Josephine (Joy) Sutherland was born on November 2, 1939. My mom always loved to tell a good story; one of her favorites was to tell us that she was born in the city of Trail (B.C.) because Nelson was closed that day. Joy began life with her parents near the farm her grandparents homesteaded in the Slocan Valley. Only a few months after she was born her father, Don Sutherland, along with his five brothers, left to fight in WWII. Mom and her sister, Leona, who was only a few years older, were left behind with their mother, Edna. Mom wandered the hills as a toddler -- she loved the animals and would wander in the barn to see the horses or help with the sheep. She would stand beside Grandpa Varney or one of the Uncles as they counted the sheep moving through the pens. She stood by calling out random numbers and by the third or fourth time she confused their count, she was sent on her way. The adults were busy with the farm work and mom’s sister, Leona, was usually expected to mind little Joy often searching high and low for her and the different articles of clothing that were discarded by Joy in her travels. One night Leona and Joy were awoken in the middle of the night and introduced to a man in their room. “Girls,’ they were told, ‘this is your father’. Mom was 5 years old.
Due to the long separation during the war her parents’ marriage ended. Joy and Leona were to spend the next few years shuttled between the homes of their grandparents. One day, Edna brought the girls to their grandparents in Nelson and registered them in school. The girls returned to their grandparents’ home that afternoon to find Edna was gone. They wouldn’t see her again for nearly two years. The girls were settled in Nelson when one day, Edna showed up at the school house door. She asked the teacher if Leona and Joy could speak with her. She told the girls to get their coats, calmly put them in the car and then drove away with them to Vancouver. Edna had remarried by this time to a miner, Gordon Christie. She had also been diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis). Edna’s health deteriorated over the next few years; Leona and Joy were in their teens when she left them both behind in Vancouver and moved to Spillamacheen, B.C. with Gordon. Leona in her late teens, was employed fulltime in a Vancouver home. Edna had found Joy a similar job in another home before she left but Joy was not able to meet the demands of a full time job and high school. Left alone in her early teens she moved several times over the next few years, finally living with Leona and her husband, Dick in Burnaby. At that time she found full time work at CNCP Telecommunications where she sent one of her first telegrams. It was to her mother and read ‘I have met the man I am going to marry!’ Too bad he didn’t know! But Mom kept up a strong willed campaign, marrying Bill Fox at age 18. Josephine Sutherland was now Joy Fox.
Joy and Bill had two daughters and raised them in the city of Burnaby. Mom had a very full life with her family and activities. Proud of her Scottish heritage, she drove her girls to Highland dance lessons and competitions. She coached our softball teams with Dad, organized church and school activities while at the same time breeding show dogs. At one time she bred the top Sheltie in Canada. Life was always full of adventures and exciting ideas with mom. Although she had very strict rules, she loved her music and at the drop of a hat, when a favorite song came over the stereo she would grab my sister or I for an impromptu jive in the living room.
Because of her own childhood family was very important to mom. Leona lived nearby and our families visited regularly. We also spent time with Mom’s sister Darlene and her family; Leona and mom had sisters Darlene and Donna, as well as brothers Ted and Doug from their father’s second marriage.
A lot of summer vacations were spent traveling to Nelson and Valican where we visited Aunts, Uncles and cousins from mom’s extended family. Although Mom was a city girl to us, she showed her country roots on a few occasions. One time in particular I remember her cousin Ernie challenging her to ride an ‘unrideable’ horse he owned. Mom climbed aboard and my father, sister and I watched as the horse reared and bucked with her on it’s back down the road into the valley. We lost sight of them but eventually the horse returned - riderless. Mom finally came walking back but spent the rest of the afternoon fitting her tall 5’11 ¾” frame (she refused to measure herself or admit she might be 6’) into a pair of her 5’ grandmother’s pants.
During the early part of my childhood our grandmother, Edna Christie, came to live with us. Edna was wheelchair bound and lived with us for the better part of a year until she eventually moved into a nursing home. Edna passed away from pneumonia related to her MS when I was 5 years old. Less than 10 years later my own mother would be diagnosed with MS.
Looking for cures, Mom and Dad tried many alternative treatments, including apia therapy (bee stings), macrobiotic diets, acupuncture, muxibustion, allergists, naturopaths and experimental drugs. I remember my teenage years with changing diets; my sister and I had to grind wheat daily for special home made bread. We were experimented on with many unusual recipes; a lentil and bean meatloaf experiment that we couldn’t even trick the dogs into eating is one meal that still comes to mind!
I have to say that Mom had MS but the disease never ‘had’ her. Her condition continued to deteriorate but even when she was wheelchair bound she was always willing to try something new. With my three young children, Mom and Dad took us camping for five weeks across Canada and the States on two different occasions. We ran into many obstacles with that wheelchair. We ended up pushing and pulling her chair into every tourist trap and non-wheelchair friendly restroom we found on that 16,000 km journey. At one point we flipped our van on a highway in Saskatchewan. We spent the next three days trying to figure out how to get home: Dad and I had given up but mom made her own plans. We were in a new van and on our way again with the help of many people in that little town. Mom never complained but some of the incidents that happened on those trips became funny stories only after the passing of a few years!
My mother spent 26 years living with MS but when the end finally came we were totally unprepared. We took mom to the hospital concerned over a respitory problem, within hours she had slipped into a ‘coma’. My Dad, sister Sandra, Leona and I took turns holding her hand and exchanging memories and stories. She fought for a week while we sat by her side in that hospital. She still had that strong will to live her life but finally slipped away from us on March 18 , 1999.
One thing I want you to know about my mom is how passionate she was about things; and hard she worked to have a full and happy life. My mom along with her mother, Edna, also shared a love of storytelling. To this day no one in our family has ever heard the punch line to any joke either of them told. They both began to laugh so hard at the beginning of a joke that, try as they might, they could never deliver the punch line. We all were caught up in the breathless contagion of their laughter, laughing at a joke that had no ending.
There’s a line to a song that always makes me think of Mom in the last few years of her life. The song goes “Her life wasn’t easy, Lord, but oh how hard she tried’. I think of that line and remember my mom; her love of family, the joy of her friends and her deep faith in God that made her strong and kept her going. If you could have seen her smile… like myself… it may have caused you to ‘Run for Joy’.
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