The Passing of Cindy Littlefair

My mom, Cindy Littlefair, died on April 15 at the Halifax Hospice, surrounded by friends and family. She was 65. Cindy was a school board member, a writer, a Buddhist, a prolific friend, and mother of four.

Death comes for us all, but, for mom, I think her untimely death carried peculiar meaning. She spent her whole life deeply curious about mortality, following a childhood beset by tragedy. As a result, she maintained a light-hearted awareness of death, always reminding herself to live each day with curiosity and enthusiasm, knowing that this life generally ends without warning and without ceremony.

Mom was the youngest of six children in a blue-collar family in Peterborough, Ontario. By the time she was born, two of her older siblings had already died in separate tragedies. She wouldn't learn their names until she found photos of them in the attic as a child. Her two remaining brothers died before she reached adolescence. Mom shared this story with her kids to show us the preciousness of life, encouraging us to invest in friendships and experiences over possessions.

In her twenties, mom struggled to reconcile her traumatic childhood with the pleasant quietude surrounding her as a factory worker in small-town Ontario. That's when she found Buddhism. "It saved my life," she said many times. Buddhism told her that everyone experiences suffering and death. In 1984, at age 25, she moved to Halifax as part of a Buddhist migration.

In Halifax, mom and her first husband Ken had three children: Paige, myself, and Allister. She and her next partner, Gary, had one child, Grace. Mom always made it clear that her children were her greatest joy in life. She sewed our halloween costumes, designed scavenger hunts for our birthdays, and encouraged us to travel the world.

In her spare time, mom's greatest passions were thrift shopping and writing. She combined those interests in a financial advice column for Halifax's Daily News, “Life in the Cheap Lane.” She paid off her mortgage in thirteen years, finding herself mortgage-free at age forty. When she submitted herself to The Globe and Mail's financial column for advice, the columnist said he had no advice to give and instead showcased her as an exemplar of household economics.

At age 43, mom leveraged her financial freedom to gift herself a four-day workweek, using her Fridays to work on her personal projects. For many years, she used that time to focus on writing, publishing a weekly column about life in Halifax's North End in The Chronicle Herald.

As we four children made our way through school, mom served on the Parent-Teacher Association for our elementary school, St. Mary's. During the school board's repeated attempts to close the school, mom toiled to save it. (St. Mary's survives to this day, in large part due to her work.) Inspired by that experience, in 2012 she ran for school board, where she served one and a half terms. She focused much of her energy on governance reform to make the board more effective. In her perennial effort to engage the public, she wrote columns and blog posts about important school board issues, including a column for The Coast encouraging others to run for the board. That work was all lost when the Liberal government disbanded school boards in 2018.

After the school board, mom returned to her writing projects. She wrote a draft of a book about her childhood, which inspired her to enroll in a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction at King's (never having been to university before). She graduated with her MFA in 2022 at age 62.

In the last two years of her life, mom found an agent for her book and started a Substack to promote her writing. She published a story in The New York Times' Modern Love column. She was looking forward to a retirement spent writing, drinking wine with friends, traveling, walking her dog, and chatting with acquaintances up and down Agricola St.

That was mom. She was compulsively social. She loved hearing everyone's stories --- the mundane and the extraordinary. She loved knowing her neighbours and chatting with them in the hallway. She maintained an impressive mental rolodex of acquaintances who she would happily call up for advice or a favour. She loved her day job as a human resources manager at the Lion's Roar Foundation, largely because it brought her in contact with her beloved coworkers --- many of whom in turn counted her as a close friend. She once told me that she wrote personal responses to every single job application that came across her desk (often hundreds of resumes for a single posting). She had a close circle of chosen family, and a wider, shifting circle of clan. Our family's Sunday dinners welcomed friends, friends of friends, partners, exes, exes' exes, boarding students, and mom's one foster child.

Mom was diagnosed with bladder cancer in January 2024. For the last months of her life, she was almost always in bed, and she was almost never alone. Her family and friends rallied to take care of her around the clock.

Before her cancer diagnosis, mom said that she aspired to die "all used up," knowing that she had applied herself to the end, that her body had nothing left to give. That end came sooner than expected, but she nonetheless realized that goal; she gave us everything she had. "I love people," she would often say, and many people loved her back. I think it's true (and I think she would be happy to know) that she leaves behind a community that is stronger thanks to her dedication and enthusiasm.

Cindy Maureen Littlefair died on April 15 surrounded by her family and friends at the Halifax Hospice in Halifax, NS. She leaves behind her four children, Paige (Mark Jennings), Sam (Claire Zimmerman), Allister (Ivnoor Shergill) and Grace. She was the joyful grandmother of Ellis, Norah, and Hilda, precious sister to Sue Harvey and auntie to a niece and nephew. Her dog Luc was her faithful companion for 12 years, and she leaves a legion of friends.

Cindy was born in 1959 in Peterborough, Ontario to Shirley Littlefair (née Ashby) and Thomas Littlefair, the youngest of six children. It was a loving family with more than its fair share of tragedy, and by the time Cindy was 12, four of her siblings had died. Her desire to make sense of these events led her to study Buddhism, and she continued on that path all of her days, inspired by the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa and Ösel Tendzin as well as the many teachers she met along the way.

Cindy worked until the last six months of her life, enjoying the engagement and dynamics of a busy work life. For the last 18 years she worked for Lion’s Roar magazine (formerly Shambhala Sun) and was well-known as the coordinator of the yearly online auction which began many new friendships worldwide. Before this she worked for ACTRA and the CBC.

For more than 30 years, Cindy was a columnist and blogger, sharing insights on life, community, and family. In 2022, she received her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction at the University of King’s College, developing a memoir, Deadfall. She published in Lion’s Roar, the New York Times, and her newsletter Fleeting in Substack was widely read.

Civil engagement was an important tenet of Cindy’s life. She was a member of the Halifax Regional School Board from 2012 until its disbandment in 2018, and always up for a meeting of local politicians or activists. She was a strong believer in honouring the Canadians who served in war and always attended Remembrance Day ceremonies.

Cindy was a passionate reader, loving the classics—anything by Dickens or Tolstoy, and in recent years devoured hundreds of memoirs. She was a maniac thrifter, a habit she has schooled her children in, and a lover of polka dots. She frequented the Y, calling it “my favourite place of worship.” She was always up for learning something new, her most recent venture being the art of silk-screening, inspired by her collection of street posters. Music and in particular supporting local artists was also a large part of Cindy’s life. Friday nights would find her sharing a meal and many stories of the week with her pals, and Saturday morning meant a walk with Luc to Point Pleasant Park with friends, followed by a trip to the Brewery Market.

Cindy loved life in all its manifestations, and her thrifty nature caused her to see it as something that should be properly used up so that nothing was left at the end. Her greatest work was her family, and it is there her friends could see how her ferocious intelligence and big heart worked to great effect. All of her children are wonderfully positioned to live their own lives with heart and intelligence in abundance. They are all kind, funny and creative. And know how to stretch a buck and make a fantastic pot roast.

Cindy’s family and friends are very appreciative of the loving care given by all staff at the Halifax Hospice. Her body is resting at the Shambhala Centre, 1084 Tower Rd., Halifax. A funeral Ceremony of Sukhavati will be held there on Friday, April 18th at 1 pm. In lieu of flowers please donate to AfterWords Literary Festival, afterwordsliteraryfestival.com.