PENNER, JOYCE 1947 – 2018 Joyce Rosalyn Penner, died unexpectedly of natural causes in Toronto in July just before her 71st birthday. She is greatly missed and lovingly remembered by her entire extended family and community.
Joyce led a full, creative, and interesting life. Born to parents dedicated to social justice, Norma and Norman Penner, Joyce grew up in a family deeply engaged in the pursuit of political change. Joyce was known for her feisty personality, as well as her kindness and candidness. Coming of age in the Sixties, she was very much a child of that era, part of the politics, music and art scene of that time. Inspired in part by her grandmother and namesake, Rose Shapak, an actress on the Yiddish stage and an active revolutionary along with her partner Jacob Penner, Joyce became involved in theatre, taking acting lessons with theatre pioneer Dora Mavor Moore, and studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, before receiving her Fine Arts degree from Sir George Williams University (now Concordia). There, amongst other achievements, she directed the play Miss Julie, by Strindberg and was a vocal part of the student movement and protests.
After Concordia she became active in Toronto’s emerging alternative theatre scene, helping to found the ground-breaking Factory Theatre Lab and staging productions there. She also taught drama, mostly for free, both to children and to people from diverse backgrounds. Joyce at times was an art dealer, counselor with the John Howard Society, amongst many different types of works she was involved in. She volunteered with many political and social justice organizations and was politically involved in feminist issues, prisoners’ rights, neighborhood protection and fighting for the rights of tenants and people of low income.
A wonderful mother, Joyce raised her son Dylan Penner with values of love, socialism and political involvement (she bought him his first keffiyeh). In parenting Dylan she had the deep involvement of Dylan’s father Herman Parsons. Herman and Joyce remained lifelong friends and kindred spirits and Joyce visited Herman in Kentucky only months before her death, as part of a road trip through parts of Canada and the US in her new van, in which she re-visited many old friends and relatives. Joyce also took in three young girls, Sue, Natalia and Marcela (as well as Natalia and Marcela’s mother Flor) and gave them a loving home for several years of their lives.
Joyce was actively and eagerly planning the next phase of her life, having moved into her new apartment in the Queen West district of Toronto just a month before her unexpected death. Always interested, intellectual and caring, a lover of travel and of the world around her, Joyce was a great influence on those that knew her – a powerful character with a generous heart.
As well as being sadly missed by her son Dylan, Joyce is remembered and mourned by Herman Parsons, Dylan’s partner, Christine Jones, her brothers, Steve, Gary and Bob, their partners, Mary Ellen Marus, Marlene Kadar and Shaena Lambert and by the many nieces, nephews, cousins and friends, who loved her kind spirit and wild stories.
A memorial will take place at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, November 11, 2018. Please send RSVPs or remembrances to rememberingjoycepenner@gmail.com.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Joyce’s name to the Black Lives Matter Toronto Freedom School (https:// blacklivesmatter.ca/donate-to-freedom-school/) or the John Howard Society.