Laughing, loving, living to the fullest
Despite her disability, woman cared for family, community
A sweet-faced innocent with a stuffed puppy named Spanky, Valerie Thornton fancied strawberry sundaes, the colour purple and afternoon tea with her mom.
Born with Down syndrome, she grew up on the south side of Edmonton and attended the Winnifred Stewart and L.Y. Cairns Vocational schools before embarking on a 21-year career with Goodwill Industries.
Rarely seen with an expression other than a smile on her face, she bowled at Bonnie Doon Lanes with the Happy Rollers every other Saturday for nearly 40 years and loved to swim, whether in the pool at Rundle Park as a kid, or in the Pacific Ocean off Vancouver Island, where she had moved with her parents in 2009. They lived near her brother.
“She could swim like a fish,” brother Phillip Thornton said recently, recalling one warm day in July 2009 when she took a dip off the beach in Parksville and drifted out with the tide, unaware of the peril. “I had to go out to get her. She could have ended up in Japan.”
A few days after swimming in the Caribbean Sea off Cancún on vacation at the end of March, Valerie suffered a seizure and fell, breaking her neck. That was the beginning of the end for the unbridled spirit who died on Nov. 1 at age 54 from complications related to an abdominal infection.
“She was so innocent,” Phillip, 52, said from his home in Nanaimo. “She was a great sister and a better friend. She never had a mean bone in her body.”
Always a joy, Valerie clamoured to lead prayers before Christmas supper and loved to occasionally treat her family to dinner at Red Lobster. She was only 4 feet 11, but lived so much bigger than that — travelling to California to go on rides at Disneyland, to Mexico, twice to Hawaii, and seven or eight times to the United Kingdom to visit extended family.
Their parents had immigrated to Canada from the U.K. in 1952, Phillip Thornton said, setting sail from England on the Queen Elizabeth II. Boarding a train in Montreal, they handed a conductor $20 and asked how far it would take them. That’s how they ended up settling in Edmonton.
“Another $20 and they would have ended up in Vancouver,” Phillip, who works for the Vancouver Island Health Authority, said.
Despite her disability, Valerie helped take care of her aging parents, cooking, cleaning and shopping for their groceries, and taping Coronation Street for them on her VCR. Once a week, she had a standing appointment to get her hair done, she learned to use a computer and kept the minutes at meetings for a social group she attended.
“I will always remember her smile and her capacity to know,” said Toyo Turner, a case support worker for Catholic Social Services who worked with her for many years. “She was very sensitive to other people’s feelings. Her parents were big at advocating for her trying to be as independent as possible.
“They managed to raise a wonderful child.”
Sadly missed, Valerie was eulogized at memorial services on Vancouver Island on Nov. 15, at Goodwill Industries on Nov. 16 and a day later again at Bonnie Doon Lanes, where she had bowled with the Happy Rollers from 1971 until she moved to Vancouver Island.
“She was a loving, caring person,” said Martin Vankeimpema, whose family has run the bowling alley for more than 50 years, and whose father joined forces with Valerie’s dad, Peter, and Bob Symons, to establish the Happy Rollers, a league for special-needs bowlers.
Retiring with a small pension in 2006, Valerie bequeathed $1,000 to the Happy Rollers to use as they see fit, and left significant sums to Catholic Social Services and Goodwill Industries, which is putting up a plaque in her honour.
“It is hard for us to know she is gone, but we know she is in a better place,” said Janet Koren, who met Valerie more than 40 years ago when both attended the L.Y. Cairns Vocational School. “She was a lucky girl. She was liked by everybody, sweet, just being the person she was.”
Koren, who is 55 and also from Edmonton, worked beside Valerie sorting through clothing and other donated items sold at the organization’s thrift store on 51st Avenue. For years, they took their breaks and lunch together.
“She’ll be in our thoughts and hearts forever. She will never be forgotten,” Koren said.
As children, Valerie and her brother Phillip were close. After he married, he moved away from Edmonton and they saw each other only occasionally at family functions.
As their parents aged, he moved them closer, and Valerie moved, too. A year ago, she helped spread their father’s ashes in England near the home where he and his brother’s family were evacuated during the Second World War.
Their mother, Emily, is still alive, but ailing.
Three days before she broke her neck, Phillip swam with Valerie in the warm ocean waters off the Yucatán Peninsula. At the end, they were close, just like they were as kids. He came to Edmonton, carrying a collage of photographs, for two of the memorials.
“They were great celebrations,” he said.
“They were celebrations of how far Valerie got in this life. She had a pretty good life.”