ROSEMARY MARGARET DARVILLE

Adjust Text Size: A+ A-

ROSEMARY MARGARET DARVILLE

July 20, 1924 - March 23, 2023

Rosemary, also known as Rose, passed on at about 9:30 a.m. Thursday March 23, 2023. She was a patient at Cowichan District Hospital (CDH) in Duncan, British Columbia, where she’d been taken by ambulance on March 19.
In a previous recent stay at CDH, Rose had been found to have serious but unexplained anemia. After twenty days Rosemary had returned home, to be with her husband and care-giver Harry Berbrayer, and to receive three daily visits from Health Care Aides and, on occasion, nurses with Home and Community Care. After her return home Rose remained indoors, rarely leaving the bedroom. New medications included a daily iron pill. In February Rose began private, home-based physiotherapy. With medicines, care, and her own motivation and efforts, Rose was regaining strength and stamina and her capabilities were returning. Her spirit was alive as ever, as was her deep interest in others, and in world events. But by March 17 there was an obvious downturn in her health.
Rosemary was the first of two children born to Sidney and Margaret (Harrison) Darvill of Dartford, Kent, England. Her brother David, known as Dave, took his last breaths on December 5 2022, in the same Duncan hospital. Rose was born July 20 1924 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father, a professional flautist and violinist, was in what later became the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Both parents were musicians; Margaret was an accomplished pianist and accompanist, and had been and continued to be a music teacher. She had also been a pre-school teacher for over 10 years before marrying, and had established the first kindergarten in Dartford.
In the mid-1930s the family moved to Canada, following one of Margaret’s sisters and husband to Oyama, in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Rose and Dave left behind the Irish Sea, the walks on Cave Hill, the heather and the broom. (Years later, the Irish passport she obtained in 1994 became one of her most valued possessions.) Rose formed strong lifelong friendships in Oyama, and treasured the experiences of living in a small rural community. But with the start of the Second World War the family moved again, to Victoria B.C., where her father was appointed bandmaster of the Garrison (military) band.
In Victoria Rose and Dave completed their high school, and Rose graduated from teachers’ college. She also met and married (1944) James (Jim) Foort, who had grown up on Quadra Island. Rose and Jim’s first child, Heather, was born in 1945 in Victoria. Shortly after, the new family moved to Ajax, Ontario, where, in a post-war program for veterans, Jim studied to be an engineer. He later became a skilled, dedicated and inventive prosthetics engineer, moving with the family to work in Berkeley, California from 1953-63, and then back to Canada. He’d been recruited to become a co-founder and key member of Winnipeg’s Prosthetic and Orthotic Research and Development Unit, with an initial focus on the needs of Thalidomide children. Later, in the 1970s, Jim continued his work at University of British Columbia.
After a still-born child in 1950 Rose and Jim’s son Michael was born in 1951. In the 1960s, at Rose’s insistence and with Jim’s support, Rose and Jim adopted Ernest (Ernie) and then Peter. In 1970 Rosemary and Jim separated, and then divorced in the late 1970s. Rose later reverted to her original family name, but to its earlier spelling, of Darville.
Harry and Rosemary began living together permanently in 1976, and were married in 1981. Harry thanks Rosemary’s family and closest friends for accepting and welcoming him into their lives. Rosemary also felt very happy and grateful to be included and welcomed into Harry’s family, and to play supportive roles in their lives.

