Catherine Ellice Mick

MICK, Catherine Ellice
(née McGibbon)
October 4, 1926 - January 16, 2024
If you want to know Catherine Mick, take a close look at her weaving. She pieced together each creation on her loom - a talent that took her around the world teaching workshops as 'The Rag Lady' - with material from old garments that she knew had more life left in them. She approached her art the way she approached her life: constantly adapting, challenging herself, while remaining focused on what was possible, not what wasn't.
"It's always exciting … having to problem-solve all the way through these things," she remarked to the CBC, at age 92, in a story about a retrospective exhibit of her work. "Like, 'Oh dear, look at the mess I'm in. How do I get out of it?'"
Catherine Ellice McGibbon was born on October 4, 1926 in the community of Fossmill, Ont., near the northwestern corner of Algonquin Provincial Park, where her father was a partner in a logging company. Known as Trudy, her resourcefulness, imagination and determination were evident early on. The six children born to Stella and John McGibbon - Margaret, Robert, Lois, Catherine, Joan and Carol - made up songs and games, played in the snow and listened to old records on the gramophone while growing up in Fossmill and Powassan. It was there Catherine met her future husband, Paul Alexander Mick, a relationship forged through letters while Paul served in England during WWII.
They married on September 16, 1947 and their family grew to include three children - David, Joanne and Linda - as Paul's career in the Royal Canadian Air Force took them to Toronto, Calgary, London, Ont., and Vancouver Island where they settled at the Canadian Air Force Base at Comox and later Esquimalt. Catherine spent summers with her children picking up shells and exploring the beach at Kye Bay. She became a teacher in Victoria, a career that later inspired her second act as a textile artist, when, to save money on supplies, she gave her grade 4 students cut up clothing to weave into picture frames.
After Paul died in September 1970, Catherine forged her own path. She was in her 50s when her work as a textile artist took off, travelling as far as New Zealand and Australia to teach others her craft. Late into her 80s, she and her friend, Della, crossed most of Canada several times in an arrangement with Via Rail where they taught fellow passengers crochet and knitting techniques to supplement their fare.
All of her passions intertwined with her love of nature. A season's pass holder at Whistler, then Mt. Washington for more than 20 seasons, she took to the hills on downhill, cross-country and telemark skis. Summers were spent hiking, cycling and backpacking, a lucky grandchild occasionally in tow, tossing wild blueberries into bannock over a fire and skinnydipping in alpine lakes.
She delighted in the plant world, weaving grasses into wall hangings, memorizing the Latin names of indigenous plants and cultivating hearty vegetable gardens fed by her devotion to a good compost pile. She often arrived at family gatherings with two pies stuffed with homegrown raspberries or wild blackberries plucked from the bushes around Victoria. Vivacious and dressed with flair in her own creations, she allowed a few suitors to tag along on her adventures if they could keep up. They included Lorne Duncan, her companion and Scottish country dance partner for 25 years.
Catherine pushed herself physically into her 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, always keen for one more loop of the trail, one more kilometer on her bike, one more lap of the garden. Her work lives on: her looms, spinning wheels and hand-spun spools of silk and wool went to a network of artists around Vancouver Island. Some of her textiles, each labeled a 'Catherine Mick original', went to family to cherish and others to the University of Alberta Museums, Anne Lambert Clothing and Textiles Collection.
"I like uniqueness," she told the CBC. That she was.
Catherine died on January 16, 2024, at age 97, and will be missed by her surviving sisters, Joan Spindler and Carol Edwards; children David, Joanne and Linda and daughters-in-law Kathleen and Pat; grandchildren Melanie, Matthew, Hayley, Paul and Corrina and their partners Greg, Blair and Keith; and great-grandchildren Cy, Scarlett, Calum, Jane, Maeve and Oliver.
The family would like to thank the staff at Selkirk Seniors Village for their care in recent years.
A celebration of Catherine's life will be held in Victoria on September 28, 2024. For details, email Catherinemickscelebration@gmail.com