Lois Evelyn DARROCH

DARROCH, Lois Evelyn, B.A., M.A.
Died peacefully March 1, 2004 after a long struggle with breast cancer in Toronto. Sadly missed by her only child, Cristine Lois Bayly (nee Milani), grandchildren Jennifer Bayly-Atkin (Jamie Atkin), Melissa McCrackin (Tyree), Tim (Kirsty) and Katherine, great-grandsons Brody and Jared Atkin and Magnus and PK McCrackin and many nieces and nephews. Predeceased by her parents W. F. and Leonora Darroch (nee Wolverton), brothers and sisters-in-law Franklin (Janet), Don (Irma) and sister Dorothy and her husband Roy Russell, nephews Roylen, Gilbert and Ken and loving son-in- law, John U. Bayly, Q.C.

Lois attended Wolverton Public School 1916-1924, Humberside Collegiate Institute 1924-1929 and Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1929-1933.

At the height of the Depression she attended the Ontario College of Education, was one year without a job, then taught at Fenelon Falls Continuation School and three years at Parkdale Collegiate Institute 1939-1941 where her father was also on staff.

Always she was trying to write poetry and articles as a prelude to the book that surely some day would materialize out of grim determination to fulfill her ambition to be an author. Finally ten years' of work saw the self-published definitive biography Robert Gourlay, Gadfly - Forerunner of the Revolution of 1938 in 1971. In 1981 the biography Bright Land: A Warm Look at Arthur Lismer was published. In 1985 Four Went to the Civil War was published. This book is an historical fiction based on her Canadian grandfather and his three brothers who were teamsters during the American Civil War. In 1998, too old to wait for a publisher, she self-published her fourth book Time Between/Akuningini - A Novel of the North at the age of 86 years.

Lois belonged to the Arts & Letters Club, the Heliconian Club, the North York University Women's Club, the North York Historical Society, the York Pioneer Society, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum.

A few months from the end she remarked to Cristine with her usual sense of humour, slightly irked by the ordeal she was going through, 'This business of dying is for the birds'.

Lois' ashes will be interred during a celebration of her life in the cemetery at Wolverton under the large granite rock she chose herself (and had installed some years ago) in the summer of 2004. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her name to the Oak Ridges Moraine Land Trust, The Gatehouse, 13990 Dufferin Street North, King City, ON L7B 1B3.