love was a deep curiosity. Friends, colleagues, neighbours, cab drivers – he wanted to know about their kids, their jobs, their plans for the future. He read voraciously and could be counted on to wander off on family excursions, distracted by an interesting shop, a historical plaque, a room in a museum everyone else had somehow missed. Everything he discovered, he wanted to share. With Jo he hosted countless dinners, offering a table laid with good food and wine to visiting family; to friends from work, sailing, and the neighbourhood; to his children's friends and his friends' children. This was, perhaps, where he was happiest – trying to coax a guest into sampling ever stinkier cheeses, winking conspiratorially as he slipped a little to the dog waiting patiently beside him. Andy's final weeks were spent at home, surrounded by family and friends and lovingly cared for by Jo, the team at the Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care at Mount Sinai hospital, and wonderful PSWs. In addition to his wife, children, and grandchildren, Andy leaves his brothers, Steve and Denis, his nieces and nephews, and a wide network of extended family and friends, many of whom he considered family. A celebration of life is being planned for the fall.