GODLEWSKI, Josephine (GIUSEPPINA PAPES) Godlewski, Obituary

GODLEWSKI, Josephine (nee GIUSEPPINA PAPES)  –  December 15, 1921 – December 28, 2015

Passed away in the Neurological Ward of Toronto Western Hospital on the afternoon of Monday, December 28 2015, at the age of 94, in the presence of her eldest son, Mario, after an almost four month ordeal battling medical and cognitive issues arising from having suffered a massive stroke on the morning of September 3, 2015 in her cherished and much-loved home in Etobicoke: her ‘Piccola caseta in Canada ‘con fiori di lilla.’  Josie to her neighbours, or ‘Pineta’, as she was known to her husband, Stan Godlewski, and family members, close friends and relatives of Italian background, was born in the town of Vazzola, Italy, on December 15, 1921 to Giovanni Papes and Carmela DeZotti, she being the first of five children, followed by brothers, Massimiliano, Agostino and Mario and sister Elia, all predeceased.

She is survived by her three sons, Mario, John and Eddy and daughters-in-law, Madelyn, Celine and Sharon, five grandchildren, Jacquelyn, Sabrina, Remy, Alex and Tamara and eight nieces and nephews and is fondly and lovingly remembered by all. She’ll be much missed by family and by her many close friends who had the chance to experience her kindness, good heart and warm generosity.

Giuseppina grew up in the small village of Tezze di Piave, Italy in the historical hamlet of Borgo Mallanotte and from there immigrated to Belgium in 1948 and then to Canada in 1951, sailing steerage class with her husband and two sons, Mario and John, on the SS Volendam I from Rotterdam to Halifax, landing at Pier 21 and arriving at Toronto’s Union Station on a cold and snowy November 5, 1951 to begin a new life in Canada as immigrants and refugees: a day Josie would remember and never fail to remind her children and grandchildren about with the phrase, “If I had the money to go back that day, I would have.”

Instead she settled in Toronto and had one more son, Eddy, working at various jobs at the Savarin Restaurant and the Imperial Room at the Royal York Hotel where she would meet many a famous celebrity.

Josie’s life in Toronto began on a grey, cold and snowy November day in 1951 near the corner of Bathurst and Dundas and ended – “I go good-bye Charlie”, as she would say” – 64 years later on an equally grey, cold and snowy December day in 2015, in a hospital bed not far from that first beginning: an ironic and symbolic twist of fate to a life long-lived in Toronto that was once sorrowfully wished to rather have been lived elsewhere, back in the land of her birth.

Funeral Service will be held at Turner & Porter Butler Chapel, Etobicoke on Monday, January 4, 2016 at 11 a.m.

For those who wish, donations may be made to the Salvation Army.

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