Rosemary Ethel Hayward

Dear Friends and Family — as we start this new year, we wanted to share that our mother, Rosemary Ethel Hayward (née Farmer), beloved matriarch of the Winther family, passed away peacefully on the morning of December 27th at Astoria Suites, the full care unit of Origin At Longwood in Nanaimo, British Columbia. She had just turned 88 years old. Rosemary had an incredibly full and amazing life and the world is a better place for having had her in it.

Some of you have been aware of the long, bittersweet goodbye that she and our family members have been engaged in over this past year and a half. Like so many others of her generation, Rosemary was dealing with vascular dementia compounded with Alzheimer’s. While it’s been difficult to witness such a strong, capable person slowly drift away, Rosemary was fortunate to have been cared for by an incredible team of nurses and doctors at Origin. Most of her family members were able to visit and spend time with her during the last two months of her life. Cherished by this large blended family, Rosemary will be profoundly missed and her memory will live on through her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Rosemary was born to Roland and Ethel Farmer, in 1933 on the island of Shameen in Guangzhou (Canton) China, center of the urban foreign concession where her parents owned and managed the Victoria Hotel. Invaded and interned by the Japanese army in 1941, the family was lucky to have been part of an exchange/repatriation deal and ended up in South Africa via Shanghai with only the shirts on their backs. Her father Roland died suddenly a year later, leaving mother Ethel to raise and support the girls. At war’s end, they moved to British Columbia with the help of Ethel’s Canadian family. Settling in Victoria, the girls were schooled at Queen Margaret’s School in Duncan.

Rosemary possessed a deeply felt drive to help others and to always look on the positive side of any adversity. Not one to dwell on her troubles, our mother personified the British “stiff upper lip” mentality and strived to always move forward without too much fuss or self-pity. This attitude combined with a natural wit and intuitive warmth, inspired most people who came in contact with her -- friends, family and strangers alike.

Married to her first husband of 26 years, the late Jørn Winther, she is survived by their five adult children, Kim (Vivian), Lisa (Sam), Michael, Peter and Lars (Jessica) and her nephew, David Wilkinson (Jennifer) and their three sons, Andrew, Tim and William. In addition, through her marriage to her late second husband of 30 years, Ian Hayward, Rosemary is survived by her four step-children, Sally (Brian), Mark (Dana), Joanna (David) and Alison (Rose). She was grandmother to Matthew, Tyler, Haidyn and Violet as well as step-grandmother to Julia, Rita, Laila, Jordan, Aimee, Whitney and Stirling. Our family looks forward to celebrating our mother’s life in the spring when we plan to scatter her ashes in Evening Cove, near Ladysmith on Vancouver Island where she lived with her beloved Ian for the last 30 years of her life.