Ann Rivard passed away in the presence of her family on the morning of November 3rd at the age of 77. Ann was the beloved wife of Paul, with whom she shared a loving marriage since August 25, 1969. She was a devoted mother to Charlie and mother-in-law to Annette, and a cherished grandmother to their only grandchild, Hannah. Ann will be greatly missed but never forgotten by her older brother Charlie, sister Elizabeth, and her two younger brothers, Gordon and George. Ann was a retired public-school teacher who taught mostly Grades 5 and 6 at Ponsonby Public School for 29 years. Early in her career, she also taught three years as a music teacher in Cornwall, and towards the end of her career, Ann enthusiastically transitioned for an additional four years to occasional French teaching for the Catholic School Board in the Fergus/Guelph area. Her love for reading, writing, and music shone brightly in her classrooms. Students under her tutorship won a few Ontario Province wide writing and poetry competitions. Her devotion to excellence in music annually produced consistent first place individual student, classroom and all school choir and grade five and six recorder ensemble awards adjudicated at the Kiwanis Festivals located at several different Ontario cities. These accomplishments helped earn her the school board’s Chairman’s Award. Ann’s original annual Christmas school plays that she wrote and directed involved her combined junior student choir of virtually every Ponsonby student with the whole Ponsonby staff contributing dance choreography and stage decors. These were congregated celebrations of the community’s cooperative devotion to its children’s development. Ponsonby Public School community parents’ and extended family members supported the school children by attending all school plays and concerts, sewing custom personally fitted choir uniforms and attending the Kiwanis Festival celebrations of music. In her private life, she loved swimming, hiking, canoeing along our Ontario and Quebec Rivers and lakes with Paul and one or two of her Great Pyrenees onboard, bald eagle watching, and spending time with her family. Ann led an active and meaningful life for three and a half years when increasingly faced with Lewy Body Dementia’s taxing demands. During the last six months of her life, the disease’s challenges and effects became more evident and arduous. The family would like to thank everyone at Groves Memorial Hospital who cared for Ann during her final weeks. A celebration of her life will be held in the spring. (More information will be provided later.) In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada to help with the research associated with the development of treatments for the various forms of dementia.
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