For ten years PAL Vancouver was Joy's home. She electrified our hallways and theatre with her warmth and humour; and united PAL residents, bringing out our best selves.
On any given day she might be meeting the j's at the coffee shop on the corner; planning a tea party or concert or an art auction; gathering the crochet club together; commissioning public art for PAL's rooftop garden, inviting neighbours to her home for dinner; or baking tea biscuits to drop off at a special someone's apartment.
Joy Coghill-Thorne, a woman honoured many times by the performing arts communities she nurtured, passed away on Friday, January 20th in the palliative care unit of St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. She had been admitted a few days earlier after suffering massive heart failure. There will be a Celebration of Life service on Monday, February 20 at 3pm at Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver. In lieu of flowers, her family asks that you please consider donating to the Performing Arts Lodge Vancouver, where Joy lived for the past ten years. www.palvancouver.org. Donations ensure the sustainability of PAL's rental assistance program, ensuring residents in need pay only 33% of their incomes on rent.
Joy's extensive career and trail-blazing energy led to lifetime achievement honours by UBCP/ACTRA in November 2016, and by the City of Vancouver in 2015. She was inducted as a member of the Order of Canada in 1991 and was a recipient of the Governor General's Award for the Performing Arts in 2002. Joy also received honourary doctorates from the University of British Columbia (1995) and Simon Fraser University (1994) and in the early 1970s she was head of the English section of the National Theatre School of Canada.
The first woman to hold the position of artistic director of the Vancouver Playhouse from 1967-1969, Joy founded Canada's first professional theatre, Holiday Theatre, in 1953. One of her best-known works as a playwright is
Song of This Place about Emily Carr; while viewers of CBC's dramatic series
DaVinci's Inquest will remember here as Devinci's mother, Portia.
Beyond her work on stage and in film and television, Joy dedicated herself to working on behalf of members of the performing arts community, many of whom have modest incomes and few benefits. In 2001, she co-founded the Performing Arts Lodge Vancouver with Jane Heyman, which provides affordable housing and a vibrant network of support for veterans of the city's performing arts communities.
Joy is predeceased by her husband of fifty-five years, John G. Thorne. She is survived by her three children, Debra (Theo Boere) Gordon (Michelle Lalonde), and David. And by her grandchildren Casey and Lucy.
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