Joan May Skelton Kurisko

She had loving relationships with husband Stanley (Stan) their four children, and a succession of six dogs.

After marriage in 1951, the couple moved from Toronto, Joan’s birth-place and their place of formal education, to Sault Ste. Marie, Stan’s home and his first practice of law.

In the Fifties, lured to Elliot Lake by the starry-eyed concept of a government planned model town with Stan as its first lawyer, the couple returned to the Sault five years later, somewhat richer and a lot wiser. However, Joan had found the stuff of her first novel, Interlude, The Story of Elliot Lake.

Believing in constructive activity for young people, Joan participated in the formation of the Horse and Pony Club, modelled on the British Pony Club. It operated a boarding stable and a riding school taught by an instructor hired from Ireland. Joan was charter District Commissioner.

Joan became a Certified Instructor with the Canadian Ski School Alliance and the Ski School Director of the YMCA Snowbird Ski School. The Kurisko family dedicated their winter weekends to skiing.

For several summers, with two other families, they rented an island in the North Channel of the St. Marys River where with water and mainland nearby, they jogged, played tennis, fished, boated, swam, and ate sumptuous communal meals.

Then began a five-year search for their own cottage property. They found it on the shore of Lake Superior; slightly under two thousand feet of frontage of rock, sand, and transparent blue green water. Joan’s private family edition of Gull Rock, Cottaging on Lake Superior captured their experiences of swimming, hiking, working, relaxing, melding with nature, two weddings, and a sixtieth wedding anniversary celebration.

Stan was appointed to the Bench in Thunder Bay and became a Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario. There, Joan taught six of her eleven grandchildren to ski, all of whom travelled from distant cities.

Joan became an advocate for Lake Superior. She was a charter member of the Thunder Bay Public Advisory Committee of the Remedial Action Plan for the Great Lakes (RAP PAC). After resigning because of inaction on the contaminated sediments in Thunder Bay harbor, she continued to work with PAC, writing a series of articles for the Thunder Bay Chronicle Journal on what she called the real Sleeping Giant, a blob of more than 200,000 cubic meters of creosote and pentachlorophenol. Her advocacy was instrumental in having this environmental advocacy in having this environmental blemish cleaned up.

Spear-heading the World Heritage Site Initiative: Pukaskwa to Agawa: Ancestral Voices, Joan chaired meetings of a dozen dedicated citizens from Thunder Bay, Wawa, First Nations, and Toronto. For five years, the committee worked in cognito because of sensitive issues involving coastal lands. Its goal was to gain recognition for Lake Superior not only as the largest surface of fresh water in the world but for its geology, historic voices and wild beauty. Government support was not forthcoming. Later, Parks Canada asked Joan to revive the initiative although it was too late. The committee had dispersed.

In line with her environmental concerns, Joan chaired Canadians Against Harmful Pornography. It was defeated by the Internet.

Vicariously experiencing anti-semitism via a boyfriend as a teenager, the experience reinforced her youthful acceptance of all peoples.

In 1991, with a friend in Thunder Bay, they formed Bookends, an organization of a dozen book aficionados that still continues to this day.

She authored, three novels, two non-fiction books, and two private editions are published. About The Survivor of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Northrop Frye said: “I was … extremely impressed with the novel.” Her free-lance pieces have appeared in the Globe and Mail and other publications.

Joan met Stan at Victoria College, University of Toronto, where she graduated with an HBA in Philosophy and English, Stan with an HBA in Political Science and Economics. After some sixty years of living near Lake Superior, the couple wrenched themselves away from the North, to move to Guelph and be near two of their families and some of Joan’s Skelton ancestors, her great grandfather having been mayor of Palmerston. After almost 65 years of marriage, Stan passed away leaving an empty space in Joan’s heart. She was predeceased by siblings Douglas and Marilynn.

Joan spent the last four years of her life under the wonderful care of The Village Of Riverside Glen in Guelph aided by the close attention of Johanna who became a dear friend.

Her heart was with Lake Superior; and with her children, Kathryn (Kathy), veterinarian, the late Blake, lawyer, and wife Jane, Stanley (Lee), radiologist, and wife Joyce, and Andrea, retired teacher; her eleven grandchildren, Carla and husband Jeff; Bryce and wife Gloria, Brett and wife Amy; Cayli and fiancé Gary; Jeffrey and wife Carrie; Samantha and husband Nicholas; Daniel, Carolyn and husband Matthew, and Diana; Cameron and Danika; and her nine great grandchildren, Max, Keira, Emma, Milo, Oscar, Jack, Eloise, Leo and Alice.

A Celebration of Life will be held on Thursday, August 20 at 1:00 pm at the Gilbert MacIntyre and Son Funeral Home, 1099 Gordon St. Guelph, in the Fellowship Lounge. Refreshments will be served. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Joan to the Alzheimer’s Society or Guelph General Hospital would be appreciated by the family.