Joan Elizabeth Marshall Roberts

To view the service for Joan Roberts please click the following link: https://www.youtube.com/@anglicancathedralofst.john4736/streams

Joan Elizabeth Marshall Roberts died peacefully at St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Joan was born and raised in St. John’s and lived a remarkable life. A beauty queen and a scholar, Joan was crowned “Freshette Queen” and “Miss Memorial” as an undergraduate at Memorial University, where she was also a field hockey champion. Joan went on to study at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Oxford University, where she read for a doctorate in medieval French as a Rothermere Fellow. She subsequently completed a Master’s degree in Library Sciences at Dalhousie University and worked at Memorial University’s Center for Newfoundland Studies. She served for several years as a member of the Newfoundland Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee.

Joan will be remembered for her generosity, her elegance, her exceptional memory, and her tenacity. Joan was stoic in the face of many medical challenges and bore her declining health without complaint. Even as her health was failing, she was still able to astonish by quoting lengthy passages of Chaucer from memory. Joan was an ardent Newfoundlander, and would not entertain any suggestion that she live elsewhere. She loved her children and grandchildren above all, and wrote two children’s books for them, Goodnight Caroline and Maddie’s Seashell.

Joan was a resident of the Agnes Pratt nursing home for the last 16 years of her life, and the family extends its profound thanks and gratitude to all the staff who took such good care of her through those years.

Joan was predeceased by her parents, Dr. Kelvin and Mary Marshall. She is survived by her brother, Kelvin Marshall, her sister and brother-in-law, Brenda and Dr. Scott McClellan, her daughters, Catherine Roberts and Caroline Roberts, her son-in-law, Ben Quine, and her grandchildren Madeleine Lavrence, Graeme Lavrence, Jeremy Lavrence, Chloe Quine, and Henry Quine.

Visitation at Carnell’s Funeral Home December 27, 2022 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Funeral Service at the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, at 2 p.m. on December 28, 2022.