Lucy (Edith) Maud Thompson

Edith was born in Kingston, Ontario on October 6th, 1935 to Hugh and Lucy Thompson (nee Gall).  Hugh was a carpenter on the railways and Lucy was a homemaker.  Hugh died of cancer in his mid 50's while Edith was living in Hong Kong - a regret she held her entire life as she was unable to be with him when he died.  Lucy, or 'Mother Thompson' as she was always referred to, was a very proper lady who lived independently well into her 90's. 

 

Edith was one of four Thompson children (Joan, Jim, Edith and Loraine) who were raised in the small village of Havelock, Ontario.  Edith appreciated a loving relationship with her siblings and her parents.  She particularly enjoyed doing carpentry like her father, much more than she enjoyed doing the more home-making types of tasks undertaken by her mother. ​It was in Havelock that Edith first met Paul Newman, as teenage Paul moved into the town and became friends with Edith's brother, Jim.  

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Growing up in Ontario gave Edith a love of fresh blueberries, corn, and red maple trees in the fall.  Her favourite pie was raspberry with blueberry a close second. She was particularly fastidious when it came to properly cooking fresh corn on the cob (exactly 12 mins - no salt in the water) and would often recount the belief she felt as a child, of being expected to eat her height in corn ears when it was in season.

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Edith initially trained at Peterborough Civic Hospital to be a nurse, graduating in 1956, the year before Paul and Edith were married.  Edith worked as a nurse for several years while Paul pursued his degrees at the University of Toronto. She also continued doing nursing work in St. Andrew’s Scotland while Paul completed his Ph.D.  While Paul and Edith were living in Scotland,  Edith and a friend decided to go backpacking and hitch-hiking throughout Europe as Paul put the finishing touches on his Ph.D. thesis.  At one point Edith and her friend had to jump out of a moving vehicle to avoid the advances of the male driver who had picked them up and being relatively fearless, they simply continued their adventure undeterred. 

 

In 1966, shortly after Paul defended his thesis and they returned to Canada, Paul and Edith packed up their very young family (Simone 1 and Greg a few months old) and moved to Hong Kong to serve as United Church missionaries for the next 10 years at Chung Chi College - one of three foundation colleges of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Edith spent most of her time in Hong Kong raising their 2, 3, then 4 children (Simone, Greg, Rob and Sean).  In recent years, Edith experienced hip pain that she directly attributed to lugging 4 children up 76 stairs from the parking lot to their Hong Kong flat.

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In 1973, while the Newmans were still living in Hong Kong, Paul and Edith and their four little kids, who were now all under the age of 8, took a trip to Thailand and traveled by train from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur. During the trip guerillas boarded the train. The first time the guerillas came on board, they demanded passports from all the travelers and only returned them after receiving payment. The next time the guerillas boarded the train, Edith took all the passports and jammed them under her shirt telling them they could come get them if they were so inclined!  Thankfully, they backed down, took their machine guns and left the young family alone. 

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Tragically in 1975, days before the Newman family was to move back to Canada, Robert died when he slipped and fell into an open rainwater culvert while taking a short cut through the forest near their home on Chung Chi campus. Rob was heading to the university swimming pool to enjoy a final swim. He was 8 years old. Everything had already been packed and shipped to Canada, so the family had to deal with unimaginable grief as they left their memories of Hong Kong and tried to adjust and settle into what was to be a new life in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The reason to move back to Canada was to have access to a stronger support system that Edith and Paul felt their 5 year old special needs son, Sean, would need to succeed in life.  

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In Saskatoon, Edith worked as a social resource worker with Community Aid for several years, but in 1983, just as Greg graduated high school and was entering university, Edith felt the calling to enter the ministry and enrolled at St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon where Paul was a Professor of Theology. She graduated four years later, obtaining her Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1987 and was ordained as a minister with the United Church of Canada. 

 

After convocation Edith started applying for ministry positions anywhere in Canada. She had spent much of her adult life supporting Paul’s work/schooling needs, and they both felt it was time for her new career to direct where they would live moving forward. From 1987 - 1994, Edith was the Minister at Garden City United Church in Victoria BC and retired in 1997 after serving 3 years at Plura Hills United Church in Kamloops, B.C. 

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Being unable (or unwilling) to lie or tell an untruth resulted in Edith sometimes being perceived as brutally frank. Usually she was able to temper the truth she felt obligated to reveal by also showing you that she held immense respect for you. She would quite literally give you the shirt off her back, but she would not tolerate, nor could she herself, lie.  Paul used to comment that not being able to lie made it very difficult for Edith to play any type of game that required "fibbing" and as a result, she was particularly terrible at games like Balderdash.  

