Flora Joye Thomson

Joye graduated from Ottawa Teachers College and taught at Orangeville District Secondary School, Ontario, from 1961 to 1996, with a Sabbatical in 1967 to complete her BA in Mathematics at Queen’s University, Kingston. Besides teaching mathematics, she was Head of Women’s Phys. Ed. at ODSS where her diverse range of skills enabled the expansion of their program to include badminton, golf, riflery marksmanship, archery, swimming, canoeing, orienteering and survival skills.

She was an avid fly fisher and frequently made road trips to Banff, where her dad grew up (and where she and her mother waited out WWII while he served in the North Atlantic) and she knew and loved the mountains, streams and trails. She enjoyed art and design, learned to carve and paint duck decoys and designed her van into a camper for summer treks to Western Canada. After moving to Victoria upon retirement in 1996, Joye explored Newfoundland & Labrador, the Northwest Territories and Yukon, visited Scotland (finding the Thomson homestead near Dunfermline), and enjoyed many regional and international art tours with the Associates of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria ̶ all while maintaining contact with extended family as well as many friends from her university and teaching days, and successfully cultivating her large Victoria vegetable garden despite the deer!

Joye was always happy that so many of her Ontario friends, teaching colleagues, and former students as well as their sons and daughters (also her students), kept in touch over the years – a loyalty that was all the more remarkable considering she never took the easy route of using email, communicating only in properly written longhand compositions.

Joye will long be remembered by family, students and friends for her cheerful, resourceful, creative and caring personality, her great sense of humour, her generous spirit, her natural wisdom and strong sense of Justice. A life fully-lived.

In her memory, please write a real letter to an old friend or phone them and have a good long conversation.

A private Memorial will be held at the time of what would have been Joye’s 85th birthday.