McConnell, Joan

Ellen “Joan” McConnell (née Fisher) was born on January 15, 1926 at home in Orange, New South Wales, Australia. The second-youngest child of Nell (née Thompson) and Thomas Fisher, Joan was predeceased by her five brothers: Jack, Thomas, Reginald, Keith and Wallace.

She met Dell (Isabel), her “best friend forever,” when they started school in 1931, vowing they’d become sisters. So they did, when Joan wed Dell’s only brother Allen on April 25, 1947 – a loving marriage that would last 53 years until Allen’s death in 2000. Joan is survived by her three children, David, Malcolm and Gillian, granddaughters Airlie and Tegan, and great-granddaughters Amélie, Matilda, Mika and Eleanor.

Born in the aftermath of the Great War, Joan was confronted with the inglorious reality of war at each ANZAC Day Parade, watching broken soldiers proudly marching — a generation of young men whose lives were brutally cut short or destroyed for a dubious cause. A child of the Great Depression, she recalled how her father, a merchant, struggled to keep his store in business and his staff employed, while her mother and maiden aunts sought ways to help hungry and destitute men preserve their dignity, feeding them in exchange for chores. Australia entered the Second World War as Joan became a teenager – an adolescence marked by rationing, helping her father build an air raid shelter, living through brownouts, then experiencing the threat of the Japanese invasion in the 1942 bombing of Darwin and subsequent submarine attacks. These experiences, along with her parents’ demonstration of integrity, instilled in Joan a lifelong advocacy of human and civil rights, and social justice.

During the war, Joan worked in the State Library of New South Wales while studying liberal arts at Sydney University. In her third year, an unfortunate outing on a horse left Joan caught between a fence and a hard place. Sliding off the back of the horse before it tried to jump the fence, Joan broke her back, resulting in nine months encased in a plaster cast and an abrupt end to her studies.

Joan and Allen stayed in Sydney after their marriage, where Allen, a civil engineer, worked for the Department of Public Works. David and Malcolm joined the family in 1949 and 1950, after which Allen’s work took the McConnells to Cooma, NSW, headquarters of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. Launched in 1949, this massive endeavour comprised seven power stations and 16 dams, employing more then 100,000 men and women from 42 countries over the 25 years to its completion in 1974.

In 1955 Joan became a founding member of the Cooma Little Theatre. Having inherited her father’s thespian talents, she went on to direct and act in successful productions staged by this amateur theatre company that has just celebrated its 70th anniversary.

By 1964, the design phase of the Snowy scheme was all but complete, and Joan could see that Allen’s professional future lay overseas. They attended the International Congress of Large Dams (ICOLD) in Edinburgh, followed by a well-earned camping holiday through Europe. Returning to Australia, they packed up the family (which now included Gillian, born in 1958) and emigrated to Canada just in time for the novelty of a traditional White Christmas.

Allen’s work for Acres Canadian Bechtel on the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project took the family to Niagara Falls and St. Catharines, Ont., for 18 months, followed by a year in North Vancouver and, finally, to Montréal, just in time for the excitement of Expo ‘67.

Although Joan hated the cold, she revelled in the art, music, theatre, multicultural community, cuisine and European flair that Montréal had to offer. In the mid-1970s, she returned to her studies, taking courses steeped in the Socratic method at the Thomas More Institute. Joan’s support for the institute, along with her love for art and vounteering, became the catalyst for an art collection she nurtured and expanded for more than half a century. Her hatred of war, drive for social justice and interest in international development propelled her to complete a political science degree at Concordia University, graduating magna cum laude in 1979 and making lifelong friends along the way.

Her studies complete and her daughter grown, Joan joined Allen on business trips and engineering conferences all over the world, making friends and gaining an appreciation for diverse cultures and customs.

In 1988, Joan and Allen retired to the West Coast. In the ideal climate of Salt Spring Island, Joan revived her love of gardening. As a member of the Japanese Garden Society, she combined her passion for flowering plants with her rejection of war-engendered hatred for the “other” to help create the Heiwa Peace Park and restore the Japanese Charcoal Pit Kilns.

In the 1990s, Joan and Allen discovered the Sydney University Graduates Union of North America (SUGUNA), attending annual conferences and local gatherings and forging enduring friendships with other expats. At the 2007 SUGUNA meeting, held in Kingston, Ont., at Queen’s University (David and Gillian’s alma mater), Joan fortuitously met Julian and Kaaren Brown. Dismayed by the paucity of significant visual art prizes in Canada and inspired by Australia’s Archibald Prize, the Browns had founded the Kingston Prize for Portraiture, the first National Art Prize in Canada with an open call for artist submissions. The 2007 SUGUNA events included a visit to the first exhibition of finalists for this biennial prize.

In a conversation with Julian on that eventful trip, Joan mused that it would be wonderful if we had something like the Kingston Prize on Salt Spring Island. In typical Aussie fashion, Julian threw down the gauntlet and said, “Well, Joan, why don’t you start one?”

With a few years of gentle persuasion and the backing of local artists and art lovers ready to realize the vision, Ron Crawford bravely took up that gauntlet and steered an enthusiastic committee to the first successful Salt Spring National Art Prize (SSNAP) in 2015. A key member of the steering committee, Joan stepped up to donate the First Prize (including the Residency Prize) and funding for the catalogue for SSNAP, now in its 6th iteration.

Joan’s contributions to organizations supporting the arts, human rights, social justice, education and food security, locally and globally, are her living legacy. May others follow in her footsteps, as she has followed those who have walked before her.

CELEBRATION OF LIFE

Meaden Hall at the Legion, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025 at 1 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, please support local arts and artists of all disciplines, local food security initiatives, local organizations supporting our seniors, families and marginalized, our mental health and those who strive to help us bridge the divides in our community and our world.