Suzanne McCarthy: Sad News
From: http://mountpleasantgroup.permavita.com/site/SuzanneEthelwynMcCarthy.html?s=110
Suzanne Ethelwyn McCarthy
December 14, 1955 – June 12, 2015With deep sadness and love, we announce that Suzanne Ethelwyn McCarthy, née Hayhoe, passed away at the Dorothy Ley Hospice in Toronto, after a long struggle with breast cancer.
Beloved wife of Jay Frankel, beloved mother of John Cormac McCarthy and Helen Eva McCarthy, beloved mother-in-law of Lindsay Marie McCarthy, beloved grandmother of Wyatt Hudson Cormac McCarthy, and beloved sister of Doris Morris [Bill], Elizabeth Francisco [Bruce], Ruth Hayhoe [Walter Linde], Douglas Hayhoe [Maurita], Alice Hayhoe, Cecil Hayhoe [Joan], and Louise Sinclair [Blair].
Suzanne was born in Toronto on December 14, 1955, the seventh of eight children of Richard Scott Hayhoe and Doris Emilie Guignard Hayhoe. After attending Humberside Collegiate Institute, in Toronto, where she studied several languages, among other subjects, Suzanne specialized at the University of Toronto in the study of linguistics, French, German, Greek, and Hebrew, and for a year pursued French-language biblical studies at Institut Emmaüs, in Vevey, Switzerland. In 1978, she received her B.A. in Classics and Modern Languages from the University of Toronto as a French Specialist. She pursued further studies there, focusing on the teaching of primary and secondary French, and receiving a diploma in Teaching English as a Second Language, in 1979. She received her M.A. in Education from the Franco-Ontarian Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, at the University of Toronto, in 1994, writing her thesis on the Cree syllabary and writing system.
Suzanne was an authority on the history of biblical translation as well as written language systems. In addition to her scholarly contributions to understanding the Cree writing system, she was an incisive critic of the recent movement in some circles to translate the Bible in ways designed to reinforce and sanctify the submission of women—the topic of her book, whose publication we look forward to.
Having worked as a French teacher, Suzanne later worked for many years as a teacher of children with special needs in the Vancouver, BC school system. She loved the outdoors, especially the woods, and was also an avid reader and an elegant, graceful writer and poet. She faced her long final illness with characteristic courage and dignity. She was an honest, forthright, humble, respectful, and kind person, and her active love for her children and others in her life was her foundation for living.
BLT 
So very sorry to hear this, and so very grateful to have benefited from her life, as have countless others. Memory eternal; her soul shall dwell with the blessed.
Dana
So sorry to hear this sad news of her passing.
That is sad news.
I’m grieving. This woman was one of the blessed souls who impart freedom and dignity to others, and her influence on my life is profound, even though we never met personally.
I am so sad to hear of this.
I am sad at this. I had hoped to meet her in person in Vancouver or Victoria some day. I wondered why I had not heard from her for a while. I didn’t know she was a Hayhoe. I knew several of this family, among them some friends in Ottawa, Toronto, and Saint John. Though I did not subscribe to their readings of the Biblical text, I was intrigued by their diligence, and influenced thereby.
Fully Adam
Lying on the soft duff
A sprinkle of snow on the moss
Salal cushions the twigs
And hard earth.
Splayed towards the sky
Surrounded by firs
Watching trunks tower in parallel lines
Narrowing to a meeting point
Just beyond my view – infinity
Crowns spray like black fireworks
Thrown against the winter lemon sky
Wandering those paths in August
Leaning underneath the lacy branches
Of high huckleberry
Tart red berries tiny to the hands
Are collected in the pail
And musky salal berries
Stain the fingers
With their dark bitter fruit
Cast along with sharp
Mouth puckering Oregon grape
Whose lemon yellow sprigs
Herald late winter.
Wilderness berry jam
Brings the woods inside.
But often I think of lying
On the warm dirt path
With duff scuffed away to humus
And cedar roots exposed
Fungus in the air
Overwhelmed by the smell
Of pungent needles, sage and saxifrage.
I want to lie spread eagle down
And drink in the scent of earth
All are Eve open to the sky
And harvesting the woods
But she is fully Adam facing down to dirt
Embracing that return
[by Suzanne McCarthy]
I have appreciated her writings so much. I will miss her.
I truly miss Suzanne. Her blog posts are short snippets from the enlightenment era. Loved her curiosity, tenderness and her deep caring for the oppressed.
Suzanne truly lived by this:
Bertrand Russell: “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
Suzanne McCarthy > Posts tagged ‘dying’
I’m so sorry to hear this. My condolences to her family, friends, and colleagues.
Thank you for posting this, though I never met Susanne in person, like others above I have for years appreciated her writing on various blogs, she is missed.
May the angels lead her into Paradise,
May the choirs of martyrs welcome her,
And take her to the holy city,
the new and eternal Jerusalem.
May she come to be
where Lazarus is poor no longer.
May she find eternal rest.
May she find eternal rest.
Very sad news. I admired Suzanne’s expertise, and appreciated her welcome and support behind the scenes. I will miss her distinctive flavor in this B*L*T.
I learned from my friend and study partner Cindy, who died earlier this year of cancer, that the rabbis say that in heaven, we’ll spend all our time studying the Torah. I imagine Suzanne and Cindy finding each other at the feminist table there, companionably studying the texts that they both loved.
My condolences and prayers for Suzanne’s family and friends.