Sheila Elizabeth Andrich

She was a kind, witty, generous, intelligent, and dear friend and soul. Sheila was a a friend to many and always ready to listen to their troubles, empathize and even when she was in such poor health herself, would tell them that if ever they needed to talk to someone, she was there for them. She had an inquisitive mind and was interested in so many things.

She made me laugh, we liked the same things, gardening, flowers, travel, baking, movies, theatre, music and books, and she adored art by Claude Monet. Sheila got a lot of pleasure eating out in restaurants. She enjoyed our times making jam and at the end of it laughingly said, “what are we going to do with all that jam!”

Sheila is pre-deceased by an older brother Bill that passed when she was 17 years old. Her parents Betty and Jack passed in 2000 and 2005.

Sheila was born in Winnipeg in 1947 to parents Betty and Jack Andrich, and moved to Yorkton for a year with her parents and then to Saskatoon for about 10 years before coming back to Winnipeg where she lived until her passing.

She attended Vincent Massey Collegiate and United College. She attended the U. of M. where she received her 1st degree in Arts and later her Honours in Psychology. In 1969 she moved to Ottawa for a job in Personnel for the government. In 1973 she returned home for her grandmother’s funeral. Later that year she attended Library school at University of Western Ontario. After she graduated, Sheila returned to Winnipeg. She worked for the Winnipeg Core Area Initiative for a number of years. In 1988 Sheila began work at the University of Manitoba Education Library where she remained until the library closed and she transferred to The Elizabeth Dafoe Library Reference Department in 1997, where her responsibilities were in Psychology and Women’s Studies. She always said the best part of her job was interacting with the students. While at the library, Sheila was active in the Status of Women Committee with Dr. Rosa Bruno-Jofre.

She and her father created the Betty Andrich award in 2001 in memory of her mother who had been the first student to take the Library Technician’s course at Red River College (at that time known as MIT - Manitoba Institute of Technology). The money designated for that award was to help students already in the workforce going back to school for their library technician’s degree. Sheila and her mother had set up a scholarship at the Veterinary college at the University of Guelph in honour of her father who was a veterinarian and specialized in large animal diseases.

Sheila retired in 2008 and she and her good friend Stella travelled to PEI where they discovered rural pottery shops and COWS ice cream! She and her friend made several more trips in the next years, Las Vegas was a popular destination, where she enjoyed the countless buffets, theatre shows and gambling on the “penny slots”. Her travels included Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Czech Republic and Hungary. We joined our friends from Montreal in Cuba for a week in February of 2017 and Sheila had a tremendous time enjoying the laughter of friends and colours of the ocean and sandy beaches. In September of that year we went on a Danube River Cruise, Sheila fell in love with the cities of Nürnberg, Prague and Budapest. There were the frequent visits to Fargo for a little shopping and fun. We always joked that we spent half of our allotment at Menard’s before we even got to the other stores!! Sheila looked forward to their annual peach run to Grand Forks and Fargo where they picked up a couple of boxes of peaches that came from Colorado and were huge and juicy. She looked forward to that trip with excitement every year, and disappointed when Covid halted that for three years. Sheila loved her new house that she and her friend had built and enjoyed the many flowers they grew on the deck and the birds that visited. She had fun picking the different varieties of tomatoes her friend planted and loved being in her home. Whenever we had a dinner party or celebration of some sort, Sheila had a lot of fun putting together small goodie bags for our friends.

For the last four years, Sheila had a number of health issues, a stroke in 2019, cancer and lastly had to go on dialysis, a treatment which distressed her very much.

Sheila leaves to mourn her dear friend Stella and will be deeply missed by her numerous friends in Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Ingersoll, Montreal, Saskatoon, Calgary, San Francisco and Germany.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her name to the Winnipeg Humane Society, or to the Manitoba Kidney Foundation.

Funeral arrangements have been made by Thomson Funeral Home. Cremation has taken place.