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JOCELYN ANN SMYTH (RADFORD)
Born: Jun 30, 1934
Date of Passing: Dec 21, 2021
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JOCELYN ANN SMYTH
(nee RADFORD)
June 30, 1934 - December 21, 2021
Raised in a working class family in Winnipeg, Jocelyn graduated in English / French from the University of Manitoba in 1956, awarded the gold medal for the highest standing over all Honours courses in the Faculty of Arts. After a scholarship year at the Sorbonne, she migrated to Toronto in 1958 where, inspired by a wonderful performance of Handel's Messiah at Massey Hall in December of that year --- and following a hurried February visit by concerned mother Evelina --- she married Bill Smyth in May 1959.
In addition to raising four children, Jocelyn contributed to editing and translation (English, French, Italian, Hungarian) over a 60-year period. With her family, she lived in the Canary Islands (where Alia was born), Rome, and especially Budapest, where she visited intensively with many friends over half a century (1969 to 2019).
In the 1960s / 1970s Jocelyn edited / translated for adventurous Canadian enterprises such as Peter Martin Books and the Readers' Club of Canada. Later, over a dozen years, she edited several series of children's books for Grolier. Her house in Toronto contained three thousand much-thumbed books in several languages.
Jocelyn's extraordinary life was shortened and diminished by a 1996 left brain burst aneurysm, from which she miraculously recovered after a three-month stay in hospital. Nevertheless, the effects of it remained and recurred periodically over the next quarter-century, almost certainly causing her death.
We miss her greatly.
As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Dec 29, 2021