August 3, 1922 – December 20, 2022
With deep sadness, the family of Lilyon Sutherland announces her passing peacefully on Tuesday, December 20, 2022 in Hospice at Mission Memorial Hospital, at the age of 100 years.
Lilyon was born in Southwark, the east end of the city of London, England. Her father died when she was about three years old, and her mother struggled to keep her. Lilyon lived mostly with her grandmother who she hated because she beat her and treated her badly. She was passed around to various relatives until the age of six when she entered Russell Hill Boarding School for girls in Pearly, Surrey. Before he died, her father had registered and paid for Lilyon’s full attendance until she graduated. Shortly before starting school, Lilyon had been taken in permanently by her mother’s sister, Alice and husband, Chud both of whom Lilyon adored. While never formerly adopted, Lilyon considered them her parents and their only child Brenda, her sister. She would go home to them on school holidays and for the first time in her life, felt like part of a real family.
Once she had finished her education at boarding school, the school found Lilyon a job as a model & salesclerk at Woollens in London. Woollens at that time was considered a high-end department store that sold clothing to debutantes who were presented to the King. Lilyon would model the clothing for the would-be buyers and in fact was the first in the store’s history to model a two-piece bathing suit. She loved that job which seemingly launched her lifelong love of fashion and clothing and a long career in fashion retail.
When war broke out and Lilyon was on her own living in London, Alit, as Lilyon called her, summoned her home to be safer from the bombing. Lilyon loved Chud dearly and looked up to him as a member of the Royal Navy. She decided to follow in his footsteps and join the Women’s Royal Navy and become a wren (WRN).
She was accepted, trained and almost immediately, at the age of 21 was shipped to Durban, South Africa where she was stationed for the duration of the war. She worked in Materials and apparently her favorite duty was dispensing rum to the sailors as their reward when off-duty.
Soon after arriving in Durban, Lilyon and a friend were enjoying an evening out in a bar. She was spotted from across the room by a young, very shy, well-dressed civilian. Donald Sutherland liked the looks of this pretty sailor girl, but too bashful to ask himself, he got his friend to ask the two to join them for a drink. The story goes that Lilyon liked his tie and his manners, so accepted. They dated and in June of 1945 married in St. Joseph’s Church in Durban.
The newlyweds had been married a little more than a few months, when Lilyon was called back to London to get “de-mobbed” (the process of being discharged from military duty). This took two years, and the couple were separated by thousands of miles.
Finally, they got back together and started a family in Durban, where Anthony and Patrick were born.
Later, Donald took a job in a copper mine in Northern Rhodesia which provided a brand new 3-bedroom house and two months of vacation a year when the company flew the family back and forth to England. In Northern Rhodesia, the family continued to grow where Linda and Anne were born.
Though Lilyon loved her life in Africa, she was growing more and more homesick. Meanwhile, talk of Northern Rhodesia, a colony of Britain at the time, looking for independence made Donald unsure about the future of the company he worked for. So, the family of six packed up and moved to England in 1959.
Shortly after the move to England, Donald’s best friend Tom, a friend he considered more like a brother, moved his wife Renee and four sons from Northern Rhodesia to England. Tom and Renee were both originally from England.
When the Beatles were just beginning to take North America by storm and had already dominated the British pop charts for a couple of years, Tom and Renee decided they wanted to try a new life in Canada. Renee had a sister who was a war bride to a Canadian soldier during the war and they had settled down and raised a family of four in London, Ontario. So, London seemed to be a logical landing spot for Tom’s family.
Tom wrote back home to Donald describing their new life and higher standard of living in glowing terms. Donald recognized he could make a better living in Canada for his family than he could in England. England’s economy was slow at the time, which wouldn’t pick up for another decade or two.
Donald talked Lilyon and the kids into moving to Canada. The deal was that he and the boys after the school year was over would move first to find work and get established. Lilyon and the younger two would stay, and Lilyon would sell and pack up everything, which she did. A few months later the family was united in London, Ontario.
Donald and Lilyon made their first trip out west and both fell in love with Vancouver which reminded them of Durban. Donald and Lilyon paid another visit, this time spending time in Mission. This visit cemented their idea of retiring out west, even though it meant leaving their friends of 40 years and their only grandchildren behind. They had both been growing increasingly tired of the humid summers and harsh snow driven winters – the main reason Linda had moved away years earlier.
They bought a house and rented it out until their retirement. When Donald retired, they sold the house and purchased a newly built home to live out their retirement years.
Throughout Lilyon’s life, she easily made friends wherever she lived. She joined groups and clubs and even at the age of 65 when she moved to Mission, she made new friends who were with her to the end. She volunteered at The Cottage and started to bring home broken dolls to fix up. She would wash them and make a new outfit for them, then take them back to the cottage to re-sell.
She began to lose her hearing, but that didn’t stop her from her many activities of playing cards, crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, knitting, gardening or line dancing. Sadly, she began to lose her sight and grudgingly had to give up many of those activities, but not before knitting hundreds of sweaters and baby clothes for family and friends over the years, and more recently, baby toques for the newborns at Mission Memorial Hospital.
Everywhere they lived, the family was expanded by one, two or three cats at a time. Lilyon was a fanatical cat lover.
She loved to travel. Donald would surprise her quite regularly with a cruise to Hawaii, one of their favorite destinations. They did make it to his homeland of Australia shortly after they retired.
Donald passed away on January 17, 2014.
Lilyon moved into Carrington House a few years later until December 9, 2022, when she was taken to Emergency and a week later moved to Christine Morrison Hospice.
Lilyon will be lovingly remembered by sons Anthony, aka Tony and Patrick (Fay) of London, Ontario; daughters Linda (Gary Bendickson) and Anne (Arthur Rennie) of PEI; grandsons Kirk (Martha) and Blake (Erin) of Ottawa and 3 grandchildren Emma, Abby and Benjamin; many friends who were so good to her in her last few years; one nephew and 2 great nephews in England.
Lilyon is predeceased by Donald, loving husband of 69 years, her biological parents and adoptive parents Alit and Chud, sister Brenda and brother-in-law Alan.
Plans for a memorial will be made in the New Year and announced then.
The family would like to thank Dr. Siemens, the staff at Carrington House, Home Support, Dr. Barwick, Dr. Mandaloon, and the staff on the second floor and especially Hospice for their care and compassion.
COMPARTA UN OBITUARIO
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