KAY, Sybil - Sybil was born in Winnipeg on January 31st 1929, and died in Toronto on August 17, 2021, loved, admired, and greatly mourned. She was largely raised in Toronto by her loving and fiercely intelligent single mother, Tania, and nourished by a wonderfully close relationship to her grandmother and grandfather. This laid a foundation for her own strength, creativity, and capacity for love.
When World War II ended she went, at 17, to Cincinnati to attend university there before returning to Winnipeg. There she met and married Dr. Sam Kay, who had also just returned to the city from doing a surgical residency in Scotland after wartime service. They raised three sons in a household that was famously welcoming to the friends of their children.
As her sons grew older, she went back to university in Winnipeg, taking a BFA (First Class Honours) degree in Painting, studying with Ivan Eyre, principally. She painted all her life, passionately explored art in galleries wherever she and her husband travelled. Birthday presents for her were easy: an art book, a classical music album. Much later in life, at 90, at the urging of one of her grandchildren, she resumed making art, having stopped for a long time because of arthritis in hands and knees.
She died at 92, at home, living there by her fierce, independent choice. Her death was sudden, without long illness, hospitals, urgent care. She had said that was her hope, and it happened that way.
There are few ways to calibrate what a good or worthy life is that will not include the one she lived, and shared with those she loved.
She is remembered and mourned by her sons, Guy, Jeffrey, and Rex, her daughters-in-law, Laura, Denise, and Johanna, her grandchildren, Sam and Matthew, Zachary and Jordan, Tatjana and Zahavah, and by so many who met her through the decades, and remember her with affection and respect and, as a number have said, with a feeling of good fortune that she was a part of their life.
The service will be held on Sunday, August 22, 2021.
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