Catharina MacMillan lived a private life, raising her two children, volunteering at their schools, hiking, skiing and playing tennis with them, cheering them on at hockey and rowing, taking them home to Sweden for summers and supporting her husband’s business career as he rose through the Canadian banking echelons, beginning with Bank of Montreal and ending as president, chief executive officer and then chair of CIBC Mellon.
“She was heroic, but she didn’t make a big fuss about how brave she was,” said her sister-in-law, historian Margaret MacMillan, the author, most recently, of The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914. “None of us ever heard her complain” about a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in her 20s, breast cancer in her 50s, or how the two diseases conspired to rampage through her body in her 60s….
Asked last fall if she had any regrets, Catharina said no, articulating a straightforward philosophy: “Try and do what is right, and even if it is not right for somebody else, as long as you are happy with your decision, it is probably right for you.”
Read it all (again my emphasis).