Dorothy Louise (Tasker) Jefferies - 1919 to 2022

In her 103rd year, Dorothy Louise (Tasker) Jefferies was the wife of Arthur William (Bill) Jefferies (1915-2002), mother of John (Sheryn) of Orillia, James (1947-2017) of Oakville, David (Gail) of Collingwood, Grandmother to David (Andrea) of Orillia, Kristin (Patrick) of Chelsea Quebec, Kathryn of Orillia, and Amy (Darrin) of Orillia, Kimberly of Sault Ste. Marie, Erica (Owen) of Pickering, Emily of Ancaster,  Great Grandmother to Aria Jefferies of Orillia, Tegan and Ross Henry of Chelsea, Quebec,  Bella Francis of Orillia, Sadie Davis of Orillia, Annie and Helen McCarty of Sault Ste. Marie, & Jackson Reid of Pickering. 

Dorothy was born at 123 Carrick Avenue in Hamilton only child to James and Amy Tasker on Valentine’s Day, 1919, during the worldwide flu pandemic that followed the end of WW1. During the 1920’s she suffered three life-threatening illnesses which required her to be quarantined for typhoid fever and shortly following for scarlet fever and measles. She attended Adelaide Hoodless Public School, Delta Collegiate, and then McMaster University in Hamilton.

She learned to play piano and sang in church choirs and school performances from a young age. Following graduation from McMaster University, she undertook voice lessons in Hamilton and passed the voice examination from the Toronto Conservatory of Music (forerunner of the Royal Conservatory). She met her future husband at Ontario Teachers College in Toronto. 

As an only child, she had a very close relationship with her numerous first cousins, the Furmingers and Stewarts, in St. Catharine's. These close friendships remained well into her adult life. Each summer during the 1920s and 30s, she would return with her mother to assist in the Furminger family farm harvest, packing peaches and other fruit for shipment to Toronto from Port Dalhousie. 

She was pregnant with her first son John when her husband left for military service in England in 1942. When he returned as an officer to oversee troops guarding the power installations at Niagara, she lived near him at Niagara on the Lake. Following the war, she lived in Iroquois, Ontario, with Bill's first teaching job. When Bill was hired to teach at Upper Canada College, they returned to live in Toronto on Glengrove Avenue, where her two sons, Jim and David, were born. She earned income as a paid soloist at several churches during this time. Dorothy then followed her husband to summer camps, Haliburton, Kilcoo and Taylor Statten and many car camping expeditions. 

With some regret, she moved to 1304 Cumnock Crescent in Oakville in 1952 when her husband took up his teaching position at the newly expanded Oakville Trafalgar High School. Dorothy and Bill maintained a bountiful vegetable garden on their one-acre property. But with a population of only about 6000, the isolation and absence of friends in Trafalgar Township on the eastern edge of Oakville made her long for her former life in Toronto. Activities with the University Women's Club and singing performances with Oakville Arts & Crafts Centre on Reynolds Street and at the Oakville Club became some of her primary community social activities. She was a supply teacher at Oakville high schools from time to time.

Over her 70 plus years in her adopted town, she developed many close lifelong friends and learned to love Oakville. Starting in the 1960s, she travelled extensively in Europe and led a student tour. After her husband retired, she led tour groups for the Retired Teachers of Ontario. They eventually joined the Granite Club in Toronto. 

When her middle son Jim was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the late 1960s, she and her husband Bill began a desperate search for new and emerging treatments with the hope of a cure. She travelled to New York City with Jim in an attempt to achieve an alternate diagnosis. In the mid-1970s, she again travelled with Jim to Saskatoon for mega vitamin treatments with Dr. Abram Hoffer. When none of their efforts to return her son Jim to full health were successful, she worked with her husband, Bill. She worked closely with Dr.Philip Seeman at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto to gain funding for research for the causes and cure for schizophrenia. They worked together in establishing the Friends of Schizophrenics, with the first meetings held at St. Jude’s Church in Oakville. They then worked to establish the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario and then for Canada, as well as family-based schizophrenia societies in provinces across the country. They helped in founding the World Schizophrenia Fellowship. They provided continuing support for their son Jim throughout his life. 

After Bill’s death, she moved into the Granary Condominium in Oakville and, there, made many new and loyal friends that sustained her in the last 20 years of her life. She was an active member of the Oakville Opera Guild. She spent many summer weeks on Lake of Bays, swimming at the Jefferies family cottage and joining son John to attend the Festival of the Sound each year in Parry Sound. She maintained her driver’s license until the age of 100. Her Christian faith and dedication, and love for her family remain an inspiration to all who knew her. 

Following a fall in October of this year, she was admitted to the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital and then transferred to Champlain Manor in Orillia, where she died on December 3rd of natural causes. A special thanks to Dr. Alexandra Ginty and the Dorval Medical Clinic team for years of attention to her healthcare. Also, thanks to Grace Surphlis, Auriel Haenisch, Fatima Pereira, Linda Crone and Nancy McNicoll of Oakville for their wonderful assistance that allowed her to remain living in her condominium home during the last years of her life. 

A funeral service will be held at St. Jude’s Anglican Church, William Street Oakville, on December 22nd at 1:30 pm. Immediately following, there will be an internment where her ashes will be placed in the St. Jude’s Memorial Garden. Following the service, a reception in Victoria Hall will be held to celebrate her life with the Jefferies Family. Donations can be made to the Schizophrenia Society of Canada or the Canadian Wildlife Federation, Kanata, Ontario.