Olivia Tumak, resident of the Village Green Long Term Care Residence, Selby, Ontario, passed away on Wednesday, March 27th 2019 at Providence Care in Kingston. Prayers will be held on Friday, April 8th 2019 at 7:00pm, and the funeral service on Saturday, April 9th 2019 at 10:00am, all from the Holy Transfiguration Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Yorkton. The interment will follow in the Garden of Crucifixion, Yorkton Memorial Gardens.
Olivia Tumak (born Olga Budzinski, 2 Dec. 1933 – 27 March 2019), passed quietly in the presence of family at Providence Care in Kingston, Ontario, after a slow, gentle decline that started at the beginning of February. She always appreciated rest, which she experienced during this time, and as the House of the Lord has many rooms, undoubtedly there are bedchambers as well.
Raised on isolated Ukrainian homesteader farms near the hamlets of Sheho and Insinger, Saskatchewan, when she first went to school she didn’t speak English. As only English was allowed, she never forgot how she and other children were strapped for speaking Ukrainian, by a teacher of Ukrainian background.
To pursue secondary school she had to go to boarding school in nearby Foam Lake, which also had a long-term impact – among other things a revulsion for cooked onions that she expected everyone else to agree with. She studied Home Economics at University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, and married Elmer Tumak in 1956. They parted ways in the early-1980s. Olivia did not remarry. The children are Carmen (formerly Patricia, partner Roy), Edgar (Paul) and Jacquie (Debbie). A son, William, died shortly after birth. The eldest of her siblings, she is survived by John, Michael (Evelyn), Bill/Bud (Janice), and Rosalie Boynton. Predeceased by brothers Julian (Diana) and Maurice (Darlene.
The family moved from Saskatoon, to Winnipeg, Montreal and eventually Ottawa. In Ottawa Olivia returned to the work force, first in retail at the high-end Peacock Imports store (where Olivia well indulged her passion for retail therapy), and then she became a successful realtor. Olivia was never a conventional mother or sibling but we all learned from this.
Health issues in the 1980s required her to take long-term disability and she subsequently lived a quiet life, during which time she pursued passions of square dancing, painting, knitting sweaters with complex patterns (with a habit of making everything two sizes too large), many crafts, highly-demanding historically-correct Baroque period costumes, and enjoying the company of her cats and dogs. In 2014 she moved in with Edgar and son-in-law Paul, into their converted church residence, known as St. Mark’s Hall in Deseronto, Ontario.
Always wanting to appear well-turned out, she refused to go to the hospital in 2017 when she was having breathing difficulties, until she was properly attired and made up. What was thought to be pneumonia turned to be out non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. After several months in hospitals in Napanee and Kingston, the stairs of St. Mark’s were too daunting and she moved to Village Green Long-term Residence, in the nearby hamlet of Selby.
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Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Olivia Tumak Budzinski Wednesday March 27th 2019..
Death notice for the town of: Yorkton, Province: Saskatchewan