Obituary of June Eileen Dueck
Obituary of June Eileen Dueck
June 22, 1957 - October 27, 2024
With profound sadness we announce the passing of June Eileen Dueck, born June 22, 1957 in Rosthern Saskatchewan to Jacob and Eileen Dueck. She was their fifth daughter of a total of seven daughters and two sons.
June lived with her parents and eight siblings on a farm near Hague, SK until they packed up the station wagon and moved from Saskatchewan to Buick, BC in 1965. This was quite an adventure and was, perhaps, the catalyst for June’s future adventures. Schooling went only to Grade 7 and then the options were education by correspondence or staying in the dormitory in Fort St. John during the week and going home for weekends. June took Grade 8 by correspondence and then stayed in the dormitory until graduating from Grade 12 in 1975 at North Peace Secondary School in Fort St. John, BC.
June received a scholarship to attend a summer French immersion program in either Montreal or at Toronto’s Glendon College. She jumped at the chance to check out Toronto because it was her plan to go to University of Toronto (U of T). June then returned to BC to attend one year at Simon Fraser University and then transferred to U of T to pursue Ancient Near Eastern Studies. She graduated from U of T in 1980 with a Bachelor of Arts Honors Degree with a major in Anthropology with emphasis on Archaeology.
June loved her adopted city of Toronto and decided to make it her home. It was the multi-cultural nature of Toronto that attracted her – a mini world in one city that she longed to experience.
While attending U of T, June took a part-time job at Thompson-Lightstone. This became a full-time job after graduation. Her goal was to save enough money to travel for a year.
June bought a one-year plane ticket to London in July 1981. That was the first of many adventures in 22 countries that June visited over the next 42 years. She seized an opportunity to live in and work voluntarily for several months at a kibbutz and participated in several archaeological digs in Israel. A few of her travel highlights included seeing orangutans in the wild in Borneo, hiking in Tasmania, and visiting with many of Eric’s relatives in Israel. Two of June’s favourite memories were climbing Mt. Sinai and spending a night sleeping under the stars on a traditional sailing boat on the Nile. June loved to explore the cuisines of other countries and embraced the Moroccan cuisine most of all. She would go so far as to ferment butter for a month so that she would have the one teaspoon required to make a certain authentic Moroccan dish.
June met Eric Markovic at Thompson-Lightstone, but they did not start to date until a chance encounter after June’s year of travel in 1982. While June and Eric did not have children, they both loved cats and raised many.
June spent most of her career at Sony Music starting in 1989 and retiring in 2017, at the age of 60. June progressed from programmer to project leader to management in her career at Sony Music and gained wonderful friends along the way, namely Pat, Shari, Lori, and more. She always said she was destined to work there because every day the bus she took to work passed by the Sony Music building (then CBS Records) and she would say to herself, “I want to work there.”
Two dear friends of June from outside of work were Darlene and Lidia. June met Darlene while in the French immersion program at Toronto’s Glendon College. They remained fast friends through many years. One time, June even had an opportunity to bring Darlene home to Buick while on holidays. In 2023, June travelled to Morocco with Lidia, who had become a good friend and hiking companion.
Covid brought an end to June’s travel plans for a while but opened a new world of bird photography to add to her love of travel photography. On her daily walks in the extensive ravine parks in Toronto, June noticed many varieties of birds and started carrying a small camera to capture them and anything else of interest seen along the way. This became her passion.
In the year 2000, June was diagnosed with kidney cancer and had a kidney removed on her birthday June 22. This became a day to celebrate another year of surviving cancer, however, in November 2023, June suddenly fell ill and was diagnosed with DLCBL Lymphoma. This came as a huge surprise as she had felt well until that point and was only one week away from boarding a plane to Sri Lanka, a trip that was reluctantly cancelled. June fought a courageous battle against her cancer, but sadly it would not be beaten and she passed away on October 27, 2024.
June was predeceased by her father Jacob Dueck in 2023, sister Pauline Tallman in 2013, and brother-in-law Norbert Fischer in 1984.
June will always be lovingly remembered by her spouse Eric Markovic; mother Eileen Dueck, and siblings - Elaine Fehr (Dave), Cathy Stewart (Rocky), Sandi Travis (Russ), Janet Strandlund (Phil), Robert Dueck (Deborah), Alan Dueck (Lynn), Brenda Johnston (Gene), brother-in-law Harvey Tallman (Veronica), and nieces and nephews.
In accordance with her last wishes, June’s ashes are interred at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto.
June’s roots were with family, but her heart was in Toronto.
There will be a memorial service for June on Friday, November 29, 2024, at 2:00 PM at Hamre's Funeral Chapel.
The service will be livestreamed for those who cannot make it in person.
CLICK HERE for the livestream link
There will be a tea to follow, held at the Peace Luthern Apartments Solarium, located in on the 5th floor in building 2.