While in Berkeley, and after a long period of searching and discernment, Rose chose to become a Roman Catholic. Her Catholicism was soon to be of the Catholic Worker movement, Vatican II, the Berrigan brothers, Liberation Theology in Latin America; an engaged Catholicism seeking social justice. In Duncan years later, Rosemary was particularly glad to have discovered a small religious order of Franciscan nuns, the Poor Clares, and attended Mass with them until the Members of the Order were dispersed to other communities.
Much of her life Rose cared for many children. She had a deep concern with child development, and supporting and assisting children in reaching their fullest potentials. In some cases Rosemary became a kind of foster parent to one or another child or teen. It was in Winnipeg during the 1960s that Rosemary took a special interest in the writings and practices of pioneer Italian educator Maria Montessori (1870-1952). With a number of committed Winnipeggers, Rose was a founder of what became Children’s House, a Montessori pre-school. Rose began working at the school and, shortly after, studied and was certified as an early childhood Montessori teacher. She spent 24 years immersed in Children’s House. Each child there was special to her.
By the late 1970s Harry became increasingly concerned with the struggles by local peoples for justice and real progress in Central America. Rose came to be involved in the Refugee Committee of her church in Winnipeg, St. Ignatius. Eventually, Rose and Harry decided to sponsor in their home a refugee couple from El Salvador. The pair arrived in autumn 1985, and by the following summer had a daughter, born in the home with the assistance of a midwife.
Rose had wide and deep interests, in ideas, literature, music, and art. Rose had always been artistic and did most things with a flair, but after retiring from Children’s House she began to find time to express her creativity through water-colour painting, almost always spontaneously and much of the time out-of-doors. She painted until increasing blindness made it impossible to do so.
Rose loved the ocean, and being close to the water. The last home, in Maple Bay outside Duncan, was special for her. She could walk down to the water and swim out, and did so for many summers until the last few years. But it was in Italy, in a seaside town in Calabria, where Rosemary had felt the strongest need to stay. She was there twice for six months at a time, painted, walked, swam, shopped, made food, and formed a number of real friendships.
From summer of 1998 until mid-March of 2001, Rosemary and Harry lived in Jerusalem. Rosemary knew that rights and opportunities must be for all, and that there can be no lasting peace without justice. She therefore saw quickly and clearly that Palestinians were being oppressed by Israel, that this was occurring with the support of much of the world, and that Palestinians must be able to determine their own futures. Later, with Harry and others, Rose became a co-founder of Mid-Islanders for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, bringing speakers and films to public settings in Nanaimo, Duncan, and elsewhere, and publicly demonstrating for Palestinian rights.
Until her last few months Rose followed world and national news, with consideration and deep feeling, and continued to her last days to ask about events. She wanted an end to wars; true peace with justice, everywhere; that all children receive care, love, and assistance in reaching their fullest potentials and identities.
Rosemary embodied Love. Harry was terrifically lucky to have had Rosemary in his life, and to have had his life transformed by Rosemary. A number of people have said that they now have a new Guardian Angel. Her spirit was, and is, strong.
Mass has been celebrated by Father Robert Foliot, S.J., at the Martyrs’ Shrine, Midland, Ontario, on March 29 2023, and will be celebrated at St. Edward’s Catholic Church, Maple Bay Road, Duncan, at 9:30 a.m. on July 2 2023.
Predeceased by mother Margaret (1958), father Sid (1972), brother Dave (2022), first husband Jim (2020), grandson Martin Griller (1977), cousin Ian Hodsdon (2009), cousin Mary Pearl Aish (2013). Rosemary is remembered and missed in many places, by any number of people whose lives she touched. Those include immediate and extended family: husband Harry Berbrayer; daughter Heather and son-in-law Arnold Griller; son Michael Foort and daughter-in-law Carol; son Ernie; son Peter and daughter-in-law Anh; grandchildren Robin, Natalie, and Jennifer Griller; grandchildren Kyra and Amirah Foort; grandchildren Autumn and Ocean Baker-Foort; granddaughter Ayden Foort; and great-grandchildren Tori and Kali Stover, among others.
Rose was loved and will be remembered by members of Harry’s family, including David (and Nancy), Alison, and Karla (and Allen), and children Carolyn (Hartley), Joanne (Aaron), Emily (Ron); Corey and Samantha; Eyal (and Zoey), Micah, Per, and Meital.
Thanks to many, many nurses, aides, doctors and other staff at CDH. Rose would want in particular to thank her MD, Dr. Teresa Elliott. Thanks to the stellar and very hardworking Home Care Workers and nurses and other staff with Home and Community Care. Thanks to Evaleen Baker, low vision specialist, with Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada and CNIB. Thanks greatly to Sands Funeral Home (of Arbor Memorial) in Duncan.

Please go to: www.arbormemorial.ca/ and search for Darville to add comments, recollections, etc.

Sands of Duncan, 250-746-5212

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Jun 30, 2023, Jul 01, 2023