SONJA MORAWETZ SINCLAIR

1921 - 2024

December 3, 1921 – May 23, 2024

Sonja has made her exit. ""Old age ""sucks,"" she would say, but tell her that a grandchild wanted to visit, or a new great-grandchild was on the way, and she'd change her tune. Forever grateful to those who helped her, and later her parents, escape their native Czechoslovakia in 1939, her will to live prevailed even as her legs and her eyes gave out.

Ric, the guy who swept Sonja off her feet in 1945, predeceased her; as did brothers, Oskar, John, Herbert, and their spouses. Their joint legacy is a cross-generational family bond, nurtured by summers together on Belle Isle, a small piece of heaven on Lake Muskoka.

Sonja leaves sons, Michael (Marie) and Tony (Leslie); daughter, Helen (Paul, in spirit); grandchildren, Mark, Anna (Alex), Ben (Jennifer) and Laura (Joey); and great grandchildren, Mary, Katrina, Nicolas, Alexander and Ray; along with a bouquet of nieces, nephews and their progeny.

Sonja's life's work and passion were storytelling. She leaves hundreds of articles and interviews, four books, and her recorded life's recollections.

Her stories followed two tracks, first the lives of ""unusual people." At the top of that list was her father, Richard Morawetz, a Czech businessman who built housing for his employees and ran a day-nursery for their children on the grounds of his jute factory in northern Bohemia.

The second track traced Sonja's own life. Completing studies in modern languages and mathematics at Trinity College in 1943, she joined the top-secret Canadian outpost of Bletchley Park known as the Examination Unit, as a code breaker.

The war ended, and, in the same vein as other women who had shone when the men were away, she switched careers to air force wife and mother. In 1956, back in Ottawa and with three young children in tow, Sonja enrolled in journalism at Carleton University and embarked on the career she had long dreamed of, but never imagined could be hers.

Sonja sometimes said that her work assignments were the ones no one else wanted. In northern Nunavut, she camped out with a group of prospectors to pursue a story about a newly discovered iron ore deposit. In Czechoslovakia, she spent an afternoon interviewing Vaclav Havel. In Switzerland, she dialed the about-to-be elected President and was invited to lunch. She pestered George Ignatieff for years before he allowed her to ghost his autobiography. As soon as it hit the stands, Thomas Bata invited her to write his own life story.

Discretion was Sonja's badge of honour. Ric died in 2006, never learning of her wartime work. She only opened up in 2017 after the British Government and its intelligence agency, GCHQ, publicly recognized her. And so it went in other facets of Sonja's long and storied life. A secret was a secret, whether a matter of state security, or a personal confidence shared by one of her children's friends.

As her body gave out, Sonja's mind and interests revved up. In the lead-up to her 100th birthday, she went online to make her annual charitable donations, spent a fortune on Amazon, took part in a Covid-19 Town Hall, and recorded another chapter of her life's recollections.

Her decline and final days were as graceful as the life she had lived. No bang and no whimper, just a profound sleep.

To Sonja's caregivers, who tended to her mounting needs, made sure she was first in line at the beauty salon, loaded her kindle, changed many batteries and became her confidantes; and to the staff of the Bradgate Arms who reset her passwords, explained to her why the errors in her monthly statements were not errors after all, kept her well-stocked with prune juice and yogurt, and provided the best of companionship, our family thanks you.

We plan to hold a Celebration of Life in early September.