Obituary of Helen Audrey Sutherland

Watch recording of service at https://video.ibm.com/embed/recorded/127597912

With great sadness the family of Helen Sutherland announces her passing.  
 
Helen Audrey Currie entered the world in Lone Rock, Saskatchewan, the first of six children born to Jim and Mildred Currie. In 1936 the family moved to a farm near Delisle, Saskatchewan, where she attended school, graduating in 1948. Her childhood coincided with the tremendous upheaval of the Depression years and the Second World War, and her family was as poor as any and poorer than most. Her parents became active in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, with her father, at one point, running future Premier Woodrow Lloyd’s election campaign. Both Lloyd and Tommy Douglas, premier at the time, were occasional visitors to the family home.  
 
Bright, lively and beautiful, but a self-described wallflower, she continued on to teachers’ college in Saskatoon, where her circle of acquaintances included Don Sutherland, who was studying at the College of Vocational Agriculture. No sparks flew between the two, but those developed after her first school proved to be Thistle Dale, a one-room rural schoolhouse overlooking the North Saskatchewan River valley, near Borden. She was assigned to board at the home of Don’s parents.  
 
The two were married in 1952, a happy and highly productive union that yielded eight children and provided Borden and district with dynamic and committed leadership. Helen led the local 4-H Homecraft club for many years and was active with the United Church Women, among many other activities. In the late 1960s she founded the Borden Library, serving as librarian for almost a quarter century before shifting her focus to the Borden Museum, which she presided over until her mid-80s.  
 
Always a dedicated gardener, Helen became a farmer in her own right as child-rearing duties began to recede, with a plantation of saskatoon and other berries. For some two decades she was a fixture at the Saskatoon Farmers Market, selling fresh and preserved fruit, pies and flower arrangements picked from her vast and impeccably tended garden. After Don died in 2002, she moved her enterprise to the new Borden Farmers Market, which she helped to found.  
 
In 2009, after several years of living alone in the farmhouse, she bought a vacant lot in Borden, and instructed youngest son Scott to build her a house, despite the presence of an ephemeral stream that had repelled others. Duly set on a concrete pad, with no basement, the cottage was designed to her specifications, with a large sunroom for her house plants. To widespread wonder, there was never a square inch of lawn. Instead the entire lot was planted to flowers and vegetables, with a stone channel in the creek bed, which was soon upholstered in native reeds, ferns and grasses.  
 
Helen lived as happily in Borden as she had on the farm, finally determining in 2018 that the community could possibly be trusted to manage itself in her absence. She purchased a suite overlooking the South Saskatchewan River at Luther Heights, a seniors community in Saskatoon’s Richmond Heights neighborhood, and moved there in September, soon joining the writers’ group and gathering many friends. Although her mobility became quite limited, her overall health remained good until a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer this spring. During her last few weeks, she reveled in the love and attention of her now vast brood, and greatly appreciated the enlightened Luther Heights management, which allowed appropriate visitation under the current trying circumstances. 
 
Helen Sutherland was predeceased by her parents, two of her five siblings, two grandchildren, Nicholas and Sandon Sutherland, and her husband of 50 years, whom she loved with a passion until the moment of her own death. She leaves a sister, Marie Winsel, and two brothers, Gordon Currie (Donna) of Delisle, and Keith Currie (Carole Olafson) of Edmonton. Her own children include Jim Sutherland (Jessie Horner) of Vancouver, Ian Sutherland (Shelley), Dawn Morgan 
(Ron), Kevin Sutherland (Michelle), and Anne Westad (Lindsay), all of Saskatoon, and David (Michelle), Glenn (Sheri) and Scott Sutherland (Sonia), all of Borden. She leaves 19 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.  
 
A memorial celebration is planned for Borden on the date of her 90th birthday, July 26, if circumstances allow. 

In lieu of flowers please donate to the Borden Museum (Box 5 / Borden, SK. / S0K 0N0) or a charity of your choice.