Nancy Elizabeth Walshe: Mother. Adventurer. DIY-er. Fearless. Born Aug. 23, 1946, in Toronto; died Oct. 9, 2025, in Victoria, with breast cancer, by MAID; aged 79.
Nancy Elizabeth Walshe.Courtesy of family
A few days before Nancy died, she got her first tattoo. It was lovingly created and inked by her granddaughter. A small heart, with the word “forever” in the centre. It was simple and beautiful.
Nancy Robinson was the middle and spirited child born to John and Marion Robinson. She grew up in Montreal with older sister Margot and younger brother Ross.
At 19, she moved into a ramshackle apartment with four other young women on Montreal’s plateau. Cockroaches also inhabited this apartment, and one night Nancy orchestrated a pest extermination, smashing bugs with shoes and spraying a nasty poison through a hand pump. This problem-solving determination was a quality that remained with her for the rest of her life.
When Hugh Hefner opened a Playboy Club in Montreal in 1967, Nancy applied to be a waitress and began bunny training. She would delight her roommates with the skills she learned, such as the “bunny dip” – serving drinks with one’s backside to the table, a bend of the knees and passing drinks from a tray with a backward motion of the arm. If customers became too frisky, they said, “Please sir, you’re not allowed to touch the bunnies.” After a few days, her father got wind of her new job and he sent a telegram to Hugh Hefner forbidding her from continuing. A cheque from the Playboy Club for the sum of $7.13 remained an uncashed souvenir for the rest of her life.
Nancy changed course and moved to Victoria. She began working at a children’s treatment centre and met Tom Johnstone, whom she later married. She gave birth to a daughter, Shannon, and the family relocated to Ottawa to be closer to Tom’s family. A son, Ross, was also welcomed.
The wiring in their new Ottawa home desperately needed updating. Nancy, always eager to learn a new skill, took on the job. She consulted manuals, but not inspectors. Nancy even learned to drive a school bus, which her children loved to play in after school.
Nancy loved having a project on the go. She learned to lay hardwood floors, renovate kitchens and install tile. In her 70s, she converted a laundry room in into a bathroom. She also had a flair for sewing, most of it done without the aid of a pattern. At Christmas she sewed matching pyjamas for the family, and in the last few years of her life, she produced ballgowns in preparation for attending a ball in Vienna.
After her marriage to Tom ended in 1981, Nancy began working in sales in the early years of wireless technology. She owned a cellphone (as large as a brick) long before any of her peers. This new career was just the right niche for her intelligence, curiosity and boundless energy.
One winter, she took her children on a Caribbean cruise that she had won from her sales performance. They were invited to the captain’s dinner but their suitcases with a change of clothes never arrived. Not to be deterred, Nancy fashioned toga-like ball gowns from bedsheets, using the plastic embellishments from her cabin’s fruit bowl to accessorize.
Nancy met her second husband, Tony Walshe, after the children had left home. They married in 1994, and worked and travelled abroad, living in the U.K., Malta and Ireland. She returned to Canada briefly during this time, to donate her bone marrow to her ill brother.
Upon retirement in 2005, Nancy and Tony moved to Victoria to be closer to family and friends. Nancy was active in many outdoor pursuits, and after Tony died in 2019, she began ballroom dancing.
Nancy liked to be in charge and she was very capable. Her nickname was Nana the Planner. But it could be challenging for friends and family who had other suggestions on how to get a job done. Until the end of her life, she insisted that she be the boss.
In the summer of 2025, Nancy learned she had advanced and aggressive breast cancer. She visited with family and friends, she tidied up her already tidy affairs and lived her final days with sparkle with an unfailing sense of humour.
At a gathering to celebrate her life, guests were given a temporary tattoo – a heart, with the word forever in the centre.
Ross Johnstone is Nancy Walshe’s son. Liz Dohan is Nancy’s friend.
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