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Eleanor May (Monan) Ingalls

Educator, mentor, advocate. Born on April 9, 1925, in Regina; died on April 9, 2015, in Burlington, Ont., of natural causes, aged 90.

My mother was the only child of an immigrant from Northern Ireland and a Saskatchewan farmer's daughter. Eleanor Monan grew up in Regina, spending summers at the family farm. That house held a treasure trove for her: bookshelves filled with works by Thackeray, the Brontes and Margaret Mitchell, among others. Although she loved to learn, she hated school because she got good marks effortlessly, which drew the resentment of classmates. She would occasionally put the wrong answers on exams, noting later that "we pay a high price for approval sometimes."

Mom never wanted to be a "token" female in a male profession, which was why she declined a scholarship to the University of Saskatchewan's engineering school; instead, she enrolled in the faculty of household sciences and got her degree in 1946. She taught high-school home economics before taking a job as a nutritionist with the Saskatchewan health department, becoming its director of nutrition services in 1952.

At a football game in Regina, she met Carl Ingalls, who was training to be an RCMP officer; he was smitten at first sight, but her first impression was that he and his Mountie pals were a bunch of hooligans. After he completed a four-year posting in the Far North he returned to Regina, where they married when she was 30.

Dad's job as an RCMP officer took them to several towns in southern Manitoba, where she was the "unpaid second man," responsible for taking and dispatching calls and maintaining files. Once a man showed up at the detachment (actually their home), intoxicated and bleeding from a gash across his throat. She calmly invited him in, treated his wound and radioed for backup. This with two toddlers in tow, and a baby on the way! It's not that Mom was fearless – she was exceedingly afraid of heights and didn't know how to swim – but few people ever suspected her fears.

In 1962, her second son, Michael, died of leukemia at the age of four. The next year, Dad was transferred to Thompson, in northern Manitoba, at the time a rough, young mining town that was desperate for teachers. Partly as a way to deal with her grief, Mom returned to work, first as a teacher, then as a school principal. In 1969, she was named Thompson's superintendent of schools, one of the first women to hold that position in Canada. Determined to build a first-rate school system, she insisted on hiring full-time librarians, music, art and gym teachers for every school. In 1977, she became the first female president of the Manitoba Association of School Superintendents.

In 1981, Mom took a job in a smaller school district in Yellowknife, wanting to spend more time with Dad, who was in poor health. After she retired six years later, at 62, they were in the midst of moving to a new home in Duncan, B.C., when he passed away. In Duncan, she tutored students and helped to establish a day-care centre for teen mothers so they could complete their education.

Mom was an untiring advocate of causes born of her own moral compass and personal tragedies. Her eldest son had been diagnosed at the age of six with a debilitating mental illness and for the rest of her life, she campaigned to every organization and government official who she felt could improve care for the mentally ill.

In 2012, she was diagnosed with dementia, a terrible disease that slowly robbed her of herself. She died on her 90th birthday, to the exact day. A remarkable life, come full circle.

Trish Ingalls is Eleanor's daughter.

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