Joyce Howarth

Wife of Edgar, who predeceased her in 2008. Mother of Janet, who predeceased her in 1967; Neil, who predeceased her in 2003; Keir, who predeceased her in 2013; and David.

Margaret Joyce Howarth (née Longton) was born in Rishton, Lancashire in the north of England near to Manchester. She preferred the name Joyce and no one in her family ever called her Margaret. Her parents ran hotels in Lancashire and Joyce and her younger brother Edward were sent to boarding school at a young age. Joyce attended Arnold School in Blackpool and — being sporty and gregarious — loved her time there. Joyce was thirteen when war was declared in 1939. To avoid the Luftwaffe’s bombs, she spent her school holidays with her friend Mary Ivinson at her home in Caldbeck, Cumbria. Joyce’s brother Edward attended Kirkham Grammar school and was there mentored an older boy named Edgar Howarth. Through Edward, Joyce met Edgar. They were married in 1946 and remained so for 62 years until Edgar’s death in 2008 at the age of 83.

While studying at Atholl Crescent College of Domestic Science in Edinburgh in Scotland from 1943 to 1945, Joyce also contributed to the British war effort. Notably, she drove ambulances, transporting wounded soldiers from the port at Leith to the Royal Edinburgh Infirmary. After the war, Joyce returned to Lancashire where she had her first child, Janet, in 1947. Joyce and Edgar moved to Australia in 1952, where he took up a professorship at the University of Melbourne. In 1954, Joyce had her second child, Neil. Never content with the life of a stay-at-home mother, she worked part-time as a science teacher at a Melbourne secondary school (Mordialloc High). Joyce also played a lot of competitive tennis. She followed her husband to the US in 1959 (the University of Illinois, in Champagne-Urbana) and then on to Edmonton in 1960, where Edgar took up a professorship at the University of Alberta. Apart from two sabbatical years spent in England and the United States, Joyce spent the next 29 years of her life living in the Windsor Park neighbourhood of Edmonton. She thrived in Alberta as she had in Melbourne, Edinburgh and Lancashire. She had dozens of great friendships through her tennis, the Windsor Park Community League, and her active involvement in St. George’s Anglican Church.

Later in the 1960s, Joyce became mother to two additional children, Keir and David, who grew up in Edmonton. She attended the University of Alberta and obtained a Bachelors in Education but after a brief stint working at Harry Ainley High school, she decided that teaching teenagers was definitely not her thing. Joyce was always very active in the community. She was elected Windsor Park community league president in the early 1970s. In 1973, Joyce and her good friend Susan Secord (née Carnahan), were commissioned by the government of Alberta to research female volunteering. They produced the 1974 study ‘The Female Volunteer’. Following this publication, Joyce and Susan set up the volunteer services department at the WW Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, one of Western Canada’s largest Cancer hospitals, and the location of the University of Alberta’s Department of Oncology. Joyce served as the Director of Volunteer Services at the Cross Cancer Institute from 1975 to 1990. Her natural leadership skills resulted in her helping to establish a range of volunteer management professional associations, and her election as president of the Canadian Association of Directors of Volunteers in Health Care. She subsequently became the Vice President of the North American Association of Volunteer Administrators. She served in both positions for a number of years in the 1980s. Joyce obtained a certificate in hospital administration from the University of Saskatchewan and assumed responsibility for a number of additional services at the Cross Cancer Institute. When she retired in 1990, the Cross had one of the most successful volunteer programs of any hospital in Canada.

Despite her formal retirement and her move to Vancouver Island in 1990, Joyce continued her community engagement. On the island, she soon joined the Nanaimo Regional Health Board and was an active member of that board for over a decade. After a year in Victoria, she and Edgar bought a house in Departure Bay in Nanaimo in 1991, and then moved to the Terraces Strata in North Nanaimo in the early 2000s. Joyce was elected to the Terraces Strata Council in 2003, served for seven years, and was Council president for two. Her husband Edgar died in August 2008 after a decade of worsening Alzheimer’s. Joyce moved to Origin assisted living in February 2017 and then to Nanaimo Seniors Village Long-term Care in April 2019.

A woman of quiet, consistent faith, Joyce was an active member of the Anglican Church and regularly attended St. George’s in Windsor Park, Edmonton and then St. Pauls’ Church in downtown Nanaimo, where she served a number of years as a church warden. Joyce was also an engaged member of the Nanaimo branch of the Canadian Federation of University Women.

During her very active retirement in Nanaimo, Joyce formed a large number of new friendships, including those with Pat Radcliffe, Joanne Bevis and Pat Murray. Joyce lived in Nanaimo for a total of 32 years, from 1991 through to 2023. This was the longest she had lived anywhere. She greatly enjoyed her retirement there. Her three sons, their families and her Alberta-based friends, including Jackie Specken and Bea Grey (née Newbound) visited her regularly.

Until her 60s, Joyce’s main leisure activity was playing tennis. She was an active member of the Garneau tennis club in Edmonton. With the long and cold Edmonton winters, she also took up both cross-country and downhill skiing. She spent many winter weekends skiing around the parks of Edmonton’s gorgeous river valley and many winter and spring school holidays in the Rocky Mountains at Marmot Basin and Sunshine ski resorts. Joyce was also an accomplished pianist and continued to play well into her retirement despite difficulties caused by arthritis.

Joyce had her fair share of hardship during her life. She suffered debilitating arthritis from her fifties. She outlived three of her children. However, she was a wonderful mother and five times grandmother. She is survived by her brother Mr. Edward Longton and sister-in-law Jane, of Stainforth, Yorkshire, United Kingdom; her son Professor David Howarth, daughter-in-law Gillian and their children in Luxembourg; and her granddaughter, Katarina Howarth, who lives in Calgary.