Patricia Mary Murray

Published on 10/07/2021

MURRAY Patricia Mary (married name Maika) was born on February 19, 1929 in Bournemouth, England. She died peacefully with her children by her side on May 20, 2021 in Kamloops, B.C. She is predeceased by her four siblings—Andrew, Michael and John Murray and Anna Browning. She is survived by her children—Paul (Heather), Patrick, Timothy (Leigh Ann), Christopher, Frances and Julia Maika; her grandchildren—Nobalee, Allan, Zoë, Samantha, Josephine, Aliyah and Rosie; and her former husband and father of her children, Dominic (Nick) Maika.

Patricia grew up the eldest in a working-class Anglo-Irish Catholic family in Bournemouth. She was academically gifted and earned a scholarship to Talbot Heath Independent School for Girls, graduating with her A Levels in multiple subjects. She trained as a nurse and midwife in London, England before immigrating to Canada in 1953. She worked as a registered nurse in London, Ontario; Calgary, Alberta and Chemainus, B.C. where she met her husband, Dominic. They shared a love of good parties and the Gulf Islands. After a courtship spent on the dance floor or fishing and camping in Nick’s homemade boat, they married in 1958 in Bournemouth then settled in Ladysmith, B.C.

Patricia and Dominic raised their six children together in Ladysmith, Squamish, Penticton and Salmon Arm. Patricia was involved in the Catholic Church and continued to work as a nurse as her children grew. In the mid-1970s she discovered the Women’s Movement which reawakened her ambition to pursue an academic career. She earned a B.A., B.C. Teaching Certificate and an M.A. in English at Simon Fraser University. She worked as an editor, wrote book reviews and a book on Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, taught English at Malaspina College then Kwantlen University until she retired from Vancouver to Gabriola Island in 1995, fulfilling her lifelong dream of returning to the Gulf Islands.

Patricia lived a full and long life in which her family, literature, opera, cooking, theatre, style, and art played major roles. Her response to everything was to read. She loved the English language and had a mastery of it that was paralleled by few. Woe betide the person (even her children) who tried to best her in a battle of words or wits.

Mummy, you were a mother like no other. We will miss you immeasurably and always.

“I ask, if I shall never see you again and fix my eyes on that solidity, what form will our communication take? You have gone across the court, further and further, drawing finer and finer the thread between us. But you exist somewhere. Something of you remains.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves.

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