Dorothy Millar Osborne-Stewart, 22 April 1934 - 16 April 2011

I am sad to announce that my mother, Dorothy Miller Osborne-Stewart, passed away on 16 April 2011 at the Peter Lougheed Center in Calgary following a brief battle with cancer, at the age of 76 years.

She was born in Darvel, Scotland on 22 April 1934, the daughter of James Miller Osborne and Dorothy Asquith. She was evacuated to Loch Katherine during World War II, attended school in Musselburgh, East Lothian, and worked as a golf caddy at Gleneagles, before moving to Glasgow, where she studied nursing. After living in Hainault, Cumbernauld and Cambuslang she immigrated to Port Arthur, Ontario on 27 June 1967, and in Thunder Bay she became very well known in the community for her professional social work, particularly tending to the needs of the homeless and the abused. She opened Thunder Bay’s first shelter for abused teenage girls, and subsequently two shelters for battered women. In the late 1970s she was the first person in Ontario to be granted a divorce for mental cruelty. In 1980 she met John Stewart, marrying in 1985 and eventually moving to Winnipeg, where she was the founding director of that city’s Ronald MacDonald House. In 1986 she moved to Manitou and retired with John, her cats, and her dog. Following John’s death she moved to Coleman, Alberta in 1997, where she lived with her beloved dog Kelpie and devoted herself to her garden and her cooking.

She will be dearly and deeply missed by her children, Haroon Akram-Lodhi of Toronto and Soraiya Boland of Calgary; and by her grandchildren Cameron Lodhi and Róisín Lodhi, both of Toronto.

A person with a profound sense of warmth and generousity to all, she was predeceased by John in 1990 and her sister Margaret in 2010.