FOLEY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-06-09 published
ACOMBA,
Margaret
Elizabeth (née
EATON)
Giver of Life
Passed away peacefully on June 6, 2007 in Ajax, Ontario in her
92nd year. Gloriously came into this world on April 23, 1916.
First child of George and Mary
EATON of Montreal, Quebec. Devoted
wife of 62 years to the late Sydney
ACOMBA.
Sister of dear Marie
MARSH of Notre-Dame de Grace, Montreal and sister to dearly departed
James EATON and Daphne
FOLEY.
Beloved, respected and treasured
Mother to Catherine
ACOMBA (Graham
DARLINGTON), Jean
GROULX (Gerald
GROULX), David
ACOMBA (Sharon
KEOGH), Richard
ACOMBA (Peggy
ACOMBA)
and honourary son David
HAWCO.
Adored
Grandmother to Pamela,
Rob, Catherine, Leigh, Craig, Jordan, Scott. Loving Great-Grandmother
to Matthew, Natalie, D.J., Jack, Eva, and Oliver. Margaret's
compassion for others was demonstrated through her care-giving
and tireless work as a foster mother to 105 children over the
years during the 1950's while in Montreal. Her passion for playing
the piano and her gifted vocals will forever remain with us.
All who would like to celebrate the remarkable life of this determined,
loving woman, please join us Wednesday, June 13th, 10: 30 at St.
Bernadette's Roman Catholic Church, 21 Bayly St. E. (Bayly and
Harwood), Ajax, Ontario, followed by a reception in the Hall.
In lieu of flowers, donations to The Hospital for Sick Children
(416-813-5320) would be appreciated by the family. She will be
sadly missed.
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FOLIOT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-09-29 published
MARGESSON,
Mary
Margaret
Passed away peacefully on Wednesday September 26, 2007 in Collingwood,
surrounded by her family in her 90th year. Mary, beloved wife
of the late Reginald, loving mother of Elizabeth and Reggie and
her husband Georges
FOLIOT. Survived also by her sisters Barbara
REID and Allison
GUBLEMAN.
Mary was a familiar and active force
in and around Blue Mountain over the past 45 years. Her zeal
for life, passion for design and aesthetics and quiet determination
for lifetime learning served as an inspiration to so many. Our
greatest thanks to Mary's close network of community Friends
who became her 'team', offering so much support and care to allow
her the luxury and dignity to live a full life in her home until
her end. Friends are invited to join the family in celebrating
her life on Saturday October 13, 2007 from 1: 30 in the afternoon
at the Blue Mountain Inn, Kandahar Room for a short memorial
service followed by an open reception at Mary's home adjacent
to the Blue Mountain Inn. In lieu of flowers, donations may be
made payable to the General and Marine Hospital of Collingwood
or the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario (www.schizophrenia.on.ca)
in Mary MARGESSON's memory. Friends may visit the on-line guest
book at www.fawcettfuneralhomes.com
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FOLKARD o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-11-05 published
WILEY,
Douglas
Rowe
(August 15, 1921-November 3, 2007)
He looked Death square in the face with an inner smile and a
peaceful gaze; and that is a warrior, our father Douglas R.
WILEY,
Flight Lieutenant Officer D.F.C.
Peacefully at Sunnybrook Veterans Hospital K Wing with his family
at his side. Douglas will be sadly missed by his children Douglas
Jr. (Sharon), Betty-Anne
FOLKARD, Donald, Matthew, Mary Louise
BROUWER
(Leendert,)
Jennifer
STEVENSON (David) and is predeceased
by his beloved son John (Catherine). He was a loved grandfather
of eleven, a great-grandfather of one and an uncle to many nieces
and nephews. Among cherished family memories, his family takes
pride in remembering Douglas for serving our country as a decorated
World War 2 Veteran, as part of the Royal Canadian Air Force
431 and 429 Squadrons. He spent his career in the investment
business serving for a time as a divisional Vice-President at
Greenshields Inc., retiring in 1991. Douglas is predeceased by
his beloved brothers John, Bud, Alan, David and sister Barbara.
