Roselle Green never stopped learning, and in her 90s wrote essays just for fun

Roselle Green: Mother. Spouse. Lifelong learner. Baker. Born, Oct. 7, 1928, Prince Albert, Sask.; died Mar. 5, 2026, Halifax, N.S., of medical assistance in dying; aged 97.

I knew my mother well. When she died in March at 97, I wanted to know her better. Helping empty her seniors residence unit, I realized how few material possessions she had. While she had beautiful clothes and a cherished violin for 87 years, what remained were mostly files. Before selling her condo, she had purged. In her new home, she mainly wanted her research and laptop.

While cleaning, I kept coming across her notes and couldn’t part with them. Among them were handwritten pages summarizing Ezra Klein’s latest book, a McKinsey report on artificial intelligence, notes on polling, medicine, semi-conductors and political history. In 2025, less than a year before her death, she wrote a paper titled Policy and Politics of Terrorism. In 2013, at 85, she wrote about the Dreyfus affair. From 2016, there’s one about the Black church. At 91, the end of democracy was on her mind.

I’d tease her. “Mom, lighten up. Read a trashy novel.”

She would laugh and occasionally dip into shlock. But she was a perpetual student. After she died, Bill Lahey, then president of University of King’s College, wrote that Roselle lived “a rich life of the mind … encouraging others to do the same.”

Roselle Katz’s mother, who arrived in 1912 from what is now Belarus, was determined that her five children each get a university education and learn to play a musical instrument. Both became lifelong passions for my mother.

After two years at the University of Alberta, in 1947 Roselle was one of two women accepted to Dalhousie University law school in Halifax. She confessed to being at sea in her classes.

“I didn’t understand a damn thing they said all year.”

She was certainly an outsider. In addition to being a Jewish woman, she was with male classmates who were older, having served in the war and returned later for school. Soon though, she met Saul Green, a young surgeon, and dropped out to marry him. They met after Roselle walked into a restaurant and Saul asked his buddy to find out her name. After marrying in 1948, they lived in Halifax.

Independent, Roselle never stopped studying. While raising four children – Marcia, Susan, Howard and Morris – she returned to university, pursuing a master’s in Canadian history at Dalhousie when the legendary intellect George Grant roamed the halls. One day, the author of Lament for a Nation walked past Mom, who was about eight months pregnant with her fourth child.

“The morals at this university!” Grant huffed.

Unbowed, in the mid-1960s with children ranging from two to 15, she earned a diploma in journalism at King’s College. Later, she completed a diploma in public administration at Dal, where there’s a bursary named for her.

Into her 90s, Roselle audited courses and wrote essays, just for fun. During the last week of her life, in hospital on morphine, she said she had two unfinished papers researched.

But Mom wasn’t a nerd. She was a loving, devoted mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt and friend, whose date squares and cinnamon rolls were par excellence. I preferred the latter with raisins, while my brother liked them without, so she made both.

She loved meals with family and friends, swimming, bridge, concerts and her violin. She began weekly music lessons in 1938 with three-hour journeys each way from Prince Albert to Saskatoon. She stopped playing to raise her family but resumed after Saul died in 2005, pulling out her childhood instrument.

Her teacher came to her apartment weekly for duets. On the last night of Mom’s life, I played her Itzhak Perlman performing Mozart and Vivaldi. She managed a faint smile.

Roselle’s wit remained sharp. When she said she had become a burden, I told her no, that she was the best Mom ever. “And how many have you had?” she asked. Ever practical, she told me not to forget to cancel The Globe and Mail. She couldn’t help herself. When she visited, she couldn’t not load our dishwasher. She moved from task to task and never stopped thinking. While she wouldn’t allow invasive investigations about what afflicted her other than old age, when a young specialist suggested she might have cancer, she said, “that sounds reasonable.”

Mom and I also showed each other our writing, mischievously giving each other marks. Last summer, just before my latest book would be printed, I brought her the manuscript, 318 pages. Then 96 and still a voracious reader, she devoured it. “I found two typos!” she said, pleased with herself.

Howard Green is one of Roselle Green’s four children.

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