Tillie Sheppard
Mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, pierogie queen. Born on April 4, 1916, in Buford, Alta.; died on Oct. 25, 2015, in Toronto, of natural causes, aged 99.
Tillie would have liked to live to 100. It surprised all of us that she didn't. She never seemed old. She took the bus to go bowling and to play euchre with her friends. She built furniture, and moved furniture. She fixed things around the house, mowed the lawn, shovelled the driveway. She played with her grandkids on the carpet, flipping them over her shoulders.
The only time she showed her age was at the doctor's office. He'd ask if she had high blood pressure or diabetes or arthritis, and for how long. She'd answer honestly: "Oh yes [to all], for about 50 years."
Tekla Blonarowicz was the seventh of 11 children born to Ukrainian immigrants who built a farm in rural Alberta that is still in operation. From a young age, Tillie (as she became known in grade school) had to look after her younger siblings and cook to help feed the farm's harvesters, skills she would build into a legacy of delicious food and selfless care-giving.
Her first job away from home was cooking in the mess halls of Alberta's logging and mining camps. She gained a reputation for her soups, pierogies and quick wit. It was there she met Harold Sheppard, an engineer in the coal mines, whom she married in 1936 and with whom she had four children, Allan, Gordon, Sylvia and Richard.
After the children were grown, Tillie continued plying her culinary talents. She worked in many short-order kitchens, did cooking demonstrations for television and spent a number of years working in the kitchen and banquet hall of Jasper Park Lodge. In the early 1970s, one of her nephews moved to Egypt for work and Tillie went along as a nanny for his four children. She enjoyed the adventure, but her loyalty to family and her love of Canada brought her home.
Tillie moved into the Toronto home of her daughter Sylvia and son-in-law Les Segal, with whom she would live for the next four decades. She quickly become a willing Baba and helped to raise their three children (Jack, Rob and Jane).
She taught the children, and their friends, how to can tomatoes, sew their own pants, make cinnamon buns from scratch, and, most importantly, how to fold pierogies. While still able to travel, Baba would head to Alberta and British Columbia once a year to visit her siblings, her three sons and their families.
She was a constant source of unfiltered opinions – she acquired many over the course of her very long life – and her delivery was as humorous as it was blunt. One friend fondly remembered Tillie by saying, "While technically she was only your grandma, thank you for sharing her with all of us."
Baba proudly lived a very independent life until her final weeks. At 99, a bout of pneumonia sent her to hospital, and her declining mobility meant she needed round-the-clock care. After so many years caring for herself, and for others, it wasn't a welcome transition. Shortly after entering long-term care, she passed away peacefully, holding the hands of daughter Sylvia and the three grandchildren she helped to raise.
Jane Segal is Tillie's granddaughter.