Eatonville Care Centre

420 The East Mall, Toronto Residents 247 Infected residents 156 (as of Wednesday) Deaths 34 Infected staff 7 Staff deaths 0

She was the first resident to test positive for COVID-19 in Ontario’s hardest-hit longterm care home, but that’s not how her grandson wants her remembered.

“We were extremely close growing up,” said Raymond Persaud of his late grandmother.

“She was wise, always words of wisdom.”

Parbatee Sukhdeo, known to friends and family as Sheila, died April 2.

Sukhdeo was born in 1932 in Georgetown, the capital of the South American nation of Guyana.

Sometime in the early 1980s, Persaud doesn’t recall when, his grandparents and their seven children moved to Canada, settling in the bustling Dufferin St. and Eglinton Ave. W. area.

There, Sukhdeo became superintendent of the five-storey apartment block where Persaud and his family grew up.

“She liked to be the boss,” Persaud said with a laugh.

“We grew up watching her deal with tenants, just her ability to be able to connect with everybody, every walk of life, every background, going into their homes and fix anything that needed to be fixed.”

Persaud, who along with his brother are airline pilots, credits his grandmother’s firm but loving hand with their success in life — not only in the financial succor of surviving flight school, but instilling him with duty, pride and purpose.

“I wouldn’t have been a pilot today if it wasn’t for her help, me and my brother,” he said. “I’ve carried that forward with me with my flying ... helping other people was moulded in me because of the hard times we went through.”

As funerals are forbidden in Ontario, a quick burial was all they could manage — but a proper memorial is planned once things die down.

“Maybe September,” Persaud said. “Hopefully.”