Barbara Gale Ursaki

Barbara Gale Bullock Ursaki, passed away on July 6, 2025 just nine days before what would have been her 96th birthday. She was born on July 15, 1929 in Lethbridge, Alberta and was raised on a farm in the small southern Alberta town of Welling. She was the youngest of the six children of Alma Moroni Bullock and Laura Byrde Kunz Bullock.

Mom always talked fondly of her childhood in Welling. She talked about the beautiful prairie sunsets, the Chinook winds, the grain elevators and the Pothole Coulee where she spent many hours playing and fishing. She loved making music with her family, her dad playing the fiddle, one of her sisters playing the piano, and everyone singing. She loved to be outdoors and spent hours wandering the fields surrounding the farmhouse, often ending up at her best friend Alene Foote’s house where she could go horseback riding. She talked about riding bareback, flat out and wind in her hair! She said her friend’s mother had a well-stocked larder and told how one night the two of them shared a quart of Maraschino cherries and a large bag of coconut, leading to having her appendix removed the next day! She always told this as a cautionary tale against gluttony.

Mom left home when she was seventeen, to live with her older sister, Lillian, while finishing high school at Lethbridge Collegiate Institute. She eventually attended business school to become a stenographer and worked as a receptionist and assistant to Dr. Spackman in Lethbridge and eventually for the Life Insurance Company of Alberta in Edmonton. It was in Edmonton in January of 1954, at the Rainbow Ballroom, that Mom met Harold Michael Ursaki and her life changed forever. Barbara and Harold married on December 23, 1954, a marriage that spanned seventy years. Dad was a young engineer working in the oil refining industry and they moved several times in their early marriage with his transfers. Mom and Dad started out in Edmonton where their first child, Sandra Michelle, was born in 1956. They moved to Moosejaw, Saskatchewan where their second child, Leslie Elaine, was born in 1958 and then on to Oakville, Ontario. From Oakville, they moved to Calgary, Alberta and then to Sherwood Park, Alberta where their third and youngest child, Michael David, was born in 1961. Mom loved our years in Sherwood Park, especially because her sister, Peggy and family lived just a few blocks from us. After seven happy, productive years in Sherwood Park came their last move in 1968 to Coquitlam, British Columbia. Being the prairie girl that she was, Mom found the move to B.C. to be a difficult one at first. She was used to expansive farm fields and wide open skies with sunsets that dipped into the horizon. The tall evergreen trees and mountains of the lower mainland area made her initially feel hemmed in. But she pulled herself up by her gumboot straps and got busy serving her family, neighborhood and church family and made Coquitlam, B.C. her home. After twelve years in their first Coquitlam home, Barbara and Harold built a home a few blocks away that backed up to a small Pacific rainforest preserve (Mundy Park). They made that move in 1979 and spent the next 45 years enjoying living next to that beautiful forest. Mom grew to love those tall, swaying trees and the wildlife that they attracted (even the bears)! She was a gardener and nature lover and her flower gardens next to the forest were well tended, colorful and full of birds, bees and butterflies.

Mom was diagnosed with dementia many years ago and slowly reached the place where she needed more care than could be given at home. She and Dad moved to Bevan Village care center in February of 2024 where she received much tender, loving care from the staff of care workers and nurses. We are so grateful to all of them.

We’re so sad to be separated from this remarkable wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and friend but we’re so relieved that she is free of the confusion, anxiety and fear that come with dementia. Shout out to her daughter, Elaine, who has taken watchful and loving care of Mom for many years.

Barbara is survived by Harold Ursaki, her devoted husband of seventy years, three children and spouses; Sandra Hale (Brent), Elaine Cervo (Len), Michael Ursaki (Lucia); thirteen grandchildren – Michael Hale (Erin), Steve Hale (Kalli), Scott Hale (Rachel), Laura Walker (Jordan), Annie Jorgensen (Joey), David Cervo (Kara), Brian Cervo (Michelle), Craig Cervo (Volante), Erin Terry (Scott), Sarah Rhodenizer (Zac), Jessica Ursaki Hall (Andrew), Rachel Ursaki (Nolan), Matteo Ursaki (Madeline) and thirty-six gorgeous great grandchildren.

A funeral service for Barbara will be held Monday, July 14, 2025 at 11:00 AM at The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints, 30635 Blueridge Dr, Abbotsford, BC V2T 5W3.

Join live stream: https://youtube.com/live/-zFDdoOaV70?feature=share

Visitation/viewing for 45 minutes, starting at 10:00 a.m. prior to memorial service.

Light lunch to follow.