Alix O'Grady

O'GRADY, Alix March 8, 1931 - December 23, 2021 She sits in a jeep, arm resting outside the open window, gazing at the person behind the camera - Geoffrey Noel O'Grady - the man who would be her beloved husband for 51 years.

This was the Legendary Honeymoon, a mid-summer jaunt through the scorching Australian Outback in 100°F temperatures, where the pioneering young couple recorded Aboriginal languages, didgeridoo music and song in the late 1950's. Both passionately believed that, "Every language is a piece of Fine art that should be preserved".

Alix's personal tales from this honeymoon are also legendary:

"I was impressed by the dozen or so sharks visibly parked… alongside the beach. (Shark Bay). To my horror my good husband had nothing better to do but sneak up behind the row of them and, with bare hands and one mighty swoop, grab one beast by the tail and fling it ashore. "It's what the Aborigines at Wallal taught me", he explained simply.

I WAS impressed - and that, I imagine, was the idea of it."

And so began a love story and a series of grand adventures. From the University of Sydney, Australia - where Geoff romantically asked her on a first date by taking her arm and pronouncing, "WHERE shall we dine?" - Alix engineered an academic coup that enabled her brilliant young husband and former-jackaroo to vault from innovative linguistic field studies and a B.A., directly to a Fulbright scholarship and a PhD in the United States. Alix propelled Geoff to greatness. It is a measure of her prescience and her enterprising nature that Alix divined that it was possible for Geoff to skip a Masters' thesis, when original research was sufficiently robust and groundbreaking. Such was the case for her young, trailblazing beau, and Alix made it happen.

Alix was a maverick scholar in her own right, earning a B.A. in French and German Literature, and writing and lecturing on her gripping book on the daunting journey of Elizabeth von Wrangell, wife of the first Russian Governor of "Russian-America" (now Alaska) in, From the Baltic to Russian America: 1829-1836. Drawing from original manuscripts in Russian, German and Spanish, Alix crafted a riveting account of the trials, tribulations, and historical context for this intrepid young couple, as they journeyed across the vastness of Russia, Siberia, the former Russian-American colony (now Alaska), and Mexico.

Born in Riga, Latvia, Alix Raeder was a young schoolgirl when she and her parents Ivar and Rita fled from the advancing Russian occupation to Poland, and thence Germany, during the Second World War. Memories of air-raids; a narrow escape from the bombing of Dresden; the generosity of Canadian soldiers in post-war Europe; a grueling two years in refugee camp - where she slept on bare floorboards at minus 25°C; and the subsequent cramped and sweltering ship's journey through the Suez Canal to Australia as penniless immigrants, infused her with a determination to live her life well, and with the gift of curiosity. And so, she did some - but not too much - camping in the Gulf Islands; sabbaticals with the family in Honolulu in the 1960's and in Salzburg in the 1970's. And at age 90, she was still vitally engaged in the world, listening to the news in Italian, German, and French.

What defined Alix most dearly for her loved-ones was her warmth, deeply active mind, and irrepressible zest for life. And she shared this with Geoff, her daughters Liane (Henry) and Danielle, grandchildren Elena, Geoffrey and Isabelle, and wide circle of loved-ones, family and lifelong friends. She was positively determined to live life to its' fullest, and she did this fearlessly, and ever so well, even in the face of decades of pain. In fact, her ability to sublimate intense pain while animatedly chatting with doctors about Russian-American history eternally vexed her loved-ones, and downright confused her medical care.

Long before Julia Child's innovations, Alix learned to marinate kangaroo tail soup in red wine. Geoff's graduate students and linguistics colleagues at UVic were regular fixtures in the home, and fêted with freshly caught crab; rum bombes and meringue Pavlovas; and Vuidunka's - divine culinary inventions.

When her delicious gingerbread dough hardened into an impenetrable block in the fridge one year, Alix was undaunted. Layering it between sheets of plywood and tea towels, she gamely drove over it with her VW beetle. "What are you doing, Mrs O'Grady?", asked the bewildered neighbors. "I'm making GINGERBREAD!!!", she enthused. And it was the best-ever.

Whether it was organizing clam-digging excursions; making a Christmas Advent wreath at the kitchen table en famille; or hosting an annual lunch for her amazing "ladies", who enabled her to live at her beloved Gordon Head home until her last year, everything was a celebration. Even after the loss of her darling Geoff, Alix continued to spread joy and surprise in our lives. When asked to recently share a photo of herself with a bottle of Chianti at a memorable 1970's picnic, Alix intoned, "Oh but Dahling - I'm holding TWO bottles of Chianti in that picture, not ONE!"

It is our beloved Bubbsie, this grace; this mother, grandmother, friend, and Schwungvolle firebrand that we will so sorely miss. She was, quite simply, one of a kind. What an extraordinary adventure and love story it was to have her in our lives.

We are deeply grateful for the decades of outstanding and tender care provided by orthopedic specialist Dr Bruce Yoneda, and for the soulful guidance provided by the Victoria Hospice Palliative Care team. A private online family remembrance will be held. In lieu of flowers, Alix asked that donations be made to UNICEF Canada. Loved-ones are invited to share their reminiscences below.