Obituary for Claire Mulhern
Claire MacMillan was born on December 12, 1924 on a rural Ontario farm halfway between Montreal and Ottawa. She was the eldest of three sisters and a brother. The rustic upbringing without electricity resembled the idyllic fantasy we now have of farm life. Her stories from that time focused on playing in the corn fields with her sisters, and tales of the working dogs and working cats aiding the family. She told of the winter months when traveling to church required going in a horse drawn open sleigh with the only source of heat being a brick warmed by the home fire wrapped in a towel and put at her feet.
She often told the classic story of having to walk miles to school, and it was uphill both ways. Amazingly that was true. The house and the school were at the tops of different hills, so you did have to walk uphill both ways.
It was a hard life with dangers we no longer face. Claire survived scarlet fever. Her brother, Jack, had polio and needed help until he eventually learned to walk again. This created a family bond that lasted all her life.
She began very much as a home-body. She often described crying from the separation while she spent the weeks boarding in a local convent during high school, only coming home on the weekends.
Her world began to expand during WWII when she finished high school and moved to Ottawa to work for the Navy. There she worked coding and decoding messages between the Ottawa headquarters and the Canadian ships at sea.
After the war she moved to Montreal, sharing an apartment with her sisters. There she took a secretarial job for a notary. She also did volunteer work, and one day she was working in the main railroad station doing sewing repairs for the soldiers returning to the country. One young man asked if she would be willing to sew a button for him even though he was not a serviceman. She agreed and they started to talk. Four years later she married John Mulhern.
They started out in a small apartment, both working hard to make ends meet. Claire continued to maintain close contact with her family and Scottish roots in the Ottawa Valley with frequent trips by train to the family homestead. The next big change in their life came a year and a half later when they were blessed by their first son, Kevin.
During the next seven years they worked and saved enough to buy a house, and moved in weeks before the blessed arrival of their second son, Peter. They did well, and were even able to buy a car a decade later.
Life always brings surprises, and in 1970 John’s company relocated to Vancouver, and the family moved west, settling in Coquitlam in the house that Claire would live in for the next forty years. She made frequent trips back to her original home to remain connected to her family and to her roots. But the move to the West Coast also marked a time of her branching out.
She took the opportunity to expand into new things. She began by working part time in retail, but soon found her real niche was in volunteer work. She combined this with an expanding social sphere with her new church family. She joined the CWL, later the 55+ group, and participated in many events. She would make sandwiches for the poor, and worked as a sorter and greeter at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. She was always available to help in Church functions when asked. She loved it. She loved the people she worked with and they became her closest friends.
Again, nothing is ever perfect. She was a breast cancer survivor. In 1997 she lost her husband of almost 48 years. Her response was to decide to live life to the fullest.
Claire’s life expanded in 1998 when daughter-in-law Kellee (Peter’s wife) was added to the family and then blossomed upon the arrival in 2003 of her twin granddaughters, Susan and Laura. She referred to them as her “honeybears” .
She took the attitude, “I will never turn down an invitation or opportunity”. She traveled with the church groups to the U.S., and cruised to the Caribbean and to Hawaii. With her eldest son she traveled to China, Scotland, England, Italy and the Vatican. The farm girl whose world started out being walking distance from her house ended up as a world traveler.
Her last ten years were marred by progressive Alzheimer’s Disease. Claire ended her days by passing peacefully in her sleep in a Care home on August 10, 2021 at age 96.
She often told the classic story of having to walk miles to school, and it was uphill both ways. Amazingly that was true. The house and the school were at the tops of different hills, so you did have to walk uphill both ways.
It was a hard life with dangers we no longer face. Claire survived scarlet fever. Her brother, Jack, had polio and needed help until he eventually learned to walk again. This created a family bond that lasted all her life.
She began very much as a home-body. She often described crying from the separation while she spent the weeks boarding in a local convent during high school, only coming home on the weekends.
Her world began to expand during WWII when she finished high school and moved to Ottawa to work for the Navy. There she worked coding and decoding messages between the Ottawa headquarters and the Canadian ships at sea.
After the war she moved to Montreal, sharing an apartment with her sisters. There she took a secretarial job for a notary. She also did volunteer work, and one day she was working in the main railroad station doing sewing repairs for the soldiers returning to the country. One young man asked if she would be willing to sew a button for him even though he was not a serviceman. She agreed and they started to talk. Four years later she married John Mulhern.
They started out in a small apartment, both working hard to make ends meet. Claire continued to maintain close contact with her family and Scottish roots in the Ottawa Valley with frequent trips by train to the family homestead. The next big change in their life came a year and a half later when they were blessed by their first son, Kevin.
During the next seven years they worked and saved enough to buy a house, and moved in weeks before the blessed arrival of their second son, Peter. They did well, and were even able to buy a car a decade later.
Life always brings surprises, and in 1970 John’s company relocated to Vancouver, and the family moved west, settling in Coquitlam in the house that Claire would live in for the next forty years. She made frequent trips back to her original home to remain connected to her family and to her roots. But the move to the West Coast also marked a time of her branching out.
She took the opportunity to expand into new things. She began by working part time in retail, but soon found her real niche was in volunteer work. She combined this with an expanding social sphere with her new church family. She joined the CWL, later the 55+ group, and participated in many events. She would make sandwiches for the poor, and worked as a sorter and greeter at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store. She was always available to help in Church functions when asked. She loved it. She loved the people she worked with and they became her closest friends.
Again, nothing is ever perfect. She was a breast cancer survivor. In 1997 she lost her husband of almost 48 years. Her response was to decide to live life to the fullest.
Claire’s life expanded in 1998 when daughter-in-law Kellee (Peter’s wife) was added to the family and then blossomed upon the arrival in 2003 of her twin granddaughters, Susan and Laura. She referred to them as her “honeybears” .
She took the attitude, “I will never turn down an invitation or opportunity”. She traveled with the church groups to the U.S., and cruised to the Caribbean and to Hawaii. With her eldest son she traveled to China, Scotland, England, Italy and the Vatican. The farm girl whose world started out being walking distance from her house ended up as a world traveler.
Her last ten years were marred by progressive Alzheimer’s Disease. Claire ended her days by passing peacefully in her sleep in a Care home on August 10, 2021 at age 96.