Kate's spirit of adventure was in part genetic: After her forebears came to North America, they travelled by covered wagon from Virginia to Missouri in the early 1800s, when the prairie grass was taller than most men.
Kate was the eldest of five girls - our farming grandfather was not pleased but accepted the situation good-naturedly. Raised on a farm in an era in which there were no school buses, Kate rode a horse to school. After attending college, she taught high-school English and music during the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In 1942, Kate married her childhood sweetheart, Otho Pence. "Penny" had joined the U.S. Army Air Corps and was soon shipped overseas. His plane was shot down over Tunis in 1943. After his death, Kate joined the American Red Cross and was sent to India. She travelled extensively and numerous artifacts (ivory and brass Buddhas, sandalwood camels, inlaid marble boxes) gave our suburban 1950s home an exotic eastern air.
One day in 1944, she and her friends met three English officers in (then) Bombay. One of them was Jim Malcolm, a 6-foot-7 Londoner. Kate was 5-foot-2. In 1947 they married in Brantford, Ont. - Canada being middle ground between London and Missouri. In 1950, they moved to Toronto; Kate lived in the same house until 2003. Kate and Jim had four children: Douglas, Victoria, Keith, and Nancy. One of our most cherished memories is of our mother playing the piano, quite loudly, while we danced madly around the living room to old chestnuts like St. Louis Blues. Kate was a homemaker until the early 1960s, when she returned to teaching kindergarten in North York until she retired in 1981. Jim died in 1977. In retirement, Kate pursued painting, music, gardening, and travelling.
In the late 1980s, Kate joined and eventually became president of a seniors' life-writing group. In 2004, she self-published her memoirs, just in time for a family reunion - she sold out the first printing.
In July, 2006, Kate fell in her apartment. Subsequent X-rays led to the diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. Deeply pragmatic and determinedly optimistic she called the diagnosis her "last great adventure." Kate's approach to death was an extension of her approach to life.
Last August, Keith, Kate's younger son, died suddenly. Kate, characteristically, tried to comfort the others as best she could. Several weeks before Christmas, Kate died in her home, surrounded by family and friends. At the funeral, her granddaughter, Gillian, played the processional, St. Louis Blues.
You could almost see Kate jiving her way to the pearly gates.
Douglas Malcolm is Kate's son