September 25, 2020

JANET PRITCHARD SLOAN STILL LOVED FAMILY’S OLD RESTAURANT

GRAVENHURST — John Gordon Sloan knows death and suffering.

The retired reverend is presiding tomorrow over a small graveside interment of his late wife, Pat, in Peterborough.

Something he has done countless times in his long life as a United Church minister.

Next week, Oct. 3, he was to do the same for his sister, Janet, in Gravenhurst.

But due to new restrictions and a large gathering predicted her family has postponed the celebration of life to next summer.

The two women, Pat Wood and Janet Pritchard, died within days of each other last month.

Pat Wood was a busy community volunteer, chorister and Women’s Institute member.

She was 84 — the same age as her husband, whom she married seven years ago — when she died Aug. 19.

Janet Pritchard, 75, died in hospital at Sault Ste. Marie Aug. 28, 2020

A former elementary and adult education teacher, she and her brother were the last children of the legendary family of Sloan restaurateurs.

Her grandfather Archie and her dad Gordon (Dora) built the famous Muskoka Road food destination stop — where anyone who was anyone stopped for blueberry pie.

All the Sloan kids grew up and worked in the restaurant.

Like many in town who either dined, dated, picked up sweets at the bakery.

Or just sat at the counter to enjoy a coffee and talk about the town with genial gentleman host Gord Sloan — always dressed in a bow tie and short-sleeved white shirt to complement his coiffed white hair.

He died in 1976.

His daughter “deserved better,” said her son, Rob, referring to her shortened life and delayed funeral.

Like her brother, Pritchard made a pilgrimage to her family’s old restaurant (now called the Old Mill) each summer she came to the family’s campus of three cottages off Brydon’s Bay Road on Lake Muskoka.

And where she would catch up with her few old remaining friends on the main street.

This summer was obviously different due to COVID and her own deteriorating health tied in recent years to arthritis, said her son Rob, 49, who works from his Ottawa home for Elections Canada and is “always” preparing for a vote.

Like her father the accomplished organist and choir director at Trinity United Church, Pritchard too was a fine pianist and in the church choir in the Soo, where she also sang with the Algoma Chamber Singers.

Judy Moore grew up with her and was a classmate at Gravenhurst Public School and Gravenhurst High School, said she is “heart-broken” at her passing.

“She was one of my best, long-time friends,” Moore said yesterday. “We went back a long way.

“She had a wonderful sense of humour. She kept us in stitches,” said Moore, adding with a laugh “she could always find trouble, too.”

Moore said her old friend “loved coming (down) to the cottage.

“It was one of her favourite places.”

And despite debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that “crippled her” in recent years and prevented her beloved visits, “she didn’t let it get her down.

“Just an all-round delight to be around.”

Pritchard is survived by her brother, John Gordon, her son and her daughter, Amy, 47, who works at an ad agency in Toronto. And by ex-husband Bill Cardiff.

She is pre-deceased by her brother Malcolm (Sheila).