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Edith loved baseball and was an avid Toronto Blue Jays fan. Looking forward to watching and dissecting every televised curling tournament with family and/or friends gave her immense pleasure.  She loved planting flowers at their home in Sooke and cooking/baking for family and friends. She learned how to authentically cook Chinese food while living in Hong Kong, but was unable to find many of the ingredients once they moved back to Canada to keep up the effort.  She was always game to try out a new recipe, including those she would often clip out of the Sooke Mirror (newspaper), and she maintained a few specialties over the years.  One was the family doughnut recipe, which had been passed down to her from her grandmother and that she diligently passed down to her children and grandchildren. She loved making lemon poppyseed cake for Sean's housemates year after year, shepherds pie for her grandchildren, traditional sukiyaki on special occasions, which was Paul's favourite, and Jamaican meat patties as a special meal for the family at Christmas time.  On Boxing Day, she would make 'Jook' (Cantonese), a thick rice and ginger soup made from homemade stock using the leftover Christmas turkey carcass.  For some unknown reason, when company visited, she often insisted on making something she called "creamy egg" for breakfast. While there are those (i.e., Sean) that LOVED creamy egg, many others just never learned to appreciate just how creamy "i.e., raw and gelatinous" the eggs actually were!  

 

​Edith was a loving mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, intensely interested and invested in both the successes and struggles of her loved ones.  She differed from Paul in her approach to grandparenting, in that she sat back and waited for the child to become accustomed to her before directly engaging with them. It didn't make the resulting relationship any less strong, but it spoke to her nature of not wanting to impose herself on anyone. She was a steadfast advocate for her grandchildren, known for writing personal notes to teachers when she perceived the homework levels levied on her grandchildren was overly taxing.  She was highly perceptive, spending hours and hours musing over not just the physical, but the emotional well-being of her family and friends. She was, however, also able to effectively rationalize things into perspective and understand how to protect herself from things out of her control. 

  

Edith was a strong, exceedingly kind, independent woman who lived her life under the guiding tenant of providing service to others, with a particular fondness for helping those whom others tended to outcast from general society.  She was socially conscious and fearlessly outspoken when it wasn’t a particularly trendy characteristic to possess.  She had a very quirky and dry sense of humor. She loved crunchy peanut butter and had a serious sweet tooth, enjoying Boston creme donuts and sugar laden hazelnut coffee; Reese peanut butter cups; rum and cokes and Kahlua and milk. Her order of choice when eating out was a spicy Caesar and calamari. 

 

Edith was an unapologetic smoker and started smoking at the age of 14.  At one point she posted a sign on the front door that read "Thank you for smoking" and for years sported a pin on her jacket that read "Second-hand smokers should pay half!"  Many of her most enduring and supportive friendships were forged within a smoking circle. 

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After Paul's death in September 2022, Edith was left alone with her memories in Sooke.  In March 2024, the loneliness became too much for her and she made the very difficult decision to leave Sooke and move into assisted living at Marrion Village in Victoria. ​The transition to this final phase of Edith's life was not easy.  She initially struggled to find ways to cope with the stress of moving to live among people who did not know her past, the deep and inspiring relationship she had shared with Paul, her strong connection to family who lived far away, and the palpable loss she was feeling about leaving her Sooke home and friends.  She was forever thankful for the warm embrace that the smoking circle at Marrion Village extended to her.  Participating as a member of a small group had always been a place she felt very comfortable, and she loved making new relationships and getting to understand a person on a deep personal level. At Marrion Village, the smoking circle bonded firmly and allowed her to do just that.  ​

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At the age of 89, Mom suffered a heart attack in early July, which the Dr.’s determined would affect her strength and stamina and, in her words, “her independence”. While it wasn’t the catastrophic ending mom (and dad) had always hoped for, mom was confident and at peace with her request for MAID (medical assistance in dying).  Mom spent her final day surrounded by love, listening to stories, laughter, bagpipes and having her hand continuously held. When we asked mom if she knew she was loved, she commented with a smile “I know, and for that I am eternally grateful”.

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Known for calling everyone "love"; having a loud, spontaneous and raucous laugh and a tendency to loudly and frequent exclaim "Holy Hell!" when she found herself surprised; mom's favourite salutation when saying goodbye to loved ones was a gently delivered "Love each other - take care of one another".​

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Mom's request for any kind of a memorial or celebration was to include the song "Give To Us Laughter" as well as the ending of the United Church New Creed, which dad had a hand in creating.​

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..."In life, in death,

in life beyond death,
    God is with us.
We are not alone.

    Thanks be to God."