Surrounded by her family, Meg passed away after a fight with cancer on October 13th, 2021. Meg was a talented artist and educator. She will be remembered as a loving and caring person who had many dear friends. Meg held a diploma in Fine Arts from Fanshawe College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Waterloo and later earned her Masters of Education from the University of Western Ontario. She enjoyed her work as a Special Education Teacher at Bkejwanong Kinomaagewgamig where she worked directly with students to attend to their individual goals and needs. She retired in 2018 but so greatly missed working with students that she began tutoring at Delaware Central Public School before the pandemic. She loved her career as an educator and spoke so well of her students and colleagues. In addition to being an incredibly dedicated educator, Meg also maintained her love and interest in painting. She enjoyed sewing and quilting and always had multiple projects on the go.

She was famous for her sense of humour and could quote obscure lines from films that she had seen years earlier. Meg could weave together incredible stories so vividly that you could inhabit them along with her. On walks, she could easily name plants and explain their various uses and attributes. She loved music, and when she found an album she loved she would play it on repeat for six months straight until she had absorbed every note. She was always ready and eager to support her children and grandchildren in making their homes beautiful and comfortable places to live with creative projects alongside her husband Jim. Meg met Jim in the early 1970s in Glencoe, Ontario while out on the town with her sister, Reta. They were immediately drawn to each other and soon began a family together. Meg and Jim moved their family around a lot, living in Wardsville, ON; Sarnia, ON; Hawk Hills, AB; Manning, AB; Listowel, ON; London, ON; Waterloo, ON; Port Stanley, ON; and eventually Chatham, ON.

In every new city, Jim would make the home comfortable, and befriend the neighbours allowing Meg to concentrate on her work. Jim was always supportive of Meg’s career and pursuits and proud of her accomplishments.

An artist from a young age, Meg’s earlier work mainly focused on portraiture, including sensitive depictions of women in gendered environments, family, and cultural heroes from pop icons like The Beatles to Elijah Harper. Her work is represented in many private collections as well as the Museum of the Regiments in Calgary, AB. In 2017 she collaborated with her daughter, Julie Tucker on an artwork “On whose land are you on” with strong cultural and educational themes which was exhibited at the Art Gallery of Windsor. Meg had an ease about her, an ability to be present and comfortable in many environments from formal academia to dive bars, where she enjoyed blues music. She believed in lifelong learning, as much as she was a teacher she was a student. She was an avid reader of Indigenous history and literature and would often give books as gifts to be circulated amongst the family as a kind of library. She loved to travel and attend galleries and museums in the cities she visited. She would always stop in the gift shops to pick up a t-shirt for herself or to give as a gift.

She was learning Lunaape language and history through workshops at the Munsee Community Center and had kind words for everyone involved. In her Master’s thesis she had written, “Meg Tucker takes pride in her unique lineage as a member of the Munsee Delaware First Nation as well as her German heritage, Norma Logan Richter remains her most relentless role model.”

Meg’s mother Norma passed away in March of 2021. Meg looked up to her mother, a survivor of the residential school Mount Elgin Industrial Institute, who went on to raise seven children in Middlemiss, Ontario. From Norma is where Meg got her persistence, her resiliency, her humour, her kindness, and determination.

Meg is survived by her loving husband Jim Tucker and adoring children Christopher (Darlene), Jennifer (Gary), Julie (Dan) and Jamie (Sooyeong). She was a very special grandma to Dylan, Jacy (John), and Kyra (Cameron). Meg will be remembered by her siblings Gloria (the late Morris), Reta (Ken), Paul Jr. (Ruth), Debbie, Pam (the late John), and the late Frank Richter; nieces, nephews, extended family, and lifelong friends.

Visitation will take place at Kendrick Funeral Home, 4 Victoria Ave., Chatham, on Friday, October 29, 2021 from 4 to 8 p.m. Masks and Covid screening are mandatory for all who enter the funeral home. A private family memorial service and burial will take place on October 30, 2021 at 11:30 a.m. at Melbourne Agricultural Hall, Melbourne Rd., ON N0L 1T0

If you wish, memorial donations would be appreciated to Chatham Kent Hospice, 34 Wellington St E, Chatham, ON N7M 3N7.