MARIAN FRANCIS YEO

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MARIAN FRANCIS YEO Marian Francis Yeo, age 86, died peacefully at the home of her daughter after a long illness. Marian was well-known in Winnipeg for her work as a feminist, political activist, art historian, writer and critic, and was a tireless champion of social justice and change. She supported the rights of women, and numerous left-wing political causes, launched a landmark exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and wrote numerous articles for prestigious art publications. Marian was a warm, cheerful and gregarious person who loved people and enjoyed her family and friends. Her keen intellect, her curiosity and love of learning informed her values and her social interactions. She always felt an obligation to help others and improve the human condition. She was active in supporting labour, protesting war and working for social and cultural causes. She hosted many memorable parties at her home on Grosvenor Avenue. Marian was part of a group of writers who founded Canadian Dimension Magazine in 1963 and was hired as its feminist editor. Her long dedication to social justice led Winnipeg's activist community to honour her with Canadian Dimension Magazine's first annual Person Who Changed the World award in 2004. In her work as an art writer and critic, Marian contributed to many art journals in Canada and the United States and her writing appeared in exhibition catalogues of the Winnipeg Art Gallery and 1.1.1 Gallery at the University of Manitoba. In 1975, she and an artist friend, Sharon Zenith Corne, coordinated Woman as Viewer, a historic exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It was the first national show to work to erode destructive stereotypes of women and present authentic images of women's experience. It won critical acclaim in the Winnipeg Free Press and the Toronto Globe and Mail. In 1978 Marian organized another successful event, the Festival of Feminism, which featured distinguished panelists, such as Germaine Greer and Henry Morganthaler. Marian was honoured on International Women's Day in 2007 by the Grassroots Women, MB, a movement which she helped to organize, honouring women whose lives are lived in the best of struggles and, in May 2010, she was presented with a plaque by MAWA, recognizing her as a founding foremother of women in the visual arts. Marian was born in Winnipeg on April, 1925. She taught herself to read at an early age and remained a life-long reader. She attended local schools and United College briefly where she became an early member of Baha'i World Faith. Later, after she had her family, she returned to school and earned a master's degree in history and continued her studies on the doctoral level. At the same time, she worked as an editor and writer for her husband's business, Mercury Publications. Marian was predeceased by her parents, Beatrice Pirie and Frank Metcalfe, and her husband Grenville Robert Yeo. She is survived by a sister Barbara Germain and brother Frank Metcalfe; a half-sister Debbie Metcalfe and two stepsisters, Margaret Fenton and Elizabeth Dasinger. She leaves four children, Monty Woodman and Maggie Paskaruk, from a first marriage and two sons Robert Grenville and Frank Yeo from her second marriage; four grandchildren James Paskaruk, Martha, Michael and Oliver Beach-Yeo, and four step-grandchildren, Josh, Natashia, Ben and Jamie. A memorial service will be held at the Plug-in Gallery, where Marian had been a board member, on Tuesday, November 22 at 4:00 p.m., at 460 Portage Ave., second floor.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Nov 19, 2011