Edwin John Mills
May 25, 1927 – February 11, 2024
Almost a year to the day of losing Violet (his ‘Honey’) our vibrant Dad and Grampa passed away at age 96, ending a life filled with wanderlust and globetrotting adventures.
Edwin was raised on Eglinton Avenue, above his grandfather’s bustling Toronto hardware store, and on a snowy hockey rink in Fitzroy Harbour in the Ottawa Valley where he learned the value of close friendships and exploration. He joined the Canadian Army at 17, and in his 20s enrolled at Queen’s University, married Vi and became a civil engineer. He took a job in Venezuela’s oil sector in 1957, when moving overseas with a young family was a novel and formidable undertaking. In the early 1960s they settled their family and made close lifelong friends on Weldon Crescent in Barrie, with Edwin working at York University on campus design and development before moving abroad again to do similar work at universities in Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho.
A lifelong fan of Toronto’s sports teams, sport featured prominently in Edwin’s life, and Vancouver’s North Shore offered the perfect climate for skiing, cycling, golf and tennis throughout his active retirement years. Until his final weeks, Edwin walked the West Vancouver seawall at sunrise, where he’d laugh and swap stories with his friends en route.
Hours before he died, Edwin said that nothing made him as proud as the diverse and energetic family he and Vi raised. Edwin is survived by children Michael (Anne), Terry (Doug), Steven (Erna), Christie (Dave), Rob (Cory), (Zbyszek), sister-in-law Audrey Neufeld, 13 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren. Edwin was predeceased by his wife Violet, sister Carole and mother Catherine Mills (née McClelland).