MARGARET ANNE SANDERS

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MARGARET ANNE (PEGGY) SANDERS (nee BARAGAR) Died peacefully, surrounded by friends and family, aged 93, on July 25, 2017 at the Meno-Ya-Win Health Centre in Sioux Lookout, Northwestern Ontario. She was predeceased by her husband Don in 1988. She is survived by four children, Jim (Barb), Ken (Syd), Peter (Carole) and Christine (Jim), and 10 grandchildren: Kathleen, Sheilagh, Don, David, Sam, Kaitlin, Diana, Anna, Charlotte and Isabelle. Peggy is also survived by her brother Fletcher. Peggy was born in Winnipeg to Fred and Edith Baragar, and spent summers at her beloved Winnitoba. She graduated from United College (University of Winnipeg) with an English and History degree in 1943, served in the R.C.A.F. (Women's Division) in Victoria, BC from 1943 to 1945, and graduated at the top of her class from University of Toronto's Faculty of Education in Toronto in 1947. Her uncle had been an early bush pilot in Sioux Lookout, so she chose Sioux Lookout for her first teaching position. She loved teaching and had devoted students who still called her 'Teach' well into their 80s. A fellow resident at her boarding house was a handsome, war-decorated bomber pilot and manager of the local Beaver Lumber, Don Sanders. A romance blossomed and they were married in 1949. It was a long, happy marriage of complementary strengths and shared values. Both Peggy and Don threw themselves into community work. Peggy transformed a tiny lending library into a full-scale public library. She was an incomparable story reader for children and an active member of the United Church, Racial Relations Committee, and hospital board. For many years she was an interviewer on the local radio station. She regularly visited the Zone Hospital (which served the many northern communities) to take pregnant women out shopping and to provide newborns with bonnets. For more than 40 years every child born at the Zone Hospital was outfitted with a bonnet thanks to Peggy and her knitting club recruits. Peggy has been called 'the mother of Northwestern Ontario'. Peggy was a lifelong reader. At the time of death, her home and cottage held 10,000 books and she was still searching for more places to fit a bookcase. She wrote a novel which was serialized in the Family Herald as well as several other novels that, to her regret, remained unpublished. Her knowledge of Canadian and town history, birds, trees, and flowers, was encyclopedic. She was much loved in her community. Peggy won many awards, including the Ontario Queen's Jubilee medal (twice), and in 2006, the Order of Canada. Her belief that connections are stronger than divisions inspired everything she did. A funeral will be held on Monday, July 31 at 10:00 a.m. at St. Andrew's United Church in Sioux Lookout. In lieu of flowers, please donate in Peggy's memory to the Meno Ya Win Health Centre or the Sioux Lookout Public Library through the Sioux Lookout Funeral Home, Box 1449, Sioux Lookout, Ontario P8T 1B9.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Jul 29, 2017