January 25, 2022
Peggy Douglas passed away on January 25, 2022 at the age of 98 in South Surrey, BC. The mother of Rod (Carmen Montoya), Pierre Home-Douglas (Jocelyn), and Susan, and the grandmother of Allison, Ariel, and Cooper, Peggy was one of the quickly fading number of World War Two veterans. After a very challenging childhood—her brother Peter once commented 'We were poorer than the poor'—she enlisted as a wireless operator in the air force in England in December 1941. Her job: conveying messages to Allied bombers and intercepting messages from German aircraft.
She moved to Canada from London in 1948 with her new husband, John Home-Douglas, and all their worldly possessions in a couple of suitcases. They knew virtually no one in their new country. John worked his way up the corporate ladder and they moved from Vancouver to Montreal to Moncton to Toronto to Winnipeg and back to Montreal. The marriage eventually fell apart. Peggy remarried. That didn't work out either so she sold her house in Senneville (Montreal), put her stuff in storage, and with a few possessions in her Suburban—including a mattress—she drove across Canada by herself alone in 1988. She was 65.
She didn't know where she would live but she couldn't see spending her final days as a unilingual Anglo in wintry Quebec. She figured our own home province of BC was a good choice. The trip took 9 days. At night she camped out in her truck. She stayed for a couple of days with an old friend from our Vancouver days in White Rock, BC and found a condo which she quickly bought. She later shipped out her furniture from Montreal.
She spent 30 years living by herself, driving until she was 90. A great lover of trees, birds and animals. A voracious reader, indefatigable marmalade maker, and, true to her British heritage, a champion tea drinker. And stiff-upper-lip-British tough. When she had a knee replacement at the age of 84 she took no pain medication, a fact that gobsmacked her physiotherapist.
And then, as it often does, life closed in on her with various fall and increasing frailties and the indignities of old age. Her neighbors Cliff and Evelyn were a great help but finally she had to move and accept around-the-clock care, helped by the wonderful nurses and staff from Fraser Health. She still derived pleasure from the smallest thing--the touch of a baby someone brought to see her--but reading and then even watching TV became too taxing. Finally, she gave up eating. Can't believe she's gone. Farewell, Mum.