Seventy Years of A Full Life.
Colleen was always a woman in motion. She was born in Calgary, Alberta, but over
seven decades, she travelled across North America by car, Cuba by a Ministry limo,
Grenada by foot, and Europe by plane and train, Algonquin Park by canoe, and the
Pacific by sea kayak and dragon boat. She once did a two day trek - hiking up and down
the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. Even her wedding in 2004 was adventurous. She married
Tim Yatcak among the giant Red Woods in California when she was nearing sixty. Tim
tells the story that she would hide the car keys so that he would need to join her in
walking “uphill both ways” to work on their community garden plot in Burnaby.
Always peripatetic, the longest Colleen lived in any one city was fifteen years. She went
to public school in Calgary, high school in Toronto, university in Edmonton. Over the
next decades, she had a wide range of non-traditional jobs in Montreal, Vancouver,
Toronto, Hamilton, Vancouver, and Burnaby.
She was a renaissance person; anything she set her mind to she could accomplish. After
getting a degree in Mathematics and Science at the University of Alberta, she moved to
Montreal where she soon became perfectly bilingual in English and French. On August
22, 1984, she and four other women won a Human Rights Tribunal against Canadian
National Railway, citing discrimination against hiring women. As a result of this
tribunal, CN was ordered to establish an Affirmative Action Program in hiring. Colleen
subsequently obtained a diesel mechanic certificate and worked for many years in
Montreal as a train mechanic. She worked the hot coke ovens as a Steelworker in
Hamilton, and assembling tractors in Vancouver.
Colleen came from a family of political activists and she certainly carried on the
tradition. She wrote articles for a small political weekly in both English and French, and
demonstrating against the Viet Nam War, the October 1970 War Measures act, and for
Native Rights. When she was just a baby, she was held in the arms of political activist
and singer, Pete Seeger, as he sang a lullaby at at Calgary concert.
All her life, Colleen loved a wide range of music: Blues, Jazz, Afrocuban, Classical – a
range of musicians from: Miles Davis and Charlie Mingus; Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchel;
Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Opera Atelier.
Colleen was always very determined. She was a perfectionist, who was always on the
Honour Roll in high school and exacting in anything she set her mind to. In the 1990’s,
she was exposed to dangerous chemicals in a Vancouver workplace resulting in
Peripheral Neuropathy. She was told she would never have a normal life again.
However, with her tremendous perseverance, she regained her health, retrained as an
Information Technologist, and became an instructor at the British Columbia Institute of
Technology in Vancouver.
Unfortunately, in 2011, she was diagnosed with Frontal Temporal Dementia, possibly
from the chemicals she had been exposed to twenty years before. Until the end, she still
loved music, however. As language left Colleen, music was a source of constant joy. Her
eyes would light up as she swayed to the World Music on the IPod provided by the
Alzheimer Society. In May 2016, she became a resident of Fudger House, in Toronto,
where she spent most of her waking time walking the halls. However, in September, she
fell and broke her hip. Being confined to a wheel chair was not Colleen’s style. Colleen
was no longer a woman in motion. One month later, she died.
She had been well looked after by the staff at Fudger House, who cared for her with
compassion and great skill. Just two weeks before she died, she celebrated her
seventieth birthday with her husband, Tim Yatcak, mother, Bea Levis, sisters Kim and
Dona Levis, and family friend Cate Young. Her childhood friends, Lynn Hutchinson and
Sara Sutcliffe were a great support to Colleen over the course of her illness. In August,
she had spent time with her brother, Jan and nephew Cal Scott-Levis. She will be missed
by all her family in Vancouver, Sean, Redonna, and Sean-Rae Levis, and friends and
family from far and wide.
A Celebration of Colleen’s Life will take place:
2 PM
Sunday, November 13, 2016
115 the Esplanade meeting room.
For more information, please call 416-767-8296
Memories of Colleen may be shared by emailing:
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