O'SULLIVAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-03-29 published
O'SULLIVAN,
Pat
Died a year ago on March 29, 2007. Dear Pat, we all love and
miss you. Keep on solving the cryptics. Nuala, Eileen, Sean,
Bernadette, Imelda, Philomena, Veronica and Gabrielle.
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O'SULLIVAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-05-06 published
COUCHMAN,
Robert "
Bob"
George
James
(21 February 1937-3 May 2008)
Suddenly, at Kingston, Ontario, Bob
COUCHMAN, adventurer, campaigner,
poet, friend and family man. Bob was the former Executive Director
of Toronto and Whitehorse Family Service Associations, the Donner
Foundation and other private philanthropic activities. In a career
spanning five decades, he was active in dozens of causes related
to social justice, especially in relation to families and young
people. Bob had a profound spiritual connection to the wilderness,
which took him from a boyhood in East Toronto, via Algonquin
Park to the vast beauty of the Yukon and Northern British Columbia,
where his heart felt truly at home. He leaves behind many loved
ones his immediate family and those he made his family during
a lifetime of loving and connecting with others. We are Bruce
COUCHMAN, Barbara
O'SULLIVAN (née
COUCHMAN), Stephen
COUCHMAN,
Michael COUCHMAN,
Frances
O'SULLIVAN, Matthew
COUCHMAN, Ruth
O'SULLIVAN,
Samuel
COUCHMAN, Catherine Smart-
COUCHMAN, Brian
O'SULLIVAN, Jane
COUCHMAN, Carolyn
MOORE, Kyn and Gwynne
BARKER,
Bill Found and each to those who held him dear. Friends may visit
at the Rosar-Morrison Funeral Home and Chapel, 467 Sherbourne Street
on Thursday, May 8th from 2-4 and 6-8 p.m. A Funeral Service will
be held at St. Simon - The Apostle Anglican Church Bloor and Sherbourne)
on Friday, May 9th at 10: 30 a.m. Cremation to follow. A celebration
of his life will be held at a later date in Whitehorse. In lieu
of flowers, a donation to a charity you feel passionate about,
an act of rebellion in aid of a just cause and a gesture of thanksgiving
for life's beauty would be deeply appreciated.
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O'SULLIVAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-04 published
Activist began as angry young man and retired as 'an angry old
man'
Born on the wrong side of the tracks, he spent a lifetime tackling
issues of extreme poverty, health care and unemployment only
to conclude that 'things are worse than they were when I started'
By Gay ABBATE,
Page S8
Toronto -- Bob
COUCHMAN treasured a family anecdote of his mother
as a little girl. Her parents, although poor, scraped together
enough money early one winter to buy her a new pair of serviceable
shoes. She put them on, went out to play and returned at day's
end barefoot. She had given her shoes to a child with feet swathed
in rags. Decades later, that same strong spirit of giving would
become a hallmark of her son's life, taking him from working
with street gangs and youth in the pool halls and back alleys
of Toronto to the head of family service agencies and charitable
foundations.
During a career that spanned 51 years, Mr.
COUCHMAN was always
"a connector, an agitator and an enabler," said his son Stephen
- who, along with his sister Barbara, inherited his father's
social conscience. Both offspring continue their father's work
with social agencies and charitable groups, he in Canada, she
in Portsmouth, England.
Mr. COUCHMAN's goal in life was to leave the world a little better
and he worked tirelessly toward that end. In a speech in 2001 to
the Yukon Family Services Association after his retirement as
its executive director, Mr.
COUCHMAN spoke of the progress made
during his decades in the social advocacy field, such as universal
health care, reduction in extreme poverty and unemployment insurance.
But for him, the greatest advance was the social and health research
into the functioning of healthy communities. And his greatest
disappointment with this advance was society's failure to learn
from the research, he said in that same speech. "Our discounting
and even rejection of this research fuels my anger."
He went on to state: "In my early days, I was considered an angry
young man, a classification which was certainly in cultural vogue
during the late 1950s… As my career got under way, I found myself
rebelling against the status quo and challenging weak assumptions.
