Eleanor Sparling

SPARLING, Eleanor Mary

April 7, 1926 – Winnipeg, Manitoba

November 14, 2025 – Calgary, Alberta

Eleanor Mary Sparling (nee Cassels), passed away peacefully on Friday, November 14th, 2025, surrounded by her loving family at her residence in the Father Lacombe Care Centre in Calgary, AB, at the age of 99 years.

Eleanor was born on April 7, 1926, in Winnipeg, MB, to pioneering parents of Scottish descent, James and Eleanor (nee Munro) Cassels. She was the baby sister to three older brothers, Jim, Don, and Ron, which might explain why she loved to tease and loved to be teased.

Her early years were spent on the family farm, an enterprise born from a half section of unbroken land that her father had purchased in 1911, near the city of Winnipeg. In the 1940s, her family moved to the nearby town of Warren, MB, where she attended grade school before moving on to United College in Winnipeg to finish her final year. 

After graduation, Eleanor completed a six-week summer school course and that same year went on to do her first year of student teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in the tiny community of Edrans, MB, where she taught twenty-two students in grades one through nine. She summed up that experience by admitting, “I learned a lot more from them than they learned from me!”  The following year, she returned to Winnipeg to attend Normal School to complete her teacher-training.

Upon graduation in 1945, and at the age of 19, she accepted a teaching position in the northern mining town of Flin Flon, MB. She packed her bags, and with two of her closest schoolmates headed north by train “on the adventure of a lifetime”. Upon her arrival, she remarked that “after leaving the Red River Valley, it was like landing on the moon”. Nonetheless, she persevered, and it was there she met and fell in love with her future husband, Ted Sparling. Married in 1948, they put down roots and were soon raising a busy family of three children. 

Summers were always spent at the ‘Sparling Cabin’ at nearby Denare Beach (Amisk Lake), where Eleanor enjoyed gardening, boating, fishing, swimming, and family picnics ‘on the water’. In the winter months, she kept busy with both curling and community service.

She was an active member of the Kinettes Club, where she loved to organize and participate in Gala-Cabaret fundraisers which always had a musical theme.  Eleanor enjoyed music and loved to sing and perform. For decades, she was a member of the Flin Flon Glee Club and the Northminster Memorial United Church Choir.

Since arriving in Flin Flon and after taking several years off to raise her family, Eleanor amassed over 30 years of teaching experience before retiring in 1989. It was a few years after her husband had passed, that Eleanor decided the time had come to leave Flin Flon and in 2006 she embarked on another adventure, moving west to Calgary to be closer to her children and grandchildren. 

Eleanor was a special lady with a very pleasant demeanour and a heart of gold. She possessed a positive outlook and loved to engage with people, always with sincere and genuine interest. Nonetheless, she was known to be a bit mischievous (a product of three brothers?) and with a twinkle in her eye, she enjoyed having fun and sharing in a good laugh or practical joke.  She will be sorely missed by both her family and friends and by all who crossed paths with her. She absolutely loved her family, and her family loved her.

Eleanor was predeceased by her parents and siblings, and by her husband of 49 years, Ted Sparling.

She is survived by her three children, Janet Sparling and husband Wayne Parfitt (Calgary),  Jim Sparling  (Vernon, BC) and his children Tanner (Calgary) and Kayla (Vernon) , Chris Sparling and wife Susan (Calgary) and their children, Jamie and wife Lauren and their children Lucy and Ben (Squamish, BC), Jeff and wife Megan and their daughter Norah (Victoria, BC), Katie Dickie and husband Brett and their children Teddy, Anna and Charlie (Calgary) and Ellen McKenzie and husband Bryce along with their children Russel and Max (Calgary) and as well by numerous nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

Interment services will be held at the Denare Beach graveyard at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 16th, 2026, with Father Paul Bringleson presiding.  The service will be followed by a light luncheon hosted by family at ‘New Horizons’, 2100 Spruce Drive, Denare Beach.