“Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.” ― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
If there was a constant in Avril’s long life, it was books. The piles on her coffee and bedside tables were ever-revolving and, in genre, broad-ranging. Though her core passion was the great novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries (Henry James her go-to), philosophy, politics, and history were likely to be in the mix as well.
One of the few books Avril didn’t finish was the one she took with her to Toronto Western Hospital after a fall in early February (an Anita Brookner novel, ironically titled Falling Slowly). On Monday, February 19, 2024, in her 93rd year, she died there, with generations of family keeping a rotating, devoted vigil.
Born in Liverpool, England, on April 17 (or thereabouts – by the time her parents got around to registering her birth, the exact day had slipped their minds, so they ballparked it), 1930, Avril grew up in London, the middle child of William and Dylis (née Roberts) Showell.
Being a child and adolescent during the Blitz shaped, in ways obvious and less so, the adult Avril would become. When she spoke about the war, she often mentioned the dishes in the family’s modest mews flat in central London regularly getting smashed due to constant bombings. Presumably as a result, a broken bowl, glass, or cup never fussed her, regardless of value, and she accepted the many rises and falls in her fortunes with characteristic stoicism and resilience.
Like her father, a commercial artist and painter, Avril had a gift for drawing, so it seemed natural that, at age 15, she would enrol in art school. She did so, even though her true desire – discouraged by her mother, for reasons that remained inexplicable to her – was to be a nurse.
In the mid-1950s, she met and married Fred Donaldson, a charismatic young Canadian from Winnipeg who’d come to London on an engineering fellowship. Shortly after, the couple decamped to Montreal, where Avril worked as a newspaper fashion illustrator for Holt Renfrew, Ogilvy’s, Simpson’s, and other prominent department stores of the day. Avril’s migration ended up prompting that of her two siblings and her parents, all of whom eventually came to Canada as well.
In the early 1970s, after having three children, Avril and Fred divorced. By the end of that decade, Avril met the man who would become her second engineer husband, an expat Englishman aptly named Christopher English. A move to Toronto in the early 1980s brought with it an unexpected change of vocation. Photography was rapidly displacing illustration in newspapers, and, along with it, practitioners like Avril.
Unfazed, she opened a second-hand bookstore on Toronto’s Harbord Street and named it Showell Books (having rejected the one her children suggested, “Books Our Mother Likes,” which represented her approach to acquiring stock).
Renovations have been the ruin of many a marriage. Not so for Avril and Chris, who (willingly) went through six together. Indeed, that unholy process proved the glue of their union. They were never so happy as when they were picking out bathroom tile or traipsing through drywall dust, blueprints in hand.
Midway through the 80s, Chris’ work took them back to England. During the seven-ish years they lived in County Cheshire, they got married, re-connected with the homeland, and, yes, renovated a house or two.
In 1990, they moved back to Canada, this time to Guelph, Ontario, where Avril would live until 2019 (Chris died in 2005). Broken only by a brief pitstop in nearby Fergus, it was her longest sojourn in any place, and, seemingly, her happiest.
Avril was funny, vivacious, beautiful, whip-smart, and generous to a fault. When it came to the subjects close to her heart, she could be a fierce and stubborn debater. Never one to unquestioningly accept mainstream viewpoints and orthodoxy, she was always on the hunt for the alternative opinion, the untold story.
Artist though she was, the fullest expression of that sensibility was arguably best found in her stylish approach to dressing, and in the many warm, inviting, colourful homes she created. Not that she was precious about it. No need to take your shoes off in Avril’s house. She was a maker of many beautiful things: sweaters, clothes, stained glass, quilts, rugs – most of which she gave away to friends and family. Once, she hand-painted an entire room with a recurring original design. She’d re-invented wallpaper, minus the paper.
Music, opera, movies, current affairs, and British comedy numbered among her non-literary pursuits. Her rogue approach to wildflower gardening nearly got her tossed out of the stuffy gated senior’s community where she and Chris briefly lived near the end of his life (which had unbendable rules about what could be planted, and where). Outraged, she got them moved out a few months later.
That she could be a study in contrasts was part of her charm. The artist who didn’t always love making art. The woman who didn’t care much for travel (which got in the way of reading), but who loved moving house. The one who loved shopping, but disdained materialism. In her later years especially, the thrift shop was her candy store.
Avril had a strong ethical compass that led her to take on many causes over the years: disarmament, animal and human rights, vegetarianism, the environment. In the latter part of her career as a fashion illustrator, she refused to draw fur – this when she was supporting her kids as a single mum on freelancer’s wages and could ill afford a principled position.
A point of pride was being one of the first Guelphites to own an electric SmartCar, which she gleefully beetled all over town in. When she was forced to give up driving after her final move, to a senior’s residence in Toronto, in 2019, she hung the license plate over her bedroom door like a teenager.
She loved animals, particularly dogs. Even more particularly: dogs with a tale of woe, whether it be a missing leg, a failed career at the racetrack, or an unresolved neurosis (the latter, a rescue beagle named Mike, was the only one who didn’t work out; but he ended up in a happy – earthly – place.)
Avril is pre-deceased by her husband Chris; daughter Chelsea (Bob); brother, Russell; sister, Jill, step-granddaughter Kiara, and dogs Podge, Norman, Lolly, Toby, Maisie, and Tom.
She is survived by her son, Daniel, daughter Emily (Craig), stepchildren Zoe (Ted), Anthea, Stephanie (Peter), and Chris (Janet); grandchildren Harry, Zoe, Sam, Inigo, Hugh, Finn, Reid; step-grandchildren Lianne, Kiara, Nicholas, Trevor, Devin, William, Kelsey, Brooks; and four step-great-grandchildren. All miss her, and the bright star that she was.