October 1, 1934 - February 25, 2021
Margaret Baltimore (nee Jones), born in Galahad, Alberta on October 1, 1934 died in Ponoka, Alberta on February 25, 2021.
Margaret grew up on a farm in Hastings Coulee with her mother Louisa, siblings Roger, Sidney and Eunice and her father Arwyn (when he wasn't away for work). After graduating high school she lived briefly in Edmonton with her mom while they both worked as telephone operators and Marg supplemented her income playing what she humbly called "semi-pro" softball.
A mutually indelible love with and marriage to Ken Baltimore, whom she met on a softball field a decade earlier, led her to the Yukon in 1955 for a nearly forty-year residence starting in an Airstream trailer in Destruction Bay before a decade in Haines Junction and a quarter century in Whitehorse. She flourished as a mother, a community social spark plug and an athlete, helping to establish and lead Girl Guides, attending four national softball championships with teams from the Yukon, and curling at any opportunity.
Not just endlessly curious herself, Marg had a passion for passing on its' benefits, perhaps first expressed by sitting in for short term teacher absences in school. She subsequently home taught two of her children kindergarten, then more formally taught local children in the Whitehorse United Church basement.
She took every available night course for some years before attending summer classes and two semesters at University of Alberta to earn her teacher's degree at 45. Her tenure at Whitehorse elementary schools gained her respect from colleagues and students. She was sought after by parents and administrators until she and Ken retired to Red Deer in 1993.
She possessed an artful proficiency as a pianist, an organist, a chorister, (she loved showtunes) a carver and collector of carvings, and a rugmaker. She was a birder and botanist and collected, preserved, and displayed flowers and butterflies (picture her burly husband weaving through a field wielding a butterfly net).
Not all was serious with Marg. In telling a joke she would get laughing too hard to speak which was funnier than the punch line she couldn't get to. She loved a game of "spoons" (a sort of combative version of musical chairs), antics like paying out a $10 bet with a thousand pennies frozen in a huge block of ice, practicing the shivaree (spoons drumming pots and pans to announce an early morning demand for breakfast from those suffering a birthday) and serving dinner to her husband's siblings and their spouses on a bare, plastic covered dining room table without benefit of cutlery or china. Nutty behaviours displaying her goal oriented, single-minded, get it done approach to life.
Marg and Ken enjoyed extensive travel through Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, often with one child or all, which broadened their perspectives with pleasures and challenges.
She demonstrated to her children her inherited Christian values of kindness and respect. All her family have deep sorrow at her leaving this world, but her burdens have passed. She knew she would be joyously re-united with loved ones.
To her family (voicing here the blessing of her presence) and to those who knew her, she lived every day as a gift, an opportunity. "Weekends aren't for doing nothing, they're for doing something different" she would say to her sometimes-reluctant children. She loved gatherings, the more the merrier, and strangers were friends she hadn't met yet. The joy she found in social contact was reflected.
Margaret is survived by her husband Ken, her children Anne, Glenys, and Kevin and their families. She will be laid to rest in Hastings Coulee where she and Ken have plots next to her parents.
In lieu of flowers donations to Alzheimer's Society, Sunnybrook United Church or Centennial Centre for Mental Health and Brain Injury are invited.
Ken Baltimore, 16 Abbott Ave., Red Deer, Alberta T4R 1B5
Sunnybrook United, 12 Stanton St., Red Deer, Alberta, T4N 0B8
Alzheimer's Society, 5550 45 St #1, Red Deer, Alberta T4N 1L1
https://alzheimer.ca/ab/en
Centennial Centre for Mental Health and Brain Injury, Geriatric Psychiatry Division
46 St. S, Ponoka, Alberta, T4J 1R8
We look forward to seeing friends and family when conditions allow us to gather and celebrate her life.
To view this obituary and leave a message for the Baltimore family please visit www.arbor memorial.ca/eventide and go to "obituaries".