JANTZ, Linda

After years of declining health, Linda Jantz passed away peacefully April 5, 2020 at the Heidehof Long Term Care Home of St. Catharines. She was the eldest child of seven born to Henry and Helena Jantz, a farm family of Laird, Sask., recent immigrants at the time from the Ukraine. Though born to a mother still in fragile health because of epidemic and starvation before coming to this country, Linda survived to live a long and eventful life. She excelled in studies. She took 12 years of study in the Laird school, then continued at the Prairie Bible Institute of Three Hills, Alberta, and followed that at the Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg. Later she studied at Tabor College in Kansas, and did further studies at Bob Jones University, the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of Toronto. During many years of teaching, she taught in Kansas, Saskatchewan and in the St. Catharines area. Highlights for her, however, were periods of teaching in Nigeria with the SIM Mission, and in Japan, as an independent teacher, where she spent more than a dozen years teaching English as a Second Language and Bible, for a time in a school she herself founded. Her use of a phonics approach undergirded her English-language instruction. She remained a student all her life and stayed in touch with some of her students until late in life. Faith in Jesus Christ was central to her life and brought a sense of significance and fulfillment above everything else. She was predeceased by her parents, four brothers, Abe, Hugo, Henry and Robert, two sisters-in-law, Jean Jantz and Katherine Jantz and brother-inlaw John Derksen; and is survived by a sister, Marlene Derksen, brother Harold and wife Neoma, sisters-in-law Karen Jantz and Margaret Jantz, and many nieces and nephews. The family thanks the Heidehof for the kind care given Linda in her declining years. Burial will be by private interment at the Niagara-onthe-Lake Lakeshore Cemetery on Wednesday, April 8. A memorial service is anticipated for a later time.