September 15, 1943 – May 1, 2026
It is with deep love and sorrow that we announce the passing of Eileen Frances Hildebrandt, who died peacefully on May 1, 2026, at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie, Ontario, surrounded by the love of her family.
Eileen would never have been comfortable with too much praise, but a life like hers asks to be remembered fully. She was generous in imagination, memory, music, and care.
Eileen was born in Montreal on September 15, 1943, the cherished only child of Michael Francis McCool and Eileen Patricia Butler. She grew up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in an English-speaking Irish Catholic family whose home was full of music, laughter, food, faith, stories, and spirited conversation. Her Catholic upbringing was shaped by both sides of Montreal life: she attended English Catholic schools and worshipped at St. Augustine’s with her mother, while also attending the French parish of St. Raymond’s with her father.
From her childhood windows at the family flat on St. James Street, she remembered the view toward St. Joseph’s Oratory and St. Augustine’s Church, and from the front balcony, the sweep across the Turcotte rail yards, the Lachine Canal, and the city in motion. Childhood also brought serious illness and injury. At 6, she spent Christmas in hospital with rheumatic fever, followed by a long year of bedrest at home. At 14, after a car accident, she became one of the early patients to benefit from a pioneering facial reconstruction technique in Montréal, with surgeons placing a plate internally and avoiding external scarring.
Eileen remained a proud Montrealer throughout her life. She carried with her the city’s energy, humour, neighbourhood loyalties, languages, and sense of place, even as life took her through Ontario and far beyond. Proud of her Irish roots, she carried forward a rich oral tradition of storytelling, music, memory, and humour, preserving not only the facts of a life, but its texture. She was also deeply proud to be Canadian. With family roots tied to the Grand Trunk and CN railways, she understood Canada not as an abstraction, but as a country built through movement, work, distance, and connection. Like her mother before her, she studied the country, its people, and its histories with lasting curiosity. She was grateful for the landscapes and communities that shaped her family’s story from coast to coast to coast.
Camp Chapleau in the Laurentians held a special place in Eileen’s heart from childhood, with its train rides, campfires, songs, prayers, swimming, and sense of belonging. It was also where bonds with beloved cousins Betty, Robert, Billy, Kevin, Clinton, and Eileen deepened into lifelong friendships, close enough to feel like siblings. Camping was woven into family life too. During her father’s annual vacation from CN, the family spent 2 weeks each summer camping in Plattsburgh, New York. Eileen later carried that tradition forward with Gordon and their children, camping through Ontario and across the country to Newfoundland, with Lake Superior Provincial Park among the family’s treasured places.
Eileen’s life held both joy and difficult chapters, including illness and injury, and she lived through them with honesty, resilience, and a deep commitment to family. As a young mother, Eileen moved to Vancouver with her first husband, Joseph John Gillis, and often remembered the daily walks to the beach with her young daughters in a pram. After that marriage ended, she returned east. In time, she met Gordon William Hildebrandt, with whom she built a life rooted in devotion, humour, service, and community.
Eileen moved through life humbly, with quiet conviction. She did not seek attention for the work she did, yet she used her voice when it mattered. She had a gift for gathering people and making them feel welcome.
In 1972, Eileen and Gordon moved their family to Novar, north of Huntsville, where Eileen found a strong voice in public and community life. Seeing the need for a place where local children could gather and take part in activities, she chaired the committee responsible for building the Novar Community Centre, a gathering place that continues to serve the community today. She volunteered at Fairvern Nursing Home, supported Scouts, served as Snowy Owl with the Brownies in Huntsville in the 1970s, and performed in six musicals with the Huntsville Rotary Club between 1979 and 1985.
Eileen and Gordon found lasting joy, friendship, and community through modern square dancing, travelling as a family to dances, events, and conventions. Family memories include square dancing on a raft on a lake in Muskoka and even on Parliament Hill, moments that captured the joy, movement, and fellowship that dancing brought into their lives. After moving to Pembroke, they co-founded the Swinging Swallows Modern Square Dance Club, which continues today, a living reminder of the community they helped build.
Eileen did not simply live in houses. She made homes. The welcome she knew in childhood became the welcome she offered throughout her life. Her door was open to relatives, friends, neighbours, children, and anyone who needed warmth, food, conversation, or refuge. In Novar and later Pembroke, that welcome included her own parents, who lived with Eileen and Gordon for many years and remained part of daily family life until their deaths in the early 1990s. In later years, Eileen and Gordon made their home with their youngest daughter Mary-Anne, another expression of the close, multigenerational family life that had shaped Eileen from childhood.
Animals were part of that home life too. Eileen remembered cats Tabby and Muffin; budgies in the Novar years; and beloved dogs Laddie, Boots, Socks, Bambie, Thumper, Lady, Maggie, Chloe, Clover, and Abby. She often said she would have loved to have a farm, to which Gordon jokingly replied that the idea only worked until she named all the livestock. Chloe, Clover, and Abby will especially miss cookie time with her.
