Carmelita Louise Boivin-Cole

Carmelita Louise Boivin-Cole died peacefully on 28 October 2026 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the age of 87. Born in Rumford, Maine, on 10 August 1939 to Albert and Jacqueline Boivin, she grew up speaking French and went on to a life of scholarship, public service, and family.

Carmelita had a formidable mind and a lifelong love of literature. A Fulbright and Harvard Fellow, she earned her M.A. (1972) and Ph.D. (1982) in Comparative Literature from Harvard University. Her doctoral thesis was on Erasmus’s Praise of Folly as a Renaissance transformation of Socratic irony, a subject that suited a woman who appreciated both wit and wisdom.

She then gave more than 25 years to public service in senior roles in the Government of Canada, including with the Privy Council Office, Treasury Board Secretariat, Foreign Affairs, Veterans Affairs, the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, and the Department of Communications. She went on to be Director General of Policy, Planning and Coordination for New Brunswick at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. In 1998, she was named Chief Executive Officer of the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission.

In 2002, she moved to Nova Scotia with her husband, Richard (Dick) Holt, and spent many happy years at their dream home overlooking the Annapolis Basin. In retirement she finally opened the four boxes of family papers her grandmother had left her, the result of research they had begun together when Carmelita was a girl, and spent countless hours tracing the family’s genealogy. That research laid the foundation for her book, Whispers, which tells the stories of generations of French-Canadian women who pushed against what their times said women could, should, or should not do. Just as her grandmother once passed it to her, she leaves that work to the next generation to pick up and carry on. Her writing earned awards from the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and an excerpt was published in The New York Times. She and Dick also loved attending shows at the local theatre.

Carmelita was predeceased by her first husband and the father of her children, John Cole; her second husband, Dick Holt; and her brothers Robert (Joyce) and Paul (Mariana) Boivin. She is survived by her children, Jennifer (Wayne) Duggan and James Cole; her stepsons, Derek (Berenice) Holt and Richard (the late Christine) Holt; her six grandchildren: Brooke, Theo, Everett, Jack, Ryan, and Kyle; her siblings John (Barbara), Claire, and Mark Boivin; her nieces Michelle and Aimee Boivin; and her nephew Nick Boivin.

A celebration of life will be held at Parkland at the Gardens in Halifax on Monday, 2 November, at 10:00 am. A second celebration of life will be held at Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa on Friday, 6 November, at 9:00 am, followed by the interment of her ashes at 11:00 am. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Heart & Stroke Foundation or the Canadian Cancer Society.

Online condolences may be shared at www.cruikshankhalifaxfuneralhome.com