ISABEL KATHLEEN EDDY (née RACE)
At her home in Bathurst, NB, January 14, 2018, aged 95. She leaves her children Catherine, Bruce (Shelagh), Mary Jane Somers (Dan), and Richard (Sue Taylor); her grandchildren Sarah, Andrew (Marie Cheong), Katherine, David, Grace, Ian Lenihan (his mother Lynne), Patrick Rémillard, Caroline Rémillard, Michael Somers (Susana), Robert Somers (Erin), James Somers, Maggie (Kyle Murphy), Katie (Alexander Ednie), and Marian; her great-grandchildren Thomas and Angus McCallum, Finnegan Eddy, and Christian Somers; her nieces Judy Elliott (Gary) and Jane LeVan; and a host of other relatives and friends. Her husband Robert Cheyne Eddy died in 1986. She was also predeceased by her infant daughter Caroline in 1963 and her son John (Susan) in 2008.
Born in Brantford, Ont., she was the daughter of Wilfrid Ballantyne Race, the principal of the Ontario School for the Blind, and his wife Mary Dell Harkness. Isabel was much the youngest of the family, which included four half-siblings, Morley, Gena, Watson, and Dorothy (Ryerson), and her sister Virginia. She outlived all of them by many years.
After school in Brantford, she went to Queen’s in Kingston where she met Robert Eddy from Bathurst. They got engaged before Robert was posted overseas in 1942, sustaining the relationship by many letters. Isabel kept Robert’s letters and years later edited them, "Letters of a Subaltern," an interesting record of the war years from the perspective of two young people. Immediately after Robert returned, they married in July of 1945. After a year at Queen’s, they moved to Bathurst in 1946. The move was a surprise to Isabel, but she came to love Bathurst, where they raised their family and where she lived the rest of her long life.
Isabel loved her family and kept in touch with friends from every stage of her life. She always had her nose in a book—preferably British letters and memoirs, but she liked biographies of all kinds, provided they were well written. She was one of the founders of the Bathurst Centennial Library and a member of St. George’s Anglican Church, the Bathurst Heritage Trust Commission, the Bathurst Public Trust, and the Gloucester Chapter of the IODE. She loved her cottage at Youghall Beach in Bathurst, and for many years she had a winter home in Longboat Key, Florida.
She greatly appreciated the kind and skilful people who enabled her to live at home during these last few years, notably Jane, Sharon, and Connie, as well as the nurses and therapists of the Extramural program and her physicians.
Friends may call at Elhatton’s Funeral Home (www.elhatton.com) on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm or 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. The funeral service will be at St. George’s Anglican Church at 11:00 am on Wednesday, January 24, 2018. Donations in her memory to St. George’s Anglican Church or the Bathurst Heritage Museum would be appreciated by the family.
