Fran Piron
August 30, 1950 - Oct 4, 2024

Fran Piron was a hugger of strangers, a rescuer of books left in laundry rooms, and a militant left-hander.

Fran was an excellent speller, a “smart girl”, the kind who wins all the school prizes. She made her parents proud. She studied Biology at university at a time when women just didn’t do this. Her nose was always in a book. She figured out how to read while walking, often taking long walks in the city, sometimes barefoot.

She met a boy named Giancarlo while working at a restaurant over the summer. She waited tables, he washed dishes. They fell in love, eloped, ran away together, and had two sons.

Fran made her sons’ development her first priority. She assembled mountains of lego, pitched tents in the backyard, and made birthday pancakes that spelled out their names. She was a force of nature: chairing the PTA group, organizing school hot dog days, teaching art classes for toddlers at the community center. Often she’d be covered in fingerpaint and glitter.

As the kids got older she took a job at a bank. It was uninspiring and corporate and gray. To her coworkers Fran was the light, bright technicolor — a vibrant and silly force of personality to help get through the working day.

In 2017 cancer took her husband and Fran’s heart broke in a million pieces. But her heart was healed as her grandchildren were born — first one, then two, then three, then four!

When cancer hit Fran, she hit back. She gave it a serious seven-year beating before slipping away peacefully surrounded by her sons and her family.

If there’s something beyond this life, Fran is now with her husband, telling him all about their beautiful grandkids who she loved more than anything.

A true original and unintentionally hilarious, Fran taught her children to laugh, but mostly she taught them to be themselves, something she did fearlessly. It was her recipe for a life well lived.

In lieu of flowers, please consider offering a donation in Fran’s name to charities that were close to her:
Emmanuel House Hospice: https://goodshepherdcentres.ca/donate-to-emmanuel-house/
Canadian Cancer Society: https://cancer.ca/en/