Jean Margaret Milner
Wife, scientist, equestrian, diarist. Born on Aug.14, 1919, in Okotoks, Alta.; died on Nov. 21, 2014, in Toronto, of heart failure, aged 95.
In 1925, young Jean Pratt and her family moved from Alberta to Victoria. She showed early signs of being an overachiever: "personal best" was always her goal in every way. On Vancouver Island, she developed her fondness for horses, a lifelong passion.
As a child, Jean found she was allergic to muscle-fibre protein, which sparked an interest in nutrition. After graduating with a master's degree in agriculture from the University of British Columbia in 1942, she began working as a nutritionist at the Dominion Experimental Farms in Ottawa. There she met Jim Milner, a gold-medal law graduate from Nova Scotia working at the Wartime Prices and Trade Board.
Their interests matched in their love of poetry, a shared sense of humour, a progressive political attitude, and firmly held personal values. Jean was nervous about making a lifetime commitment to marriage, so Jim the lawyer proposed treating it as a 70-year contract. They eloped to Toronto and married on April 1, 1945, in a church not far from the street where, 14 years later, they would spend the rest of their lives.
Jim accepted Jean's passion for horses (they went riding in the Rockies on their honeymoon), and she understood his passion for the law. At war's end, Jim taught at Dalhousie University while Jean worked there as a lab assistant; when the university president found out, he deducted her stipend from Jim's salary. Soon after, they moved to Boston, where Jim earned his master's degree in law from Harvard University. He then joined the law faculty at the University of Toronto.
While living in the outskirts of the city Jim took an interest in town planning, and became an authority on the subject. Jean put her scientific skills to work as a part-time researcher in the UofT's faculty of medicine. In 1959, they decided to move closer to campus, and a friend told them about a short street of 1890s houses near the Rosedale Ravine. Collier Street had fallen on hard times, until a visionary architect made his home there and encouraged other young professionals to do the same. Jean was horrified, Jim was intrigued; their architect friend assured them their home would be ready when they returned from a summer of study in London.
The transformation of No. 137 from tenement to townhouse was featured in Canadian Homes and Gardens that fall, when it became Jean's treasured home. It remained so for more than 50 years. A few steps away is Milner Parkette, which honours Jim's eminence as a law professor and his service to city planning. Sadly, he died of heart failure at 51.
Now widowed at 50, Jean became a full-time epidemiology researcher at UofT, and co-authored a text on the subject. Well-respected in the department, she steadfastly declined to teach; but on her retirement at 65, she was awarded the honorary title of assistant professor.
She then redoubled her interest in photography and travel. She had a formidable memory and could recall conversations we had years earlier, whether "on the flight between Singapore and Mumbai" or "in that café that had a camellia bush in bloom at the door." She would sometimes consult her diary, which she kept for nearly 80 years, to be sure when the event took place. She was seldom wrong.
An invalid in her final years, Jean was determined to remain in her beloved home, and so she did. But in April, on the 70th anniversary of their marriage, her ashes will join Jim's in a niche in the rocks overlooking the sea at the Pratt family home near Victoria.
Chris Pratt is Jean's brother.