Dear Margaret Ann and Christopher,

I was shocked and saddened to hear of your mom’s illness and passing. Once we left Ontario and moved to Michigan I totally lost contact with your family, but I cannot forget that our two families were intimately joined in the early years. 

I stood with you and your mom, watching the excavator break ground for Burnside Academy. At that time my role was to help with your care, while your mother pursued her dream to put all her amazing teaching insights into practice at her “wee school,” as she fondly called it. I have countless memories of your lives, intertwined with my own children’s lives, especially with David’s and Nancy’s. I used to pile the four of you into our little Volkswagon, and trundle off to shop in Ajax, or explore the Toronto zoo. I remember one time an old man asked, “How did you get so lucky?” He thought I had two sets of twins!!!!

But, after your dad’s accident my role—and my life—changed, because to free your mother up to visit your dad in hospital, I literally walked across the road and began teaching. In the next few years your mother trusted me to follow my instincts and do child-centered teaching. She supported me with state-of-the art resources and allowed me to innovate and do whatever it took to connect with children who had not done well in other settings. I was totally untrained at the time, but now—a Ph.D in teaching behind me—I look back at the educational opportunities she offered as nothing short of ground-breaking and cutting edge. There are children (such as Ross Evans, and a boy named Lloyd) whose lives were changed because of that school, and her legacy lives on through them. I’m certain of it.

Returning to the personal side of your mom, I recall how she was “there,” for the Loates children, in ways that went FAR beyond her role as teacher, long after Burnside was a sweet, but distant memory. And, in ways neither you nor my own children could have understood, just as I was “there” for you, especially during the adjustment to your dad’s injury, she was “there,” for me during some very challenging times. 

Yes, our lives, in those early years were deeply connected, and although that changed as life went on, the memories of those times spent together are indelible. I am humbled to have known your mother, a great teacher, mother and friend.

May precious private memories sustain you in the difficult days ahead.

God help and bless you,

Love, Marjorie Cooper