MARY JANE GREEN

(January 25, 1943 - April 14, 2025) She wouldn't have liked being called an academic, so perhaps "lifelong learner and teacher" is more apt. Mary Jane graduated from Belleville Collegiate Institute as an Ontario Scholar, going on to attend York University's Glendon Campus, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, after which she taught at Quinte Secondary School and West Hill Collegiate before returning to York to earn a master's degree in political science, joining Loyalist College upon graduation. While teaching at Loyalist, she completed her Master of Education at Queen's part-time. She continued to take courses into retirement and was still talking about the courses she was going to take on Coursera and was currently taking a conversational French course with a close friend. Mary Jane's dedication to teaching and her compassion and connections with her students were remarkable. She didn't try kimchi or Vietnamese spring rolls for the first time at a restaurant, rather she tried them at the kitchen tables of her students, many of whom were mature students who had immigrated to Canada and were attending Loyalist College to transition to the workforce. We learned that teaching, for people like mom, is a six day a week affair, and Fall Sundays involved working her way through stacks of papers and reports at the dining room table. Somehow, we still ended up with an apple pie on that same table most Sundays. The majority of mom's career at Loyalist College was on contract, so whether she knew it or not, she taught us what hard work looked like through her second jobs - Barber's Nursery, Greenley's bookstore, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation, among others. What we learned didn't stop there, mom taught us how to cook delicious food, simply (oh those pies). She taught us a love of reading, a love of gardening, what a loving family looks like, and maybe most importantly, what's right and wrong, and what a fair and just world looks like, which is something she, through her weekly letter writing with Amnesty International, continued to advocate for. The hole left by her departure is impossible to fill; who to talk to about sports writer Cathal Kelly's latest column with, who to send a picture of the meals cooked or flowers seen on a walk to, who to flip through the Jamie Oliver cookbooks in the kitchen with over coffee, who to talk to about the clients seen that day (and their owners) with, who to tell about what Madeleine had learned that day, who to consult on grammar rules, and who to listen to the updates on the state of good (or bad) repair of various 75 year old tractors and farm machinery. Mary Jane was predeceased by daughter, Frances Evelyn, who sadly didn't live long enough to know her love. She'll be dearly missed by her husband, Robert, who, in her words, "was the most interesting man she knew"; sons, Cameron (Andréanne) and Lawren (Arlene); and grandchildren, Madeleine and Philippe. She'll be joining Frances, along with Sunny, Farley, Buddy and Bailey, and hopefully there's a good vacuum for all the dog hair. Thank you to the Oncology and Hematology department at KGH for providing excellent care at the end and to the St. Michael's and Sunnybrook cardiology and surgery departments and the ongoing care they provided. A service, open to all, for friends and family will be held on June 14th at 11:30 a.m. at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Belleville. Ontario.