BETTIE TAYLOR (nee GIDDENS)
Bettie Taylor passed away in Barrie on Remembrance Day at the age of 90. She was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario on June 13, 1924. Following the second war, in 1946, she married Stan Taylor, a marriage that lasted 68 years. A child of the Depression era, she ran a frugal and efficient household as the family followed Stan’s work with Ontario Hydro around the province, from Niagara to Dundas, Barrie, London and Toronto. Throughout these moves Bettie was the constant, reassuring centre of the family, providing school lunches and Sunday dinners always with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. She loved to travel, with family trips to Europe and then across Canada in the tent trailer, which offered her a perfect combination of independence and her own sheets and cutlery. After retirement in the 1980s, she also accompanied Stan around the world to CESO assignments in Ghana, Columbia, Dominican Republic and China. Bettie was a dedicated leader in the Canadian Girl Guides and also volunteered for the CNIB, Meals on Wheels and the Barrie Horticultural Society. She loved her home in Barrie’s Tollendal Woods watching the chipmunks and the nuthatches and listening to the cardinals call, and she took great pleasure watching her grandkids play in the lake at the cottage in the Algonquin Highlands. She was predeceased by her sister Myllie. Besides Stan, she leaves behind her elder sister Jean, sons Rod and Tim, her grandchildren Chas, Ben, Eric, Hadley and Will, and her great-grandchildren Grace, Oliver and Owen. At her request there will be no public funeral, however, if you wish to support one of Nan’s favourite charities with a memorial donation, please consider The Donkey Sanctuary of Canada in Guelph http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.ca/help-us .
She had a good, full life well-lived.
Night-night Nan, Mom, Bettie.