He is survived by his youngest brother Gordon. Much thanks to
the very loving and caring staff of L Wing and K2 West at Sunnybrook
who carry on the legacy of our veterans through their ultimate
respect of the residents they care for daily. Services are to
be celebrated at 11 o'clock on Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, 2075 Bayview Avenue, Toronto
in the Chapel (H Wing). A reception will follow. In lieu of flowers,
donations can be made to Sunnybrook Foundation, Veterans Comfort
Fund, 2075 Bayview Avenue, H332, Toronto M4N 3M5. Condolences
and memories may be forwarded through www.humphreymiles.com.
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FOLLOWS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2007-01-10 published
Charmion KING,
Actress: (1925-2007)
The grande dame of Canadian theatre was known for her dynamic
stage presence, writes Sandra
MARTIN
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page S9
In a career that spanned 60 years on stage, radio, television
and film, Charmion
KING was known for her dynamic stage presence,
her throaty laugh, her beauty, her dedication to the theatre,
and her professionalism. Of all playwrights she loved Chekhov
the best and no wonder, for she delivered many of her best performances
in his work.
"She was the grande dame of Canadian Theatre," Albert
SCHULTZ,
artistic director of The Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto, said
yesterday. Ms.
KING joined the company in its third season (2000)
to play a character in Noël Coward's Present Laughter. "We needed
one of those great dames who could come on stage and convince
you that she could function under a couple of martinis and be
as witty as the next person in the room and bring with her a
great aristocratic bearing and great wit and elegance -- and
that was Charm," he said.
The only child of Charles
KING, a businessman who worked for
Neilsen's (and was called The Candy Man, according to his granddaughter
Leah) and his wife
Amabel (née
REEVES,)
Charmion
KING spent her
earliest years in The Beach area of Toronto in a house fronting
the boardwalk. Even as a five-year-old, she dreamed of becoming
an actress. After the family moved to Forest Hill, she attended
Bishop Strachan, the private girls' school, where she often played
male roles in plays. In the summers she went to Tanamakoon, the
girls' camp where the late Dora Mavor Moore had begun teaching
musical theatre in the 1930s.
She enrolled in University College at the University of Toronto
in the early 1940s, where she acted in college productions. In
1944, The Globe and Mail reported that she had been offered a
screen test by Warner Brothers after talent scouts for the film
studio had seen her perform in Thunder Rock. The 19-year-old
star of the University College Players' Guild had declined, saying
"this is just a school play."
Her best work was probably done at the Hart House Theatre under
the direction of Robert
GILL, an American actor who had worked
at the Cleveland Playhouse. At the time, only men were allowed
to use Hart House, the recreational and athletic facility that
had been given to the university by the Massey family, but the
theatre was run by a different administration, one that welcomed
women on its stage after the war.
Mr. GILL, who headed Hart House Productions, was an "enormous
influence," Ms.
KING told Susan
LAWRENCE in 2002 for an article
in the University of Toronto magazine. "He taught me professional
behaviour as an actress." In her most memorable role at university,
she played the title role in Saint Joan at Hart House Theatre
in 1947, the year she graduated. "Her performance of Joan," The
Globe and Mail critic wrote the following morning, according
to Hart House records, "is a luminous portrayal, instinct with
an inner fire of truth and spiritual beauty, and exquisite in
its shadings of emotion and execution."
From Hart House and a year of graduate work in English literature,
she did summer stock in New York, and then helped found the Straw
Hat
Players in 1948 with Murray and Donald
DAVIS, two brothers
who had been part of the Hart House theatre gang. The company,
which included Eric
HOUSE,
Ted
FOLLOWS and Barbara
HAMILTON,
toured Muskoka and Port Carling and the border region of the
U.S. for several summers. "In a way it was the best time I ever
had on the stage," Ms.
KING told The Globe in 1961. "We were
10 ambitious, idealistic youngsters who thought we were building
Canadian theatre and, perhaps, we were."
The DAVIS brothers and their sister Barbara
CHILCOTT went on
to open The Crest Theatre in a renovated cinema on Mount Pleasant
Road in Toronto in 1954. At The Crest she played Masha (with
Kate Reid) in Chekhov's The Three Sisters, Madame Ranevskaya
in The Cherry Orchard and Lady Utterword in Heartbreak House,
among other roles in that theatre's ambitious and groundbreaking
history.