I now end my career almost as I began it. However, I now have
obtained the status of an angry old man."
His conclusion, after so many years in the trenches? "And now
I recognize, if anything, things are worse than they were when
I started. I need another lifetime to keep kicking the system
in the shins."
Mr. COUCHMAN wrote of his years dealing with social problems
in his 2003 book Reflections on Canadian Character: From Monarch
Park to Monarch Mountain. The title refers to his journey from
his Toronto neighbourhood to the majestic mountain in British
Columbia. The book, part memoir, is also a critique of how the
social safety net has been allowed to deteriorate and how societal
attitude has changed from the traditional one of neighbours helping
each other, which he witnessed growing up. "Generally, the Canadian
character has shifted from one of social responsibility and obligation
to one another, to one of rights and entitlement," he wrote.
In a 1989 article in The Globe and Mail, he wrote that Canadians
and their government must re-establish society's commitment to
a social contract that provides for the essential needs of Canadian.
He wrote that it was a sad state that philanthropic dollars meant
to provide for creative service innovation, risk-taking research
and the enrichment of people's lives had to be used to provide
the basics of life for those with no other means.
As a crusader for social justice, Mr.
COUCHMAN was not afraid
to take politicians to task for their stance on social issues.
He was highly critical of attempts by the Mike Harris government
to reduce Ontario's deficit, in part, through welfare cuts. In
1994, he wrote in this newspaper that the welfare initiative
was an "ill-considered policy generated by ill-informed minds."
Mr. COUCHMAN's sense of social justice extended to his personal
life. When the Anglican Church that he attended in Whitehorse
rejected same-sex marriage, Mr.
COUCHMAN became an outspoken
critic, warning that many parishioners would desert over the
issue. Eventually, he was one of them, leaving to join the United
Church.
Mr. COUCHMAN served on the boards of many organizations, including
the United Way of Greater Toronto. He was a founding director
of the White Ribbon Campaign, vice-chair of the Vanier Institute
of the Family and co-chairman of the Canada Committee for the
International Year of the Family in 1994.
The eldest of two sons born to Bob and Mary
COUCHMAN, a working-class
couple, he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in east-end
Toronto. The family lived in the Monarch Park area south of Danforth
Avenue, which was in those days the dividing line between the
haves to the north and the have-nots to the south. Mrs.
COUCHMAN
was a homemaker, her husband a lawn-bowl repairman and a maintenance
worker at East General Hospital. The family never owned a car
and Robert was 16 before the family had a telephone. With only
a single income to rely upon, times were lean. Even so, his mother
continued her life of giving - when there was food on the
COUCHMAN
table, all the neighbourhood kids ate, too.
As a youth, Mr.
COUCHMAN participated in some of the programs
offered by the Broadview Young Men's Christian Association and,
as a teenager, he volunteered his time, working with troubled
youth. After completing Grade 12 at Riverdale Collegiate, he
attended teachers college and then spent one year teaching in
a one-room school in Etobicoke, west of Toronto. At 20 he started
teaching at Ionview Public School in Scarborough, and five years
later the Etobicoke Board of Education hired him as director
of the department of student services. "He loved teaching but
left because of the challenge of working with at-risk students,"
said his first wife, Jane
COUCHMAN.
While teaching full time and working at the Young Men's Christian
Association, he took summer and correspondence courses at Queen's
University in Kingston, earning his B.A. He then obtained a masters
in education from the University of Toronto.
He left the Etobicoke school board in 1974 to become executive
director of the Family Services Association of Toronto. During
his 15 years with the association, he helped create a camp for
children with special physical needs and a domestic response
team to address domestic violence. "Christmas was always about
turkey, gifts and calls from the domestic response team," Stephen
COUCHMAN recalled.
In 1989, Mr.
COUCHMAN was named president of the Donner Canadian
Foundation, which provides financial support to charitable organizations
and to groups doing research in public policy and education.
