Lynn Valley Care Centre
North Vancouver Residents 204 Infected residents 78 (as of April 22) Deaths 20 Infected staff N/A Staff deaths 0
Margaret Ruth Shea Sept. 16, 1937-April 2, 2020
Sean Connery once had the pleasure, during a break in filming The Russia House on Bowen Island, of playing a round of golf with Margaret Ruth Shea at the Point Grey Golf and Country Club in Vancouver’s tony Southlands.
Golf was her passion, both on the fairway and socializing in the clubhouse.
After her death while residing in the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver from COVID-19 on April 2, her eldest son Michael wrote: “With a knowing sparkle in her eye, an irresistible laugh and countless clever anecdotes, Margaret was always sure to be the life of the party.”
Hers was a life well-lived.
Margaret studied piano under the Royal Conservatory of Music growing up in Edmonton and was a champion speedskater as a teen. Her family moved to Vancouver when she was 19, and she soon met her husband-to-be, Bill, while both worked at an equipment rental company.
They married in 1958 and she became enamoured with golf after the couple bought a boat-making company in Vernon, where a little bit of snow never kept her off of the fairways.
After the couple moved back to Vancouver, Margaret became the first woman to record a hole-in-one at Beach Grove Golf Club in Delta. In 1980 she won a golfing gold medal at the B.C. Summer Games, and later became the ladies’ team captain at Point Grey G&CC.
Predeceased by Bill, who died in 2013, they have three children — Michael, Robert and Karen.
“I looked up to her a lot,” Robert said. “She was caring and she was an independent woman, very active.”
After retiring from the Workers’ Compensation Board in 2003, Margaret and her husband moved to Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast, where she lived in an apartment until five years ago. When she began needing help she moved to the Lynn Valley Care Centre, which in March became the epicentre of COVID-19 in B.C.