After many active years in Novar, Eileen and Gordon later returned to Renfrew County, where her work turned increasingly toward care. She trained as a Health Care Aide through Algonquin College and completed further study in Activation Techniques in Gerontology through Durham College, along with training in palliative and pastoral care. She worked at Marianhill in Pembroke and Grove Park Lodge in Renfrew, served as a private companion to a woman living with Alzheimer’s, and worked as a relief counsellor at Avoca Interval House in Eganville. In each role, she brought patience, humour, and a deep respect for the person in front of her.
Her creativity found practical expression as well. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Eileen and Gordon ran a ceramics business, pouring and firing pieces that Eileen painted by hand and sold at craft sales in Renfrew County. Later in life, she returned to painting on canvas for her own enjoyment. She also wrote poetry and the occasional limerick, sometimes using her humour to keep musical directors on their toes.
Faith, history, and music came together in her work with the historic Pioneer Church at the Champlain Trail Museum. After the church was moved from Micksburg, Eileen worked with the museum board to help establish a summer evensong program, inspired in part by her memories of Sand Lake Church in Muskoka. For several years, she welcomed people every Thursday evening through the summer and at Christmas, bringing together faith leaders from Pembroke and the surrounding area for fellowship, music, and prayer. The program continues today through the Ottawa Valley Historical Society.
Music was one of the great constants of Eileen’s life. She sang with the Saint Andrew’s United Church choir in Novar, and later with Wesley United Church and First Presbyterian Church in Pembroke. She sang with the Pembroke Community Choir from 1986 to 2008. On several occasions, she shared her gifts as a soloist at church, with the Pembroke Community Choir, and at weddings and funerals. She performed with the Pembroke Musical Society, appearing in the chorus of Kiss Me, Kate and later as Evangeline Harcourt in Anything Goes.
Through the Ottawa Valley Music Festival, also known as the Valley Festival, Eileen became part of the Valley’s classical music community. She was part of the founding board of directors, served as the first chair of the Valley Festival Chorus, sang with the chorus for more than a decade, and helped create and launch the Valley Festival Scholarship. In that role, she helped introduce the Young Performers Highlight, giving local young musicians a place to be heard, encouraged, and celebrated. She also sang with the Muskoka Rock Choir in the 2013-2014 season.
In Pembroke, Eileen also shared a ministry of music with her friend Jane Smith, who played piano while Eileen led residents in song at local long-term care homes. At Supples Landing, she supported social coordination and helped bring music into the afternoon.
Travel also remained central to who she was. Eileen travelled across Canada, visiting every province by train, plane, and automobile, and journeyed beyond Canada to the United States, the Caribbean, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Europe, and China. Along the way, she made a point of visiting provincial and national parks, learning from them and sharing the beauty of the country with her family. Wherever she went, she returned with stories.
Above all, Eileen was the keeper of memory for her family. She preserved names, photographs, places, stories, recipes, travels, songs, and the small details that might otherwise have slipped away. Her genealogy work was never only about ancestry. It was an act of love, a way of helping those who came after her know where they came from.
Eileen is survived by her children Audrey Gillis, Heather Gillis, Charlene Kornaga (Dennis), Sherry Searle (Peter), Andrew Hildebrandt, Trevor Hildebrandt, and Mary-Anne Hildebrandt; her grandchildren Joseph, Michael, Kristin (Stephano), Jared (Haley), Frank, Meghan (Ben), Logan, Madison, Christopher, and William; her great-grandchildren Sage, Blair, Tyler, Orla, Michael, Eleni, and Popi; her step-grandchildren Harrison and Eleanor; her aunt Madeleine McCool and her husband Roger Caron; and many cousins and extended family members across several generations, including her lifelong and much-loved cousins Betty Hildebrandt, Robert Mooney (Maureen), and Billy Duffy (Solange).
She is also lovingly remembered by dear friends who became family, including Diane McDonald. She was predeceased by cherished friends Effie Hodgson, Calvin and Donna Coulter, Rev. Dr. Dorothy Wilson, and Judy Valliant-Bucholtz, each of whom held a special place in her heart and in the life she and Gordon built.
She was predeceased by her husband, Gordon Hildebrandt; her former husband, Joseph Gillis; her parents, Michael McCool and Eileen Butler; her grandson, Wesley Hildebrandt; her great-grandson, Tanner Closs-Gillis; many beloved aunts, uncles, and cousins; and dear cousins including Kevin Mooney, Clinton Mooney, and Eileen Butler-Duffy.
The family is deeply grateful to the teams at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, particularly the Cardiac Care Unit and the Integrated Stroke and Rehabilitation Unit, for the excellent and compassionate care they provided to Eileen. We are also thankful to Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket, where her heart valve replacement gave our family 2 more precious years with her. The family also extends sincere thanks to Dr. Bozek and Dr. Eaton for their care and support over the years and in Eileen’s final chapter.
Family and friends are invited to a memorial gathering at Murphy Funeral Home and Chapel, 296 Isabella Street, Pembroke, on [date] at [time]. The service will be held in the chapel at [time], followed by interment at St. Columba’s Catholic Cemetery.
In honour of Eileen’s lifelong love of music, choir, and community, donations in her memory may be made to the Pembroke Community Choir or to a local arts organization supporting community music.
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