Audrey Grace ROLAND

1921 - 2019

AUDREY GRACE ROLAND (nee Tancock) December 4, 1921 - April 2, 2019 After a long and happy life, full of adventure, Audrey passed away surrounded by her loving family. Daughter of Arthur and Lillian Tancock, predeceased by her sister Pauline Best and her brothers Gord and Osborne, and survived by loving brother Ken and sister Nina Rockett. Audrey was predeceased only five months ago by her husband, Dave, with whom she was lovingly married for 76 years. She is survived and missed by her son Ian (Linda Rothstein) and her daughter Shelley Cossonnet, her grandchildren Christopher, Elisa, Marion, Signy, and Alexa, her step-grandchildren Matthew and Sara, and her great-grandchildren, Alice Lou, Arlo, Gustave, and Oscar. She will also be missed by her many loving nieces and nephews. Audrey was born and raised in Burlington, Ontario. She and Dave married in 1942, just before Dave, a newly minted lieutenant, sailed to England and Audrey went to Washington D.C. to work for the British Admiralty. They started a family in 1947 and lived in the Niagara Peninsula, Belgium, Sorel, Quebec, and Lausanne, Switzerland. Eventually, Audrey and Dave retired to Fonthill, Ontario. From at least the early 1950s, Audrey championed fresh fruits and vegetables. Canned and packaged food products were rarely found in her kitchen, unless she did the canning herself. She believed in 'organic' food before it achieved that label. She took great pleasure in foraging for wild mushrooms, berries, black walnuts and fiddleheads. Audrey was always very active in sports - swimming, golf, biking, skiing, curling, hiking - and she enjoyed them all. She excelled at curling, achieving an 8 ender, and winning the Southern Ontario Championship in the mid-1980s. Audrey loved to knit and sew, and to play card games, especially bridge. She and Dave enjoyed travelling and making new friends. Unfortunately, they outlived most of their friends, who they dearly missed in their final years. We will miss her remarkable good humour, her understated kooky imagination, her smile and laugh, the pleasure she derived from a cocktail hour drink, and her determination to never complain about the challenges that she faced, especially at the end of her life. Her life was a journey along the middle crest of the road, never straying to life's gutters. The funeral will take place at the Mount Pleasant Funeral Centre, 375 Mount Pleasant Road, Toronto, on Tuesday, April 16, 2019, at 3 p.m. A donation in Audrey's name may be made to the Bruce Trail Conservancy, online or at P.O. Box 857, Hamilton, Ontario L8N 3N9.