Gwen HOOVER

1950 - 2022

A mysterious disease, without any previously reported cases, has taken the life of a retired Canadian federal arts manager and champion.


Gwen was born to Olive "Bessie" Field and Neale Hoover, dairy farmers in Haldimand County in Southwestern Ontario. Although she looked back on a happy childhood with her elder sister (Karen Milne), her ambition to leave the farm and see the world took shape early in her school years, where, in the margins of select pages of her school atlas, she had annotated, "I will see this." Although she excelled in domestic and farming skills in her 4-H activities, Gwen focussed her energies into her formal education, graduating in 1972 from McMaster University in French and Spanish literature, fields chosen to aid her in her projected European travels. And travel she did, alone as it turned out, when her intended travel companions backed out. After touring Europe, initially as an au pair, then using a Eurail pass and occasionally sleeping in railway stations, she returned at the end of the summer to her rural community. But, as the song goes, "How 'ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm...?"


With no money and no job prospects, Gwen took a conventional route toward her unconventional goals: she enrolled in a typing course and applied to a personnel agency in Ottawa. The agency manager casually handed Gwen's note to one of her new staff, with the advice that she could do what she wanted with it. That staffer (sister of the writer) invited Gwen to Ottawa for an interview and referred her to a temporary secretarial position at the Canada Council (now the Canada Council for the Arts). Thus began a 32-year career in arts administration spanning the visual arts, Killam fellowships, translation grants, public readings, the Governor General's Literary Awards, and finally, as Executive Secretary to the Public Lending Rights Commission, a federal program that supports Canadian authors for the multiple use of their books in libraries. Throughout, Gwen won the respect and admiration of creators and scholars in a wide variety of fields, including the League of Canadian Poets' recognition of her contributions with lifetime honorary membership. A former board member of the Public Lending Rights Commission recalled her providing a "sterling professional role model" for Commission members. Her tireless promotion of Canadian authors eventually contributed toward increased funding in a political climate of fiscal restraint.


The same Ottawa personnel agency staffer who gave Gwen her route into the Canada Council, again applied her match-making skills, introducing Gwen to her brother, Les MacDonald, then a Carleton university graduate student. It was a life-long match, with sons Ian (Lou Pingeot) and Alexander (Valdone Milvydaite) prized by family and friends as the twin jewels.


In 2005, the couple semi-retired to Prince Edward County where they built an environmentally responsible off-grid home, relying mostly on renewable energy, and Gwen fulfilled her love of the arts in volunteer capacities. She eventually became chair of the Prince Edward Chamber Music Festival having the great pleasure of working with celebrated Canadian musicians and composers. After seven years, the city again beckoned and they moved on to Toronto where Gwen worked as a fundraiser for Harbourfront's International Festival of Authors. Dogged now by uncertain health, Gwen needed to slow down, retiring again in 2014. Still feeling the arts calling, she volunteered at the Toronto Reference Library's used bookstore, with proceeds going to the library's children's programs.


As Gwen summed up her life in 2018, "All in all, I feel like one of the most fortunate people in the world, with one glitch." Two, actually. Gwen inherited the polycystic kidney disease that plagued her mother's family and was close to kidney failure in 2009 when a donated kidney from her husband in an operation at the Ottawa Hospital put her on the road to recovery. However, the disease eventually spread to the liver, and by 2018 Gwen's life was again in danger. On the advice of one of her doctors, Gwen appealed on social media for a living donor and several family members, near and far, generously accepted, all of whom ultimately were found to be medically unsuitable. As Gwen's condition continued to worsen and hope waned, an unexpected liver transplant operation gave Gwen more than three years of life she would not otherwise have enjoyed. Her family are grateful to the University Health Network's (UHN) organ transplant program and the family of the anonymous deceased donor. They also thank the doctors and the medical and support workers who cared for Gwen. Readers are welcome to make donations in Gwen's name to the UHN Foundation, the Ottawa Hospital, or to a named scholarship at the Department of French at McMaster University. All are invited to honour Gwen's memory in their own way.


In spite of her encouraging recovery from the transplant operation, Gwen continued to suffer fainting spells and injurious falls. Medical specialists pursued a range of hypotheses and an ophthalmologist detected an alarming swelling in Gwen's optic nerve following routine cataract surgery in late 2021. By April this year, despite prompt testing and treatment, Gwen had completely lost sight in both eyes. More testing and experimental treatment followed as Gwen continued to lose strength. A white cane was replaced by a walker and, on her final trip to the hospital for an emergency MRI, she had to be carried.


In recalling her life, Gwen had the thought that, like the French singer, she had no regrets. However, she did regret the ending of so many friendships and loving family relationships with her husband, sons, daughters-in-law and granddaughter, Lyra (daughter of Ian and Lou). Like her grandmother, Lyra loves books and hugs trees. Gwen's ashes will be scattered on her birthday, next July 10, in the Toronto Necropolis, at 200 Winchester Street, where Gwen and Lyra used to hug trees.