Katherine A.E. Allen

Bedridden from the last of her many falls, Katherine decided enough was enough and headed into the mystery on April Fool’s Day, four months after her 96th birthday, completing her journey on April 2, 2018. A talkative Red Tory, eclectic reader, opera buff and sports fan (particularly of tennis, figure skating and Canadian football), an admirer of Roger Federer, Joe Clark, Stephen Lewis, Dwane Casey and Katherine Hepburn, her favourite sport may have been politics. A long-standing subscriber to the self-appointed National Newspaper™ and a CBC Power & Politics addict, she was born on New Years Day 1922 at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, to a woman who babysat for Arthur Meighen and a lawyer who facilitated veterans’ pensions.

She fondly recalled childhood summers spent at Delta Beach on Lake Manitoba and two teenage years with adored cousins in Los Angeles. She came of age in Ottawa and, like most of her generation, was indelibly marked by World War II, as a civilian worker for the RCAF never quite getting over the shocking deaths of high school chums overseas. Escaping Toronto, she moved to Victoria in the mid-1970s with second husband Stanley Allen and found a congenial city she could march all over, a necessity for a lifelong non-driver. Forays into cruising culture allowed this couple to indulge a shared love of ballroom dancing. Blessed with good health and an active mind for her entire life, she nonetheless admonished youth (anyone under 70) “don’t get into your 90s.” Notwithstanding this, at 93, she lined up for an hour to successfully vote out what she called “the Canadian Reform Alliance Party government”, noting wryly, “Now I won’t have to throw myself off Ogden Point!”

Deeply missed by her boy child James, grandson Ross, a gaggle of “honorary” children across Canada and correspondents around the English-speaking world, Katherine wanted to be remembered by modest donations to improve life in Victoria, suggesting as recipients Our Place, the Victoria Symphony and the Citizens Counselling Centre.

Finally, profound gratitude to the staff of Humboldt House at Mount St. Mary Hospital for the top-notch care given to Katherine during her last two years.