July 12, 2019
Miki (aka Margaret Ann) passed away in her sleep Friday the 12th of July, on the birth-date of her late husband Bryce.
Margaret Ann was born in 1936 in Port Arthur, Ontario to Mabel and Walter Maybank and grew up in mining towns in northern Ontario and in New Denver and Nelson in the Monashee.
She first studied to be a teacher at UBC and Vancouver Normal School, and later did her Masters in Advanced Education at Gonzaga in Spokane.
Her first posting was in a one-room school house in Canal Flats. After that she taught in Vernon at Mission Hill when it first opened as an open- concept experimental school, most of her career at Silver Star Elementary, and an overseas year in Australia.
She was an extraordinary mother to her four children but it seems she was a mother figure to many others too; she expressed that through her careful and creative primary school teaching methods and the attention and mentoring she lavished on her many grandchildren.
Miki was an intrepid traveller all her life. Never one for regular tourism she found it par for the course to go camping with cats, to caravan with scores of kids, or go offroading in a Landrover. She took a year off to live in Europe, almost as long to cross Australia, and a month to cruise through the Panama Canal from Florida to Vancouver. After retirement she and Bryce, with other friends in tow, would often head south to Arizona, Mexico and the South Pacific, although she would never call it snow-birding (they were just other trips for her).
She was a fabulous cook and party-giver. Miki was a master entertainer at the family house on the lake. It was always full of visitors and kids running amok; she liked it that way.
From childhood she was a cat lover to bar none, a voracious reader and academic, a creative artistic talent, and a dear friend, colleague and confidant to many.
She is predeceased by five months by Bryce, her husband of almost 63 years.
She is survived by her four children, Patrick (Rob), Cory (Cecily), Jonathan (Pam) and Monique, her foster daughter Margie, and her eight grandchildren, April, Brittany, Chase, Patrick, Carlee Anne, Koben, Kiel, Bryce and three great-grandsons, Kaleb, Hunter and Phoenix.
Special thanks to Heron Grove and their conscientious staff, her physician of many years, Dr. Dyck, and her many care-aides including Niki, Judy and Vivian.
Miki was a force, an inspiration and a constant in so many people’s lives and is dearly missed.
There will be a Celebration of Life at the Vernon Golf & Country Club on the 5th of October at 14h00.
All friends, family and former colleagues are wholeheartedly invited, as are her many former students.
