† Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Sobor, Vancouver

Marina is our parishioner. Many of us will remember her smile, her benevolent nature, attention to people.
Marina passed away unexpectedly in the evening of June 30th, 2020 in Vancouver General Hospital at the age of 84.
She will be remembered and sadly missed by her son, Darrell; daughter-in-law, Sherie; granddaughter, Tabitha; great-granddaughter, Hayden; sister-in-law, Carol; niece, Leanne; nephews: Mitchell, Paul, and Scott and especially good friend Charlotte.
A Funeral service was held on Thursday, July 16th, 2020 Holy Resurrection Russian Orthodox Church.

Here we publish the Obituary of Marina Koskinen prepared by her son Darrell.

First of all, I would like to thank all of you for attending and praying for my mother’s soul in heaven.
In 1917, my grandmother escaped from Siberia into northern China because the communists in Russia were killing all aristocracy. My great grandfather, on my grandmother’s side was a General in the Russian army and therefore considered part of the aristocracy. My grandmother’s family traveled many days and nights, they fled by horse and carriage across Siberia into China. They were very poor when they arrived in China as they had to travel with very few belongings. Also around 1917, my grandfather traveled on horseback from Latvia all the way across Russia into Northern China, as he did not want to kill people in World War I. Then my mother was born in China in 1935.

My mother and her family lived in China until the mid 1950s. She had many good memories of living in China. Her family lived in an apartment building in Shanghai. She used to tell me about the beautiful garden outside her apartment building where she would play with friends and about the vacations she had with her family at their cottage by the sea in Korea. It must have been a wonderful childhood.

Unfortunately, communists took over China in the 1950s and forced all non Chinese people to leave the country. The majority of Russians left China and settled in Sydney, Australia, San Francisco, and Vancouver, Canada.
The preferred location for my mother’s family was Australia, but since Australia did not allow immigrants to bring a dog, they chose to come to Vancouver as the Canadian gov’t did allow immigrants to bring their pets with them. They arrived in Vancouver in the 1950s.

Shortly after my mother arrived in Canada she started working in an insurance office. My mother had very good shorthand and typing skills. It was through this job that my mother met my father in the early 1960s. Unfortunately, that relationship did not last long and they divorced shortly after I was born.

My mother also met one of her very long time friends, Rae, through her insurance job. She reminisced with me frequently about her trip to Hawaii with Rae in the 1960s.

After leaving her job at the insurance company in the 1960s, my mother became an administrative assistant to a famous professor of Neurology at UBC. I have a very vivid recollection of going with my mother to UBC every day in the summertime one year as she registered me in hockey school at UBC. I was probably around 12 years old. That was a great summer.

My mother was always supportive of me playing sports even though my grades probably suffered as a result of playing so many sports. She supported me playing ice hockey, soccer, and baseball. I recall her reminding me later in life that she used to wake up very early, around 5 am to take me to Riley Park to play ice hockey. She was a great mom for making such sacrifices for me. But luckily, for my mom, I did not pursue ice hockey for very long. I think she probably preferred taking me to soccer and baseball games more than hockey games since at least soccer and baseball took place at reasonable hours of the day. Like most people, my mother enjoyed sleeping. I definitely take after my mother in that respect as I also like to sleep.

I also recall one summer taking tennis lessons with my mother. I was around 12 or 13 years old and was already playing tennis quite often and my mother wanted to learn as well. So we took tennis lessons together at Queen Elizabeth Park. Unfortunately, tennis was not her thing. But at least she tried. That was also a very special summer for me.

What was my mother’s thing? Well, my mother loved singing. She had a beautiful voice. She had what people would call an operatic voice. She took singing lessons and had dreams of singing professionally. Unfortunately, she was not able to become a professional singer. She told me that it took money and connections to become a professional singer and our family had neither of these. She sang in the choir in this Church, soon after she arrived in Canada until sometime in the 1990s. She also sang with the Russian Center Choir at the many concerts they had each year at the Russian Center on Arbutus street.

She made many friends at both the Russian Orthodox Church and at the Russian Center. She enjoyed sharing that one special gift God had given her to share: her voice. She was also very proud to have been chosen to sing the national anthem at a very prestigious event held at UBC and told me that she was approached by a dignitary at that event who praised her for such a beautiful rendition of the national anthem. That made her very happy. Singing in general made her very happy. She also used to sing at the many parties to which she was invited, particularly at Christmas time.

Sometime in the 1970s, my mother left her job in the department of Neurology at UBC to work as an administrative assistant at the department of Ophthalmology at Shaughnessy hospital. I recall my mother telling me that in the Neurology department they experimented on monkeys. And I am sure it was for that reason my mother left that job as she loves animals and could not stand seeing animals in distress.
My mother did however enjoy working in the medical field. She loved learning about anything medical or health related.

In May of 1982, at age 47, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She survived the cancer but had her left breast and four lymph nodes removed. From that point on, her life was significantly different. She was embarrassed by the disfigurement caused to her body. Upon injuring her wrist a few years later after the removal of the lymph nodes, her left arm swelled and never returned to normal. She would live with this swollen arm for the next 37 years and felt very self conscious of how she appeared to others. She was still beautiful on the inside, but no longer felt beautiful on the outside.

Unfortunately, because my mother was in the hospital for an extended period of time, she could not go back to her job in ophthalmology. She was able to find a job working for another doctor at Vancouver General Hospital. This doctor and the other administrative assistant were not very nice to my mother, so she decided to leave this job after a few years of putting up with their insensitivities to my mother’s condition.

Fortunately, my mother found a very nice job at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Adult and Higher Education. She loved that job and the people with whom she interacted. Well, most of them anyway. She met three good friends at this job, Charlotte, Jeannie, and Robyn. I am sure they enjoyed many wonderful coffee breaks and lunches together. They remained good friends even after my mother retired around 1997.