Margaret Doris ALLAN

MARGARET DORIS ALLAN November 4, 1927 - June 8, 2022 Margaret Doris Allan (nee Wishart) was born in Dundee November 4, 1927, a younger sister to Jean. Her mother, Jules, died three weeks later of "childbirth fever." Her grandmother took care of Margaret for her first year and would say "She aye clang to me." Margaret's fierceness can be seen in her eyes even in her baby picture with her grandmother. While dying, her mother told her father, Harry, "Marry Jean," her mother's sister. He did, with the family growing to ten children, nine surviving infancy. They lived in a two room tenement on Sandeman Street, then a three room flat next to Baxter Park. Margaret would crawl above the toilet room to a window light to read in peace. In the early fifties, they all moved (except for her married sister Jean) to Glasgow for the paradise of a house next to Black Hill. She met a battered Roy who had just had a fight with his brother. "You should see him," he said. But when she glanced at Derek, he appeared hale and hearty, with no mark on him. Roy told a friend that night he would marry her. She became a teacher and then went to Canada in 1954 to marry Roy, who had moved several months earlier. He had shown her parents his bank book to win them over. His mother requested Margaret ask Roy to stay in Scotland, but she declined. He did not wish to wait for "dead men's shoes." They lived in North Bay for a year as Roy helped build the psychiatric hospital and Margaret taught, before spending several fun years in Montreal and then settling for four decades in Ottawa. A passionate woman, she always pined for Scotland, returning often. They had two children, Jane and Douglas. Margaret read and studied philosophy. By 1995, Roy developed dementia and so both moved to Toronto in 1999, where their children lived. Jane developed breast cancer in 2007 and died in 2014, aged only 56. Margaret lived in downtown Toronto, in the same apartment building as her son and his wife Joanne, until she was almost 91. Well read, progressive, a walker and a swimmer, funny, a feminist, a fighter, and a friend maker. She was always interesting. She is loved and she is missed. Survived by her sisters, Evelyn, Allison, and Rita; numerous nieces and nephews; Jane's husband, Nick DeCarlo; her grandson, Andrew DeCarlo; and her son, Doug, and his wife, Joanne Wadden.