Kathleen Anne Black

BLACK, Kathleen Anne (Avison) died in Halifax on 6 September 2024 at the age of 89.

She is survived by her children, David (and wife Heather Scott), Iris (and husband Donald Clark), Kate (and husband Gordon Rumson) and Nancy (and husband John Patterson); grandchildren Lorraine, Elizabeth, Everett, Adrian, Holly, William, Rory and Eleanor. She was predeceased by her parents and her elder sisters Helen, Lera, Joyce, and Margaret.

Anne was born in Vancouver on 23 June 1935 to Dr. Douglas Bray Avison and Kathleen Isobel (Rawson) Avison. She was just six weeks old when the family returned to Seoul, where her father and grandfather were medical missionaries. Her lifelong love of Korea began with her earliest memories.

With hostilities imminent, the family returned to Canada in the summer of 1940, via Japan where the young Anne noticed ‘soldiers everywhere’. After brief periods in Saint John, Peterborough and Toronto, the Avisons lived in Kelowna from 1943 to 1946, where they met another former missionary family, the Blacks. Eight-year-old Anne met eleven-year-old Fred Black during a game of Murder, and the rest is history.

Anne excelled in high school and at the University of British Columbia, actively participating in student life. Romance blossomed with Fred when he invited the sixteen-year-old Anne to an Air Force dance in Vancouver. They were married in 1957 and spent two idyllic years living and working in England and exploring Europe before starting their family in Toronto. She had four children in five and a thalf years, while completing an MA in English at the University of Toronto a course at a time, in between babies. Her children remember novels and notes spread over the dining room table in the evening, after dancing and marching to her fine piano playing during the day.

When her youngest child started Junior High, she turned to her dream of becoming an English teacher, completing a B.Ed. at U of T. Since permanent jobs were scarce, Anne taught where she could, from the Victor Home for Women to high schools throughout Toronto. She occasionally adeptly taught her own kids’ Latin or English classes. She was a passionate professional, devoted to her work and to every one of her students. She spent her last working years as Head of English at Yorkdale Adult Learning Centre.

Anne and Fred loved to travel, but it was only after retirement that they were able to return to Korea together. The four trips they made there, often with other family members, were pilgrimages of rediscovery and delight.

Anne was a lover of the arts, who delighted in literature, theatre, and music. She had a beautiful singing voice heard in the Beverley Hills United Church choir and on long-distance family drives. Her wide knowledge combined with her superb storytelling to hold her children’s attention on the family’s regular cross-country odysseys.

A stroke at the age of 70 left Anne more physically limited, but did nothing to quench her curiosity, spirit and determination. Since moving to Parkland at the Gardens, Halifax, in 2013, and especially since losing her beloved Fred in 2017, Anne participated in many activities: discussion groups, Great Books courses, exercise classes, ESL tutoring, drama, singalongs, and learning the ukulele. In recent years, she became passionate about writing. Her personal stories are full of humanity and wit. She ran the Book Club with efficiency and diplomacy. In her fellow residents, she found a steady source of mutual friendship and support.

St Matthew’s United Church also brought her a new community of faith and fellowship, and a place of solace and comfort.

We remember her as one who always had time to listen, and was genuinely curious about all those in her diverse circles of family and friends. Anne embraced each new family member as a unique individual. She nurtured and defended her children, celebrated their successes and comforted them in times of despair, delighted in the wonders of wildflowers both in fields and parking lots, and looked back on her full life with gratitude.

A service of remembrance will be held at St. Matthew's United Church, Halifax on September 20th at 2pm. Reception following the service at Parklands at the Gardens, 5732 College St., Halifax.