Our dear mother, Merle, passed suddenly and unexpectedly on July 16, 2022, at home while watching a beautiful sunset from her balcony with loved ones. She had just pointed up to the sky and told her grandson that every night she looks at the North Star from her bedroom window and knows that one day, that is where she is going.
Mom was delivered at home, in the West End of Winnipeg, by a midwife on January 23, 1938. She was named Merle, which means blackbird. She graduated from Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute, where she proudly received her maroon “Flying M” for playing basketball, and where she met and later married her high school sweetheart, William (Frank) Routledge...