Eileen WILSON

EILEEN WILSON May 23, 1927 - November 5, 2021 She did not want to come to Canada, and leave her parents and friends behind in England. She arrived in Deep River on a winter's night in January 1972, forty below, wondering what she had done. The next morning, she pulled the curtains back on the snow-covered ground, the bright blue sky, the mile-wide river, the Laurentian hills, and fell instantly in love. "I never want to leave this place," she said. And she never did. Eileen Wilson had many loves. She loved music, the sound of the bagpipes on the Islandmagee hills. She loved her dogs; if reincarnation existed, she said, you should come back as a dog in the Wilson family. She loved travelling through Canada, making friends, telling stories, playing tennis, doing crosswords, having fun, being with children. Above all, though, she loved her family: her husband, Alex; her three boys, David, Patrick and Andrew and their wives, Zsuzsa, Janice and Silvana; her seven grandchildren, Michael, Peter/Alwyn (Paulina), Thomas, Rachael, Julian (Anjali), Nicholas and Emily, and her three great-grandchildren, Aydan, Devin and Lucas. And she loved Ken Kitchen, with whom she spent the last years of her life. Eileen had a deep well of kindness and empathy, and was always quick to lend a helping hand to people who were in trouble. She went through some terrible times herself. During the war, when she was a teenager, she lived through the blitz of London, an experience that haunted her for the rest of her life. Later in life, she wrote a moving memoir of her war years; a copy now rests in the Imperial War Museum in London. She also experienced the anguish of seeing her husband Alex slowly succumb to Alzheimer's, and made heroic efforts to give him comfort and bring him peace. Warm hearted, generous spirited, good natured, Eileen died peacefully, surrounded by her family. Special thanks go to the staff at 4 West in Belmont House for the loving and professional care they gave Eileen during her final years. If you have flowers, please follow her example and give them to someone you love.