Margaret Joy Kanary

MARGARET JOY KANARY (baptized Margaret Josephine Kanary—JOY M. KANARY when she became naturalized) was born May 30, 1924, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia (the east side, Irish and Scottish), Canada.Joy was one of seventeen children born to her parents Thomas and Ellen Kanary and the last to have survived among the seventeen children. She and Gladys Rita were the last two children to born, Glad being the younger born nineteen months after Joy.The family homestead with its well-cultivated garden of vegetables was on a knoll overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, where male family members fished regularly providing fresh fish for the family. Joy skated on the ocean when it froze in the winter and was rescued once from near-drowning after falling into a fishing hole, the edge of which she hung on to precariously with mittened hands. She and Glad were educated together in a one-room schoolhouse holding numerous grades.

Joy was a faithful Catholic, who attended daily Mass at her last parish of St. Vincent de Paul, San Francisco. After working for Wells Fargo Bank for a number of years, she worked for and eventually retired from the City and County of San Francisco, where she enjoyed employment as a Secretary for the Board of Education. Joy was a great cook and baker, an avid golfer , frequently playing at Harding Golf Course in San Francisco, and swimmer, regularly at USF Swimming Pool (Jewish name?), and hiking at least once monthly on Mount Tamalpais, Marin County; and frequent dancing. She served as Secretary of Old St. Mary’s Center for Catholic Singles, which boasted an active membership of over six hundred women and men, and a waiting list of three hundred, for several terms. Joy was popular and received proposals of marriage, but the men did not measure up, and the two that did, in the view of this writer, Divine Providence stepped in to claim Joy for Himself. For about thirty-five years, she was dedicatedly involved in service to the Handicapables of SF, voluntarily lifting heavy wheelchairs into her car’s trunk and driving and returning the members with varying debilities each month. Glad joined Joy in her Marina District apartment after leaving Texas, and they lived together for x years until relocating together to Nazareth House , San Rafael, on September 10, 2003. Glady’s lengthy illness and demise on May 13, 2012, were two of Joy’s greatest sorrows, which she accepted helplessly though generously. Joy never complained and was marked with wit and wisdom, the former from her proud Irish heritage, and the latter from her modest and responsible upbringing. Joy’s character, in a word, was sterling; she had a very strong, trusting abandonment to and love of God and His holy Will and a genuine love of neighbor, including her dearest nieces Kristine and Kathleen Powell and blessed friends of over fifty years, Nadine Calliguri and Pete and Dee De Kroon.