Jean Eileen Koning

Jean Eileen Koning (nee Menzies) passed away on Friday March 22, 2024 at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre at the age of 101. She was predeceased by her husband Tony, her parents Thomas and Eileen Menzies, her brothers George and Ed Menzies and her sister Isabel Edwards.

Jean leaves behind her children, Stephen (Deborah) Koning, Valerie (Bryan d. 2020) Koning Keelan and Philip (Melinda) Koning. She will be missed by grandchildren Gregory, Daniel, Alice, Meghan, Geoffrey, Alan, Richard, Paul, Amanda, Ashley, and Andrew as well as 12 great-grandchildren.

Jean met and married Tony, a soldier with the Netherlands Army, in Stratford Ontario in 1942. In the early 1950s they settled in Huntsville, ON where Jean indulged her passion for dancing by teaching dancing to school-aged children and participating in amateur musicals. She also helped Tony with his accountancy business during March and April, income tax time.

As a couple, they were actively involved in the Anglican Church parish of All Saints and when Tony decided to train for the ministry in the 1960s, Jean became the bread-winner for the family, working for the Muskoka Children’s Aid Society. This exposure to at-risk families and especially children in under-privileged situations began to foster what would later become a strong sense of social justice and advocacy for those less fortunate than herself.

When Tony was sent to a parish on the Manitoulin Island, adjacent to the Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory, in 1966, Jean’s love affair (as she termed it) with First Nations Peoples began. She worked on the Reserve, first with the Children’s Aid Society and then with the Addictions Research Foundation and over the years, Jean came to believe that only by listening closely to the First Nations peoples would true reconciliation be achieved.

ln her later years, Jean's commitment to social justice and her concern for the homeless and dispossessed governed much of her behavior, but the foundation that directed her actions was her belief in God's guidance throughout her life's journey.

A Celebration of Jean’s Life followed by a reception will take place on Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. at St. John’s Anglican Church, 99 Brock Street, Peterborough. Memorial donations to the Anglican Healing Fund (www.anglican.ca/healingfund) would be appreciated by the family. Online condolences can be made at www.comstockkaye.com