Mary 'May' Poushinsky: the glue for family with Speyside and worldwide strands
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
A CENTENARIAN with close connections to Speyside and Moray has died in Canada.
Mary 'May' Poushinsky (Nee Macdonald) died peacefully on Valentine's Day.
Affectionately known as Mom and Baba, she had her daughter Barbara and two of her grandchildren, Natasha and Katya, with her when she passed.
May, who was 100, lived a big life.
Born in Aberdeen on May 30, 1922, she completed her schooling in Tomintoul and Fettercairn, and later trained in domestic science and teaching at Robert Gordon College in Aberdeen.
May met and married RCAF Officer, Anatole Poushinsky (Poush) in Scotland in 1944 and moved to join him, in Calgary in 1945. She felt so lucky and proud to be Canadian.
May and Poush had four children in Canada: Nick (partner Bobbi), Greg (Barbara) Jennifer (Sir Jim) and Barbara (Jeffrey). She was loved by 13 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren, all of whom revolved around the ‘sun’ that was Baba.
May was the glue for a family that resides in many countries and on several continents. Her home of nearly 70 years in Ottawa, where she lived and died, was the gathering point for family and friends, of whom she had many – she forged and sustained relationships that lasted for decades. This was because she was truly interested in learning about every person that she encountered and remember the most minute details of everyone’s lives.
May loved her crosswords, always querying her children and grandchildren about how they did in the morning Globe puzzles.
She leaves a legacy of propriety (she was, after all, Scottish), strength and love (the Scottish kind) and an honest and straightforward approach to life and to death.
She believed that all we can do is our best. And that wine should be had every day around 5 o’clock (a bit earlier in extraordinary situations).
The family hope to live as "courageously, honestly, and lovingly" as May lived, and to remember the happy moments that so often occurred at the big table when family joined in her love, and a game of Yahtzee or two.
May’s father, Joseph Macdonald was the bank manager in Aberlour for some time in the 1940s.
After leaving Scotland May and her family kept up their Scottish connections with visits to Findhorn and Aberlour.
During one of their visits, May’s daughter, Jennifer met and later married Jim Walker and has lived in Speyside ever since.
