Obituary of Irene Roy

Roy, Margaret Irene

1927-2024

With great sadness, the family of Irene Roy announces her death in Saskatoon on April 12, 2024, surrounded by her family.

Irene lived a long and beautiful life, filled with family, art, books, and growing things. She was the eldest of eight children raised by her parents, Anne and Aloysius (Louie) Schnell, on a farm near North Portal, Saskatchewan. She completed high school in Estevan and then worked as a teacher in North Dakota. In 1949, she met and married Wilfred Roy, who had served in the RCAF during the Second World War. They had a wonderful life together, raising their six children and farming near Lampman, Saskatchewan, in partnership with Wilfred’s brother George and Irene’s sister Patricia.

As well as cooking creative meals and caring for her family, Irene created an oasis on the farm, planting hundreds of trees and building a rock garden filled with beautiful plants. She was a visual artist, working in water colours and oils and then turning to fabric art, first with batik and then for many years with exquisite, complex quilts. She was a voracious reader, reading the best of new fiction in Canada and around the world. She loved listening to classical music and the Saturday afternoon opera, and she enforced an “only CBC radio in the house” rule. At the same time, Irene was very much involved in the Lampman community, serving on the local and regional library boards, participating in bridge clubs, and working tirelessly for the Lampman Legion Auxiliary and Catholic Women’s League. One of her memorable accomplishments was designing the stained glass windows in the Lampman Catholic church. In 1993, she visited her grandparents’ village in Ukraine, and in recent years she was very troubled by the conflict there.

As her grandchildren and great-grandchildren arrived, Irene enjoyed spending time with them and keeping up with their activities on social media. When Wilfred declined in health due to Alzheimer disease, she cared for him lovingly for fifteen years. In her later years, she moved to live in a house in Estevan, and then to Saskatoon. Looking out over the river from her beautiful apartment, she continued to quilt and then turned to creating smaller fabric wall hangings as quilting became more difficult. She involved herself in the community at Riverside Terrace, participating in the bridge club and the reading, singing, and scrabble groups, and of course planting a container garden, until declining health made these activities impossible. Irene especially enjoyed watching the sunset over the river, as she had over the west-facing pasture on the farm.

Irene is survived by her children, Remi (Natalia Grebenuk), Jennifer Miller (Garth), Jeffrey (Shirley), Jocelyn Ayers (Larry), Marcia Hirsch (Stanley), and Wendy (Garth Cantrill), as well as by her siblings Patricia Roy, Gerald Schnell, Richard Schnell, Marlene Lisafeld, Paula Fischer, and David Schnell. She is lovingly remembered by her grandchildren Uliana, Vladimir, Alexandra, Tim, Rhett, Nolan, Desai, Tamara, Kristen, Meagan, Dagan, Rachel, Kara, and Meshon, as well as by seventeen great-grandchildren, and by her sisters- and brothers-in-law and many loving nieces and nephews on both the Schnell and Roy sides of the family. She was predeceased by her parents and by her husband, Wilfred, her grandson, Aaron Hirsch, her great-granddaughter, Olivia Hirsch, and her brother, Raymond.

The family would like to thank the staff at the palliative care unit of St. Paul’s Hospital. A memorial service is planned for the Lampman-Estevan area this summer. Those wishing to make donations in Irene’s honour may do so through the Alzheimer Society of Canada, the Canadian Cancer Society, or a charity of their choice.