Helen Isabel McKinnon, late of Chilliwack, formerly of Vancouver, B.C., passed away peacefully on March 13, 2006, aged ninety years. She was born in Leask, Saskatchewan on May 29, 1915, one of eight children of Arnold and Jane Abels. She had been a Chilliwack resident for the last forty years.
She was a bookkeeper for several businesses in Vancouver and Chilliwack, utilizing an uncanny mathematical ability. An avid gardener, she was a founding member of both the Chilliwack and Mount Cheam Orchid Societies. Following a debilitating series of strokes that commenced in 1999, she had been under the loving care of the staff at the extended care unit of Chilliwack General Hospital for the last seven years.
Funeral services will be held on March 17, 2006, at Henderson Funeral Home, Chilliwack at 2 p.m., the Reverend Douglas Ireland officiating, with interment following at Chilliwack Cemetery,
Casket bearers will be her family and friends Robert Fraser and Hans Mulder.
She is survived by her husband of fifty-eight years, Douglas Kelly McKinnon, her children Sharon McKinnon (Chilliwack), Corporal Robert McKinnon (Wainwright, Alberta) and William McKinnon and her grandchildren Mika and Jay McKinnon (California) and her sisters Ruth Wilner and Blanche Kinahan (Saskatchewan).