Karen Elisabeth ARMSTRONG

1936 - 2022

KAREN ELISABETH ARMSTRONG November 23, 1936 - December 9, 2022 Karen Elisabeth Armstrong was born in Toronto on November 23, 1936, to Carl and Inger Hansen, both immigrants from Denmark, who met and married in Toronto. In 1939, at the age of three, her family moved to Kirkland Lake in northern Ontario, where Karen spent most of her childhood. In 1954, she moved back to Toronto where she studied in the School of Fashion at the Ryerson Institute of Technology, graduating in 1957. She remembered fondly time during that period spent with family friends, Maisie and Bill Barr, who were like an aunt and uncle to her. In the summer of 1958, Karen met her future husband, Robin Louis Armstrong, at St. Paul's Anglican Church on Bloor Street East where they both played tennis. He was a graduate student in Physics at the University of Toronto; she was working in the Mail Order department of Eaton's department store and living at Willard Hall on Gerrard Street East. Robin accelerated their courtship once he realized that Karen had plans to travel to Europe that fall to spend a year working for a fashion house in Copenhagen. Towards the end of her year abroad, Karen embarked on a four-week bus tour of France and Italy. When her steamship docked in Montréal in September 1959, Robin was there to greet her and in November asked her to be his wife. Karen and Robin were married by Rev. Stanley Gentle in the Knox College Chapel at the University of Toronto on July 8, 1960. Karen made her own bridal gown and the dresses for her bridesmaids (her sisters Laura and Anna, her childhood friend from Kirkland Lake, Betty Shepherd, and her Willard Hall roommate, Sonia Myers). Karen and Robin spent their honeymoon at a resort on Sparrow Lake in the Muskoka region of Ontario. The young couple lived in Oxford in 1961-1962 where Robin was a post-doctoral fellow. They spent lots of time driving around the English countryside in their sporty new Peugeot, rubbing monumental brasses in village churches, and making camping trips to Scotland and Wales. They visited Karen's family in Copenhagen for Christmas 1961 and in July-August 1962, traveled around the Continent, visiting sites in the Netherlands, West Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and France before returning to Canada on the Empress of Britain. In 1964, Karen and Robin bought their first house in the then-new "Parkway South" neighbourhood of Don Mills in anticipation of the birth of their first son. Over the following decades, Karen and Robin were partners as his administrative career evolved at the University of Toronto. She hosted his graduate students and colleagues on many occasions and was an eager participant in campus events and Physics department activities. This was also the period when the whole family took a sequence of major trips abroad, first to Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy in 1973; to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England in 1974; to France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia in 1976; and finally, to South Africa and Rio de Janeiro in 1978. The vivid memories of these voyages were something we all shared and documented through slides, journals, and drawings that are treasured souvenirs of this time spent together as a family. Karen and Robin moved to Fredericton in 1990 when he took up the presidency of the University of New Brunswick. Their base of operations was the president's house on Waterloo Row overlooking the Saint John River, which Karen transformed into a venue for entertaining and showcasing the University and local community. She became president of Fredericton Heritage Trust, and with that group, got involved in saving historic buildings and celebrating the beautiful architecture of their city. Karen and Robin returned to Toronto in 1996, whereupon they divided their time between an apartment downtown and a farm in Oxford County north of Woodstock, where Karen developed an extensive garden in a beautiful ravine setting. Ever attentive to the environment, she began to identify a group of distinctive stone farmhouses in the surrounding area and gradually got to know the owners. Her careful fieldwork led to the development of a research project centered on the late nineteenth-century stone mason John Thompson Crellin, an immigrant to Oxford County from northern England. Her research was ultimately published in 2018 in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada. Karen passed away peacefully at Governor's Walk retirement residence in the New Edinburgh neighbourhood of Ottawa on December 9, 2022, less than three years after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma and almost a year after the passing of Robin. She was also predeceased by her siblings, Don and Laura, in 2018. Karen is survived by her sister, Anna; and her two sons, Keir (Catherine) and Drew. We will always remember our mother as a creative maker, an avid gardener, and a relentless do-it-yourself enthusiast. She was our bedrock and made our family home a nurturing place. She left this world on her own terms, having made the most of her life and having always supported her family with great love and care. A private family service and cremation was held in December. In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Karen E. Armstrong Fine Arts Library Acquisitions Fund by specifying it in the additional details box after selecting the project Other from the immediately preceding pull-down menu on the page at https://donations.helpforcharities.com/unbdonation/ or the Robin L. and Karen E. Armstrong Bursary (0560013563) by specifying it in the Additional Information box after selecting the Campuses, Colleges and Communities category, University of Toronto campus, and President's Fund for Excellence from the page at https://engage.utoronto.ca/site/SPageServer?pagename=donate#/direct.