Jane Merilyn LITT

JANE MERILYN LITT (née Hildebrand) December 22, 1927 - November 2, 2019 Jane was raised in Toronto and Montreal, the daughter of Dorothea Roper and Edward Hildebrand, along with her brother Bruce. She attended Forest Hill and Bedford Park public schools in Toronto, Trafalgar School for Girls in Montreal (Head Girl, General Proficiency Prize and Latin Prize, 1944), McGill and McMaster universities, then the Ontario College of Education (OCE) in Toronto. At the start of her career she taught English literature at collegiate institutes in Clinton and Picton, Ontario. At OCE she had met Raymond Litt, a former RCAF pilot. After marrying in 1953, they moved to Vankleek Hill, Ontario, where Ray was a high school science teacher. They started a family, beginning with David and Andy, then, after they moved to Port Perry in 1957, Paul and Margaret. Their household at 324 Queen Street always included a Labrador retriever of notable personality. Jane taught English in Blackstock, Ontario (which boasted Ontario's smallest high school), then later became the assistant librarian at Port Perry High School. She was active behind the scenes in local causes, including the United Church Women, the campaign to save the old town hall, and the building of the new Port Perry library. Her home was a welcoming sanctuary where a changing ensemble of neighbours, friends, kids' friends, and assorted others dropped in to visit. Jane's genius was empathy. She instinctively tended to the emotional well-being of everyone she knew. She appreciated and celebrated the good things life offered, and, when challenges emerged, was always ready to draw from personal experience or her wide reading a precedent for dealing with them, frequently supplementing it with an apt quotation from a poem. When family or friends were far away, she corresponded prodigiously. In retirement her many grandchildren became the beneficiaries of her emotional and cultural stewardship, learning lessons from Milton without recognizing their provenance. Jane contended with health challenges in her last three years. Prior to that she lived a rich, humane life. And now the sun had stretch'd out all the hills, And now was dropp'd into the western bay; At last he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue: To-morrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.