She worked in England in the very early 1950s but returned to
Canada to work in television on the fledgling Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation network and at the equally neophyte Stratford Festival,
appearing as Hermione in The Winter's Tale and Lady Percy in
Henry IV, Part 1 in 1958. (She returned to the Festival in 1982
as a senior member of the Shakespeare 3 company and acted in
All's Well That Ends Well and A Midsummer Night's Dream.)
The following year she performed on Broadway in Robertson Davies's
Love and Libel, directed by Tyrone Guthrie, and toured in a principal
role in Love and Libel in Detroit, Boston and New York.
In 1962, she went back to The Crest to play opposite a Newfoundland
actor named Gordon
PINSENT in The Madwoman of Chaillot. They
married on November 2 of that year, a creative and romantic partnership
that lasted more than 44 years. After her wedding, Ms.
KING told
The Toronto Star that she "was doing Orpheus Descending at the
Crest and when it ended I said I didn't want to work for a long,
long time. I was tired." Their daughter, actress Leah
PINSENT,
was born on September 20, 1968. The family moved to Los Angeles
in the 1970s where Mr.
PINSENT (after the end of the television
show Quentin Durgens, M.P., in which he had starred) was writing
and finding backers for his film The Rowdyman.
"She was my best friend," Leah
PINSENT said yesterday about her
mother. "Other than when I had to go away, we talked every day.
She was giving and kind and warm and funny and smart and a great
cook."
After having retired for most of a decade to spend more time
as a wife and mother, Ms.
KING ended her self-imposed retreat
by appearing in the Ethel Barrymore role in The Royal Family,
a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, at the Shaw Festival
in 1972.
She performed steadily after that on television and radio (playing
Aunt Josephine on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-television's
Anne of Green Gables and appearing on The Newsroom, Twitch City
and Wind at My Back, and playing the voice of Mrs. Gruenwald
in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio series Rumours
and Boarders). She appeared in film (Who Has Seen the Wind? and
Nobody Waved Goodbye) and on stage, notably as Jessica Logan,
a temperamental actress trying to make a comeback, in the premiere
production of David French's showbusiness comedy Jitters in Toronto
and at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven in 1979, a role that
she revived in Toronto in 1986.
In 1990, she again performed opposite Kate Reid in a Hart House
revival of Arsenic and Old Lace. In 1998 she starred in the Tarragon
Theatre production of Janet Munsil's Emphysema (A Love Story)
in which she shared the stage with her daughter Leah, as they
both played actress Louise Brooks at different ages. Although
Ms. KING had been a heavy smoker, she had successfully stopped
for a decade until the director asked them to smoke "real" cigarettes
on stage, according to her daughter. Alas, she was hooked again.
Ms. PINSENT said it was "fabulous" working with her mother because
she was "always a very generous woman. There was no ego; she
always wanted to serve the writer and the theatre in the best
way she possibly could."
In the last several years Ms.
KING performed regularly at The
Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto, appearing in Present Laughter
in 2001, as Maria in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and
in Jean Genet's
The
Maids in 2002. "We called her at home and we got her," Mr.
SCHULTZ
said about casting her for the first time. "She always brought
such humanity and elegance and wit to everything she did. She
was a pleasure to have around."
Asked a few years ago by an interviewer whether she could imagine
retiring, Ms.
KING said absolutely not. "Being an actor is something
like being at university. It opens your mind and your soul and
makes you tap into yourself." Her last role was as Mrs. Soames
in Thornton Wilder's Our Town at Soulpepper in 2006 and she was
planning to reprise the role this spring.
"To the very end, Charm stood up for the creative arts in Canada,"
her family said in a statement this week. She was a steadfast
believer in the creative spirit of this country, its culture&hellip
her cry was always… get on with it and be proud."
Charmion KING was born in Toronto on July 25, 1925. She died
in Toronto of complications from emphysema on Saturday. She was
81. She is survived by her husband Gordon
PINSENT, her daughter
Leah PINSENT and her son-in-law Peter
KELEGHAN.
There will be
a private family cremation, followed by a memorial service at
a later date.
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