This position was quite a coup for Mr.
COUCHMAN, said his friend
Tom Brodhead, president of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation.
"You don't find social activists running foundations," he said.
"He led Donner into some imaginative projects."
In 1999, Mr.
COUCHMAN moved north to become executive director
of the Yukon Family Services Association (since renamed Many
Rivers), retiring in 2001, in part because of ill health.
He met his first wife, Jane
BARKER, in 1959, in the Toronto church
where he sang in the choir. They married two years later, had
two children and divorced after two decades, yet remained good
Friends. Four years after the divorce, he met his second wife,
interior designer Carolyn
MOORE, on a blind date. They married
two years later, had a son and in 1996 moved to Atlin, a small
community in northwest British Columbia, a two- or three-hour
drive from Whitehorse. The couple went their separate ways in
The move to the Yukon in 1999 was the realization of a long-held
dream to live in the North, where he enjoyed backpacking, canoeing
and cross-country skiing. He used his first teacher's pay check
to buy a canoe and then purchased a Volkswagen Beetle to carry
it up north. His love for the outdoors was rooted in the family's
annual summer vacation in Muskoka. He also took part in numerous
expeditions to the Canadian Rockies, the Himalayas, the Swiss
Alps and Nepal.
Always a writer of poetry and a story teller, Mr.
COUCHMAN turned
his pen to plays, particularly murder mysteries, when he moved
to Whitehorse. There, he also became a thespian, acting in his
own plays.
After retiring, Mr.
COUCHMAN continued to consult with various
organizations on social issues. "He worked thoughtfully and quietly
toward making a difference in the lives of thousands of people
who will never know his name," said Stephen
COUCHMAN.
Robert George
COUCHMAN was born February 21, 1937, in Toronto.
He died of a massive heart attack on May 3, 2008, watching a
film with his son Michael in a movie theatre in Kingston. He
was 71. He leaves his brother Bruce, daughter Barbara
O'SULLIVAN
and sons Stephen and Michael. He also leaves former wives Jane
COUCHMAN and Carolyn
MOORE.
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O'SULLIVAN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-07 published
GOULD,
Grant
Allenby, M.D.
(March 12, 1918-April 24, 2008)
In Newport Beach, California. Born in Uxbridge, Ontario to Thomas
and Alma GOULD and predeceased by siblings Thomas Bruce, Winnifred
(Mac) CANNINGTON,
Russell
Herbert
(Florence) and nephew Glenn.
Survived by his loving companion, Anne
McKNIGHT and family; children,
Marilyn Anne
(MORTIMER-
LAMB), Sheila Arlene, Grant Anthony (Dianna)
grandchildren Geoffrey, Stephanie, Jaimie, Kimberley and Sasha
sister-in-law Eileen
GOULD-
BAILEY of Uxbridge, nephew Doctor Tom
JOHNSON and family of Lindsay, Ontario, niece Mary Jane
PRESTON
and family of Port Hope, Ontario. Also survived by Gia
DESILVA,
his assistant, devoted friend and caregiver in his final days,
and dear Ed
O'SULLIVAN, thank you. Dad graduated from the University
of Toronto Medical School and interned at the Ottawa Civic Hospital
before joining the Royal Canadian Navy in World War 2 where he
met and married Sheila
NEIL, R.N. Upon residency at the Halifax
Naval Hospital, Nova Scotia, he was posted overseas, serving
on the HMCS Regina. In the Normandy invasion, his ship was
torpedoed while rescuing survivors in the English Channel. Blown
off the bridge and with a crushed chest he performed heroic surgical
and medical care of the crew for which he was decorated by King
George VI. Brilliant physician and general surgeon, accomplished
pianist, small-aircraft pilot, magician, honorary member Newport
Beach Tennis Club, mechanic to his 2-door. '70 Cadillac DeVille
convertible, craftsman and devoted animal lover, to name a few
of his many talents and loves. A tremendous intellect and unique
human being, you will be greatly missed, Dad. God Bless you.
Donations may be made to Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
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