Sister, friend, journalist, author. Born June 16, 1926, in Winnipeg. Died May 15 in Winnipeg of complications from dementia, aged 83.
Joyce Meyer was one of two children of Frank and Mildred Meyer. She had wonderful memories of her childhood in Winnipeg, but with the Depression, her father was sent to work in Yorkton, Sask., and Joyce finished high school at Yorkton Collegiate Institute. She was artistic - a figure skater, a reader and a dancer.
After training as a lab technician and working in hospitals in Yorkton and Winnipeg, Joyce's love of language and writing led her to a journalism course, followed by employment in the newsroom of The Winnipeg Tribune. Within a year, Joyce made a name for herself with human-interest features. Throughout her career she wrote for such diverse publications as the Financial Post, Toronto Star, Winnipeg Free Press and Canadian Grocer on topics ranging from travel and theatre to telecommunications and the apparel industry.
On a holiday to Italy in 1959, Joyce fell in love with the country. She returned to Rome the following year to look for work there. She initially found it as an assistant editor of a small magazine. The publication eventually failed but Joyce was next hired as a public-relations official in Rome for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. By the time her contract expired in 1966, Joyce was fluent in Italian and obtained a work permit from the Italian government to be a real-estate agent in Tuscany and Umbria selling castles and country estates.
Joyce returned to Canada in the early 1970s but her love affair with Italy never ended. Her memories of her time there are lovingly recounted in her book Ricordi - Remembrances of Italy, published in 1982.
When she returned, Joyce spent time in Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver before settling in Winnipeg in 1981, where she worked as a writer with Travel Manitoba and freelanced for various publications until her retirement.
Throughout her life, Joyce was a humanitarian and was strongly committed to social-justice causes. She supported many charities and was an active member of Amnesty International for more than 30 years, using her talent to write letters to governments around the world on behalf of prisoners of conscience. She was also part of an Amnesty International team that worked to defeat a private member's bill to reinstate the death penalty in Canada.
Joyce was intelligent and warm-hearted. Her friends enjoyed many wonderful dinner parties at her home and frequently accompanied her to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, concerts and movies. In the mid-2000s, Joyce's life began to unravel with her diagnosis of dementia, but she retained her love of language until the end, editing the promotional brochures at the residence where she lived and often stopping the conversation to correct the grammatical mistakes of her friends.
By Pat Power, Marilyn Hendzel and Manfred Jager, Joyce's friends.