Pearl Killingbeck 1938-2024

Jun 26, 2024

Pearl Killingbeck died last week. She had been staying at the Moira Manor in Tweed. It is fitting that Pearl would end up in Tweed, in a way, because of Tweed’s connection to Pearl’s favourite singer, Elvis.

But Pearl will always be known as the Pearl of Mississippi. Until a few years ago, when it became harder for her to get around, Pearl was the last of our columnists to bring in her hand-written column, on yellow legal paper that we supplied, each week. We would come in on Monday mornings to find the yellow pages between the doors. Then, someone had to type them in, which often resulted in one or two phone calls to Pearl to make sure we had it somewhat right. Pearl was a conversational writer, so a lot of the punctuation was left to us in those years.

She never missed a community dinner, and took pleasure in describing who was there, what they ate, and what they said. In her column, she talked about her friends on a first name basis only. Readers had to fill in the blanks, when hearing about Olive or Alice or Harriet. And they did. People who had no idea where Mississippi Station was, took pleasure in reading Pear’s column week after week.

When COVID hit, Pearl’s column captured the sense of isolation that only someone who lived for social gatherings, someone whose laughter filled any room, could express. We began posting them in a series on our website at one point during the pandemic, and I had a chance to go through them at random yesterday, and they are a testament to her spirit.

And, those columns brought her some fame, but no fortune, when CBC Ontario Morning picked up on them and called her for an interview.

At one point in her COVID diaries, Pearl talked about meeting up with some men, all of whom were named for types of alcohol – in one of her columns – Jose (Cuervo) Jack (Daniels) Bud (Weiser) and, of course, Johnnie (Walker).

Somehow this morphed into a romance between Pearl and Johnnie, leading to them getting engaged.

After a bit of a hard time, when Johnnie almost left Pearl for Penny Delite (aka Trash Girl) they reconciled. The entire saga ended with the following from Pearl’s Covid Diary #39: “We eloped and moved to the burbs and lived happily ever after, just like Meghan and Harry. There may be a little Johnnie in the future for some other lucky girl.”

As Covid abated, Pearl was able to get back to her normal social life, but her health, which had always been a challenge, took several turns for the worse. Being the person she was, she shared her health struggles in her column, making use of her devoted friend, Alice (Gilchrist) to type them out and email them in, even while Pearl was in the hospital.

Finally, a few months ago, Pearl let us know she was no longer up to writing and the columns stopped coming. We heard two weeks ago that she was in palliative care, and this week that she has passed.

We will miss her. Our best to her family and many friends. For those interested, 42 of Pearl’s Covid diaries are collected at https://www.frontenacnews.ca/item/14355-pearl-s-coronavirus-diary