Olga Piccinin McCormack: Mother. Volunteer. Lexicologist. Philanthropist. Born April 1, 1930, in Coppercliff, Ont.; died Nov. 22, 2023, in Montreal, of colon cancer; aged 93.
Olga Piccinin McCormackCourtesy of family
Olga Piccinin’s parents were immigrants from Padua de Pordenone in Northern Italy, her father a bricklayer and her mother a homemaker. The family moved often around Canada as construction projects developed in the 1930s and 40s, finally settling in Shawinigan, Que. Olga had two siblings, learned Italian as a first language, then French and English.
Trained as a secretary in high school, she worked for eight years at Belgo Pulp and Paper in Shawinigan. She was crowned “Miss Belgo” in 1953.
A year later, she met Eamonn McCormack playing badminton at the Shawinigan Racquet Club. He was an engineer from Mullinalaghta, Ireland, and was drawn to her beauty, svelte figure and positive outlook on all aspects of life. Olga wore those rose-coloured glasses throughout her life.
At the time of their marriage in 1957, it was illegal for a married woman in Ireland to work and even though the couple lived in Canada, Eamonn proudly abided by the ideology. Olga happily stayed home to raise their two daughters, Deirdre and Eileen.
Olga was organized and ambitious and for the next 50 years she sought intellectual fulfilment and built social connections through a variety of volunteer roles in the church and township of St. Bruno de Montarville where the family settled after Eamonn’s engineering posts in La Tuque, Que., and Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.
As volunteer secretary for St. Augustine of Canterbury Catholic Parish in St. Bruno, Olga spent 30 hours a week attending to church duties until she was 89 years old. She became a resource to friends, parishioners, priests and bishops. She organized the Shawinigan High School reunions right up until the 65-year anniversary in 2012. She was a lifelong Liberal supporter, member, convention participant, campaigning door-knocker and voter. She was well known in the party leadership as an energetic, tireless contributor. She cherished cards and letters from many prime ministers including those she knew from her Shawinigan childhood and high-school days. (When then-prime-minister Jean Chrétien met her red-headed granddaughter, he congratulated Olga: “Felicitations Olga, elle est déjà rouge!”, a commentary on Shannon’s built-in Liberal branding.) For a lifetime of volunteerism in the church and community Olga received numerous awards, including the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee medal.
Olga’s love of words and the English language led to an obsession with proper grammar. She was not an avid reader of novels; she preferred an intense study and dissection of the English language via hunting out and openly, but politely, correcting written articles. She wrote to newspapers to correct mistakes and spelling errors often. In casual conversation she spelled out homonyms. She was especially sensitive to verb conjugation and correct sentence expansion with conjunctions and prepositions (“Taller than I am” not “taller than me”). She abhorred the use of redundant phrases (“these ones”) and the indiscriminate and widespread misuse of the apostrophe. She always won at Scrabble, completed the Montreal Gazette’s crossword daily for more than 40 years and wrote study guides for herself and her family. Olga’s children and grown grandchildren still feel lucky and grateful for all the language instruction.
Her involvement in the church and town led to thousands of local and provincial connections and an associated generous spirit. She could whip out a chequebook faster than you could say Jack Robinson. Olga donated to hundreds of charitable causes every year, prompting numerous Canada Revenue Agency audits.
Olga was a rare and remarkable woman who led an important wide-reaching life.
Eileen McCormack is Olga’s daughter.
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