FLEMING, Marie Fleming

Passed away peacefully on January 6, 2026. Marie led an adventuresome and international life beginning in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where she grew up as the eldest child in a family of seven. She sailed through school and taught Latin for several years at Holy Heart of Mary Highschool. After graduating from Memorial University of Newfoundland with a Bachelor of Arts, she obtained a coveted Woodrow Wilson scholarship, and with the later assistance of Canadian grants, she went to the London School of Economics to gain a Master of Science degree (1972), a Master of Arts (1976) and Doctor of Philosophy (1976). While living in England, she not only researched in the libraries and archives there, but also travelled to France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.

In 1975 she accepted a position at the University of Western Ontario, where she remained for the next thirty-one years. During this period in her life, she won numerous distinctions that include research grants from the Canada Council, several Major Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and in 1982-83 and again in 1991 she won the distinction of becoming an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany. In her time at Western she served in various administrative positions, most notably for five years as Director of Women’s Studies.

Beginning in the years 1999 to 2001 Marie opened what became an exciting new chapter in her life in the United States, where she joined her husband and initially became a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts. In 2006 she accepted a position she esteemed as Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. There she taught courses that included the philosophy of literature, the arts, and the mind.

What Marie wanted was to be a great teacher and researcher, and to that end she devoted herself for a total of nearly a half century in the classroom. Marie has numerous publications, including scholarly articles, addresses, and books such as The Anarchist Way to Socialism: Elisée Reclus and Nineteenth-Century European Anarchism, and on a completely different topic and country, Emancipation and Illusion: Rationality and Gender in Habermas’s Theory of Modernity. She lectured, often by invitation, to audiences in Canada, the United States, Britain, Spain, Yugoslavia, Norway, and Germany. Among her many projects since coming to Florida State is a completed book manuscript on the philosophy of mind that will be published in due course.

Marie’s presence will be missed by her countless friends, colleagues, and students. Besides her eventful professional life, and with typical aplomb she also became a skilled painter, tennis player, downhill skier, and relentless participant at Pilates fitness classes. Inseparable in her busy life was her family. She took great pride in becoming a mother to Diana and was deeply saddened by losing her grandson Scott. Marie is survived by brothers Alfred (Jean) and Mac (Angela), as well as sisters Elaine (Angus), Maureen, and Dolores (John), all of whom live in Newfoundland with Marie’s nephews and nieces. She will be mourned by her daughter Diana (Mark, Kyle, Lauren, Hunter, Parker, Shayne), and by her granddaughter Samantha (Adam). She is also predeceased by her parents Johanna and Alfred Fleming, sister Catherine and husband Donald, brother-in-law Keith, sister-in-law Glenis.

Diana and her family live in Ontario along the shores of Lake Huron, near North Lambton Lodge where Marie moved to be near her daughter and family when Alzheimer’s disease struck. She kept a happy attitude throughout her last years of struggle and was invariably delighted by visits of her daughter and great-grandchildren (Aiden and Logan).

Marie treasured her husband Robert Gellately to whom she was a loving partner and lifelong friend. He will be lost without her. Just two days after their sixty-second wedding anniversary, Marie found peace from the ravages of disease, comforted by her loved ones. Cremation has taken place, and in keeping with Marie’s wishes, there will be no formal service. In lieu of flowers, donations in Marie’s memory given to the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada would be greatly appreciated.

Online condolences may be left at www.forestfuneralhome.com

Arrangements entrusted to Denning’s of Forest.