PATRICIA "PAT" MORTON

(March 13, 1937 - October 21, 2025) Died suddenly but peacefully at home in Arnprior, where she lived with her family. Patricia Jeanne Sutherland, known to everyone as Pat, was born in Almonte to a pair of schoolteachers. Her sweet tooth and wicked sense of humour were legendary from the jump, and she came to love paperback thrillers and romance movies that "make your toes curl." She and her older brother, Paul, grew up alongside two deafblind girls whom Mrs. Sutherland boarded and cared for in her role as a special-education teacher. Pat would speak about the girls her entire life, crediting them with helping to inspire her own teaching dreams. In the seventh grade, she met an airplane-obsessed boy - just 10 days younger - named Bob Morton, quiet and stoic where she was chatty and charismatic. It was quickly clear that they were both done for; with the exception of the two years that she spent at teachers college in Kingston while he attended what was then Royal Roads Military College in British Columbia, the duo were inseparable for the next half-century. Mrs. Morton, as she officially became in the spring of 1960, was the very first to give birth at the new Almonte General Hospital a year later, to son Bruce. By the time he was joined by little sister Jennifer a couple springs after that, the Mortons were in France, living in just one of many homes they'd make around the world as Bob climbed the military ladder. Pat was a talented watercolourist and noted music-lover, singing or whistling as she curled her hair and sometimes tapping away at her upright piano. Whether it was in the Maritimes or the Prairies, in Heidelberg or Colorado Springs, she was a true raconteur who could - and wanted to - befriend any bank teller, cab driver, or fellow stranger in a lineup, somehow making everyone she encountered feel important. In the Mortons' roving three or so decades, during which she picked up the odd gig teaching autistic children, she nurtured her many (literally) lifelong friendships over the phone and cooked only if she had to. You could often find her sprawled across - never sitting on - your couch gripping a mug or wineglass like a goblet, and she was seldom spotted without her lipstick and a pink manicure. She considered it the great honour of her life being on the arm of Lieutenant-General Robert W. Morton through his 37 years in the RCAF, one rivalled only by getting to become Grandma Pat shortly after her husband's 1992 retirement as deputy commander of NORAD. When she was unexpectedly widowed in 2002, dealing the whole family a blow, she seemed to survive by doubling the love she had to give. She was encouraging and nosy about her three granddaughters' love lives and careers, and they'll sorely miss getting her voicemails and occasionally going head-to-head with her. Aside from her best friend and soulmate, our Grandpa Bob, she was predeceased by her brother, Paul (Irmgard). She's survived by her kids, Bruce (Lucie) and Jennifer (Richard); her "grandbabies," Sydney (Scott), Jamie, and Ashley; and her nieces and nephew south of the border. A visitation will be held November 3 at C.R. Gamble Funeral Home & Chapel in Almonte starting at 11 a.m., with a half-hour service at 1 p.m. and reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, Pat's family asks that you please consider a donation to Autism Ontario or to Kohai LIFE - a Toronto program for adults with disabilities - in her memory.