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Meet Your Neighbours
We are fortunate to have a wonderful group of people living in our complex. In this section we would like to pass along the unique stories of an individual or family. If you would be willing to share your experiences, please send these to the webmaster or drop your story in to the management office.
We have dedicated this page to highlight only one individual. Previous highlights are not lost! If you click here, you will be directed to the Neighbours archive.
If you know your neighbour has a special story, we encourage you to ask them to submit it or, with their permission, write the story for them.
It would be very nice if you could also provide a picture of yourself. Our goal with this website is to encourage communication and it would be nice to place a face to a name.
Meet your neighbour ~ JOYCE REYNOLDS
In a building that still has some original residents dating from 1976, Joyce is a relative newcomer. She was looking for a condo in 2004, and says that the first time she stepped inside 50 Quebec she felt the warmth of the building and knew she wanted to live here. She was lucky to find an apartment for sale immediately and, surrounded by “wonderful” neighbours, has felt at home ever since.
Joyce is a Down Easterner, having been born in Cape Breton and raised there and in Prince Edward Island. She remembers making the rounds of parishoners with her father (a minister) and being privileged to sit in the formal parlours of country homes, listening to stories of pioneer ancestors and looking at treasured family photo albums. She credits this period with awakening her lifelong interest in people and in helping others.
The family moved to Ontario, where Joyce completed high school. She then studied nursing and pursued a career as a registered nurse at Ottawa Civic Hospital. She met her future husband, Howard Reynolds, at a boys camp where he was waterfront director and she was the nurse for the summer. They were married three years later and settled in Montreal, where he started working his way up the corporate ladder in an insurance company. One of Joyce’s fondest memories of this stage in her life was accompanying her husband on trips to many interesting locations in North America and the British Isles.
While she enjoyed the time spent raising their two sons (and she now also has “one perfect granddaughter”), Joyce found that she wanted more out of life than being a hostess and corporate wife. So she enrolled in McGill University, majoring in early childhood education. Joyce achieved a further degree in the same discipline from Ryerson when her husband was transferred to Toronto. This was the start of her career in helping other women.
With this background, Joyce has either initiated or worked on numerous programs involving parents and children, especially training and prevention programs such as mother and child drop-in centres. A common aim of all her programs was to help mothers with no other outlets except their children gain confidence to expand their lives. Joyce has recruited and trained numerous volunteers over the years, with one of her most satisfying accomplishments being the choice of a particular volunteer to run a program in the Jane/Finch area; the volunteer was so successful that she is now sought after world-wide for her expertise.
Joyce’s husband Howard passed away a few years ago, and she is not as active as she once was. However, she remains involved in the church and looks forward to lunch at Tim Hortons with the ladies after Sunday service. She enjoys art classes at Swansea Town Hall and loves teasing her classmates about the next masterpiece. Mall walking has been replaced with aquafit classes, and Joyce says as long as she can drive her car, she’ll be going places.
Joyce’s main passion these days is the family cottage north of Kingston, fittingly on the same lake where she met her future husband all those years ago. She enjoys paddling about the lake in either her kayak or canoe, or just sitting on the dock waving to passing boaters. Joyce is currently serving a third term on the board of the cottage owners’ association, and is heavily involved in efforts to preserve the lake, which is one of the few trout lakes in Ontario. As she puts it, she lives here, but her heart is there.
Joyce is quite happy to reside at 50 Quebec, however, and she especially appreciates the friendship and helping hands extended by the other residents on her floor (“the right floor in the right building”). She has volunteered for the Neighbours sub-committee and recently hosted the first gathering of Neighbours on her floor. Joyce would love to see the Neighbours concept adopted on every floor, because helping one another is still a guiding principle in her life.
Now that you’ve met her, please say Hello to your neighbour Joyce Reynolds whenever you see her around our condo building.
