Catherine Theodora Smits

She was predeceased by her husband Bernard A. Smits.

She will be deeply missed by her children Michael (Linda Wooding) Smits, Toronto and Frances (Philip) Handrahan, PEI, and her grandchildren Maureen Handrahan (James Faulkner), Christine Handrahan, Nick Handrahan, and Katie Smits.

She was predeceased by her seven brothers and two sisters and will be missed by many nieces and nephews in Holland, especially Ineke Rissenbeek (Andre), Ietje Bolliger (Reudi), and Noor (Koos) Follings.

Toos was born in Nijmegen, Holland and grew up in Groenewoud, a café that still operates in her hometown and that has become something of a pilgrimage for her children and her grandchildren. Toos met Bernie while ice skating in Nijmegen and they married in 1952. You would be hard pressed to find a pair more devoted to each other than Toos and Ber; they would remain the center of each other’s worlds throughout their life together. Shortly after they married, Bernie moved to Canada and found a job and an apartment in Quebec. Toos crossed the ocean a few months later to join him and start their new life in Canada. They eventually built a house on 53rd Avenue in Lachine, Quebec where they raised their two children. Toos lived in that house until 2014 when she moved to Toronto to be closer to Michael, Linda, and Katie.

Toos was brave. She survived the Second World War and traveled to a country where she barely spoke the language to build a life. She embraced her new home while keeping Dutch traditions alive for the next generation and the one after that. In 1991, she lost Bernie far too early but displayed incredible strength and independence in the next chapters of her life.

To her children, she was the embodiment of Home. She was always there at the heart of the family. She offered refuge from bad dreams, played games with her children, and loved to travel with Bernie. She was a terrible cook (but that didn't stop her from washing dishes for Meals on Wheels for many years). She was most content when her family was all together but was just as vibrant outside the home. She was an avid cyclist and she did copper enameling, joined a bowling league, tried pottery, and played badminton well into her 80s. She was a great sport – strapping snowshoes to her 86-year-old feet to tramp through the woods with her family during a Christmas visit.

She was unfailingly available to help with her young grandchildren, even from a thousand kilometres away, and made regular visits to Toronto and Prince Edward Island in the summer and at Christmas. She could make a game out of anything. She wasn’t afraid to be goofy and she kept her grandchildren in her thrall with her stories. As her grandchildren grew up, she was the warm voice on the other end of the phone eager to hear about their adventures into adulthood and ready to deploy her wonderful sense of humour to share an inside joke or teach them a rude Dutch phrase (though she would claim no responsibility for the latter).

She was known to many as simply Oma. “Oma” is Dutch for “grandmother,” but she brought her own special meaning to the moniker. “Oma” meant storyteller, nurturer, roomie, playmate, and confidante. “Oma” meant bicycle rides for ice cream, packages from Sinterklaas, and giggles in bed with grandchildren who would sneak into her bedroom to wake her up for one more “lovely story.” She was Oma not only to the grandchildren who loved her fiercely, but to their friends and neighbors too.

Oma, Mom, Moedertje: we love you, and we will miss you. “Until the next time.” Welterusten.