After graduating as a young nurse, she crossed the Atlantic in the troop ship Queen Mary and served as a front line nurse following the D-Day landings. Mary returned to Canada, graduating from the University of Toronto with a degree in psychology where she met the love of her life. Mary and Neil were married in 1950 and went west to Saskatchewan where Mary fell in love with the prairies. She expressed this love through her artwork while raising a family. On returning to Ontario, she blended psychology and the arts, working with children as a skillful therapist and guide. Mary was an eclectic thinker and a scholar. Her love of history, nature and culture is reflected in her fascinating travel journals, her dedication to conservation, and the many years she spent volunteering at the King Township Museum. She is survived by her loving son and daughter Tim and Wendy and their spouses Trish Agnew and Richard Gorrie.
A visitation for Mary will be held Friday, March 8, 2019 from 2 - 4 & 6 - 8 p.m. at Thompson Funeral Home, 530 Industrial Parkway South, Aurora, ON L4G6W8. A Celebration of Life will occur Saturday, March 9, 2019 from at 11 a.m. in the Thompson Funeral Home Chapel. Interment King City Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, contributions in Mary's memory may be made to Ontario Nature Fund, https://ontarionature.org/give.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.ThompsonFH-Aurora.com for the Agnew family.
Mary was a guiding light to many. Born in a time when some women had just gained the right to vote, she followed her heart with a backbone of steel while retaining a wry sense of humour. She suffered tragedy with the death in battle of her first husband, Edward Styffe in 1944 and retained a loving connection with his family and friends. Mary always surprised us. Her art studio was a place of creation and invention. “I’m trying to capture the light.” She would say as we rushed through. She worked in oil, watercolour, with woodcuts and ink and translated her media skills in the kitchen. It was an Aladdin’s Cave – the mouth-watering Chicken of the Dukes synonymous with heaven. Mary nurtured the historical that gives depth to experience. She generously opened her study to us where glorious texts of illustrated manuscripts and Celtic phrases would conjure a time out of time. And her beloved forest where she fostered the copper beeches and oaks became for all of us a refuge, a chapel, an inspiration.
She was the heart of our family if dad was the soul and gave her love unstintingly to all the creatures in her orbit. Always understated, she manifested the music of deep connection and, with a few well chosen words, could cut to the chase … When asked recently to give advice at a neighbourhood, wedding shower she replied with a twinkle, “Just hang in there”.
~~
Two poems written to Mary from her beloved Neil
20/10/77
This girl I know, she showed me.
I never knew all those things until she took me there.
She stuck my head up in the sky. It’s not empty after all,
So now I hear the wild geese call,
and catch the blush of gentle dawn,
and set a while with my own Sun
and watch him stroke new wonders on the western sky.
Now every tree’s a christmas tree, alive with lights.
A magic mobile dancing just for me.
No strings to tangle with the wind’s rustling rhythms –
there, hear it? Hear it? A leafy carillon.
And then she took my vision low,
to where a broach of fiery fungi graced a rusty stump.
Suddenly we noticed thievery afoot,
Black ants stealing red ant eggs: the alarm; then bedlam, battle:
disarray: then peace and clean-up –
a lifetime in a day.
As we lay stretched on this lush carpet of vibrant autumn leaves,
we watch a wounded spider wend its wobbly way, and wish it well.
But all too late. It’s trespassed on the red ant’s land. They swarm!
I reach to save the spider, to lift the leaf its on, and magic carpet it away.
She stays my hand. “It’s alright, the spider knows.
He’s ready … Trust nature a little. Learn to float.”
Says this girl I know.
By Neil Agnew
~~~
Fifty-One Years
June 16, 2001
With Eden came the apple…
first there was colour
“Red is not hostile”
she bristled!
small but mighty
But I was young
and color blind.
I missed the hue
got the taste
crisp, sweet and clean
the flavour of youth
“Red is not hostile”
she bristled
But fire is red
I was callow
took the comfort
missed the flame
because?
because it didn’t flash and blister.
Burned quietly like the sun.
Fuelling our family.
small and mighty
Neil Agnew, June 16, 2001
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