| Name |
Nevitt Davidson Black [1] |
| Birth |
26 Sep 1925 |
Pekin, China  [1, 2, 3] |
- daughter of Davidson Black
|
| Gender |
Female |
| Anecdote |
26 Oct 1949 |
Honolulu, Hawaii [1] |
- John Ryerson Maybee, 28, Male, Married; Nevitt Davidson Maybee, 25, Female, Married; John Davidson Maybee, 4, Male, Single; and Adena Maylanne Maybee, 8 months, Female, Single; all Canadian citizens, traveling First Class on the R. M. M. S. Aorangi, left from Vancouver on 20 Oct 1949 and were granted shore leave in Honolulu, Hawaii on 26 Oct 1949
|
| Witness-Obituary |
21 May 2009 |
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada [4] |
- John Ryerson (Jack) Maybee died peacefully on May 20, 2009 in his 91st year. Beloved husband of Nevitt (nee Black), cherished father of John (Alies), Maylanne (John Whittall), Brenda (Val Zanin), Chris Ryerson (Michele) and Alan (Peggy); grandfather to Ryerson (Toni), Spencer, Christian, Richard, Andrea, Benjamin, Joshua, Mark, Katie, Hayley and Jocelyn and great-grandfather to Addison. Born in Moose Jaw, SK, educated in Alberta and BC and at the University of Toronto, Jack obtained his PhD in Letters in 1942 from Princeton University. He joined the Navy as a lieutenant in 1943, making the shift from letters to numbers and serving as a navigator patrolling the North Atlantic. He married Nevitt on Aug. 4, 1945, and joined the Department of External Affairs in 1946. His early career included postings in China, Australia and Washington DC. He was Ambassador to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and later Ambassador to Nepal, and rose to the rank of High Commissioner to India. Upon retiring in 1978, Jack studied journalism at Carleton University before becoming editor of Crosstalk, the newspaper of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, converting its production to computer-based technology. Jack shared his Christian faith as a chorister, sidesperson, warden, Sunday school teacher and member of the Brotherhood of Anglican Churchmen over the years. Jack was an avid gardener and lifelong patron of the arts, and continued to enjoy nights at the opera and being read to despite failing vision and the onset of Alzheimers. In 2006 Jack became a resident of the Perley-Rideau Veterans' Health Centre, where Nevitt visited him daily, and where staff and residents appreciated his continuing warmth and gentle nature. Friends may call at the Westboro Chapel of Tubman Funeral Homes 403 Richmond Road (at Roosevelt) on Friday, May 22 from 7 – 9 p.m. A Funeral Service will be held at All Saints Anglican Church, Westboro on Saturday, May 23 at 11 a.m. Cremation to follow.
|
| Death |
1 Feb 2020 |
Extendicare Starwood, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada [3] |
| Obituary |
6 Feb 2020 |
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada [3] |
- Nevitt Maybee, died peacefully at Extendicare Starwood, Ottawa on Saturday, February 1, 2020 at age 94. Survived by her five children, John, Maylanne, Brenda (Val), Chris Ryerson (Michele) and Alan (Peggy), 12 grandchildren and six great- grandchildren. Predeceased by her husband John (Jack) Ryerson Maybee in 2009
'A FORCE OF NATURE:' The exceptional life of Ottawa's Nevitt Maybee by Andrew Duffy
Nevitt Davidson Black was born in September 26, 1925 in Beijing, where her father was head of the anatomy department at Peking Union Medical College. There, from fossils found near Beijing, Davidson Black identified a new species of early human, Sinanthropus pekinensis, that came to be known as "Peking Man."
Black died suddenly from a heart attack in 1934 when Nevitt was just eight years old. Around that same time, she contracted tuberculosis and was confined to hospital for a year. She read one book a day to pass the time.
Nevitt remained in Beijing with her mother, Adena, until 1938 — one year after Japanese forces occupied the city in the Second Sino-Japanese War. It would not be the last time her life was buffeted by war.
Back in Canada, she studied at an all-girls boarding school before taking pre-med courses at the University of Toronto. She wanted to be a doctor like her father.
A tea party organized by her mother derailed her would-be medical career. There, she met John Maybee, a Canadian navy lieutenant with a doctorate from Princeton University. They married on Aug. 4, 1945 and moved to Ottawa, where Mabyee joined the foreign affairs department, now Global Affairs Canada.
He was posted to the Canadian mission in Nanjing, China in 1948 thanks, in part, to his wife's ability to speak Mandarin. The country was then in the final stages of its long civil war.
Communist forces entered Nanjing in April 1949 and Nevitt, pregnant with her second child, was forced to evacuate while her husband remained with the mission. It would be almost a year before they were reunited.
In 1964, the family moved to Beirut, Lebanon when Maybee was named ambassador. Three years later, in June 1967, Nevitt and four of her children boarded a rented plane with 250 Canadians to flee the Six-Day War that inflamed the Middle East.
Nevitt ran an ordered household. She kept a jobs chart and each child had a file card with a "room report" that tracked completed tasks such as made beds, emptied waste baskets and cleared desks. "She could put us in line with a look from her eye," says Maylanne Maybee.
Wherever she went, Nevitt was also an involved citizen and leader. In Australia, she was a roving commissioner for the Girl Guides. In Lebanon, she was involved with the local psychiatric hospital. In India, she supported Operation Eyesight Universal, a Canadian aid organization devoted to treating eye disease in developing countries.
In Ottawa, she was president of the Ottawa Council of Women. She was also deeply involved in the Anglican Church, and was among the first women ever elected to its national executive committee, where she sought an expanded role for women. At St. Thomas the Apostle Anglican Church in Alta Vista, she was the first woman to read the Sunday lesson, a role traditionally reserved for men. "And the roof did not fall in," she whispered after her reading.
The Anglican Church of Canada ordained its first women priests in November 1976, and Nevitt soon set her sights on joining their ranks. When her husband retired, Nevitt returned to school and completed a bachelor's degree at the University of Ottawa then a Master's degree in theology at St. Paul's University. She was ordained a deacon in 1985, and a priest two years later.
"I guess my initial thought on being ordained was of how unworthy I was," she told an interviewer. "But it isn't really a question of unworthiness — we're all unworthy."
In her 70s, she led guided church tours to China, India, Australia and Lebanon; she served as an honorary assistant at All Saints' Westboro for 33 years.
She was an encouraging and very genuine soul," said Ottawa West Archdeacon Christopher Dunn. "She would tell you when she disagreed with you about something because that's the way she was. But she would do it with love."
|
| Reference Number |
17031 |
| Person ID |
I16944 |
Maybee Society |
| Last Modified |
7 Apr 2024 |
1925 - 2020 (94 years)
