Nancy Page (Ballard) Stuart-Stubbs

It is with great sadness the family of Nancy Stuart-Stubbs announces her passing. She lived a good and long life, facing many challenges along the way, but left the world a better place for her being in it.

Nancy was fascinated by her genealogy, and her ancestors included revolutionaries and heretics, pilgrims, pioneers, community leaders, a harbour mistress, entrepreneurs, travellers, and artists. You could find a little of all of these in Nancy. Her avocation to explore, learn and give back guided her.

Nancy was born and raised in Seattle, and moved to “Funnybrook Farm” in Issaquah, Washington as a young teenager, though she continued to travel back and forth to the city to the high school her father had attended. It was also the family expectation that she attend Stanford University. There she took a degree in Economics, not common for a woman in the early 1950s. She continued her education at McGill University, receiving a degree in Library Science. In Montreal she met and married Basil, and together they moved to Vancouver, where they both pursued their careers – he in the academic library system, and she in the public library system. She was one of two VPL librarians to work in all three Main Branches, starting her career at Carnegie Library in 1956. She worked part- and then full-time while raising daughters Megan and Kathleen Amy. She loved her work and made many friends in the Business and Economics and History Divisions at the Central Branch but was thrilled to spend the last years of her career in the Local History Room, where she could be closer to the history of her pioneer relatives around the Salish Sea.

She described her life in retirement as her second career and worked as a volunteer in the education program at the Museum of Anthropology for 23 years. She was particularly interested in and committed to sharing the stories and artifacts of the First Nation peoples of B.C. and equally committed to working toward reconciliation with the First Nations and Japanese communities. She needed to put this work aside when she was 88, but was very proud that she could still walk from one end of UBC campus to the other to meet her weekly commitments at the Museum.

Nancy loved to travel and particularly loved the North. She took trips to Haida Gwaii, drove the Dempster Highway, visited Baffin Island, sailed to Greenland on a small ship, and embraced the Nordic landscape in her soul.

She is remembered by Megan and Nick and will always be the cherished “Mormor” to Alex. Her brother Tim, niece Jenny and the American relatives as well as her Stubbs nieces and nephews, her friend David, and her laneway neighbours will all miss her. She was predeceased by her daughter Kathleen, her “erstwhile” husband Basil, and her life-long friend Robin.

The family is grateful for the support Nancy received to continue to lead an independent life through COVID and beyond. Thanks to Crofton Manor, Verity Home Care, Paula and Maryam, and in the last months, the caring staff at Sunrise of Vancouver.

The family would also like to acknowledge the care and kindness of the doctors, nurses and support people at Vancouver General Hospital. Donations to the Vancouver General Hospital Foundation would be appreciated.

A Celebration of Life will be held in the coming months.