By Ron Hayes
BRINY BREEZES — Joan Nicholls lived a double life on Facebook.
She was Joan Nicholls on her personal page, and she was Joan Briny Nicholls on the page reserved for the countless photographs she took of her town and its people.
“She had her own account, and she had an account for Briny Breezes,” explained her daughter, Sandy Miatello. “She always wanted to share those photos so people could see what was going on in their favorite club.”
Joan Nicholls died at her home in Pickering, Ontario, on April 1. She was 91 and had been a winter resident of Briny Breezes since 1971.
As the town’s roving photographer, Mrs. Nicholls photographed here, there and everywhere, then took the photos home, edited them, and shared them both to Joan Briny Nicholls on Facebook and on the walls of the town auditorium.
With the town’s historical preservation club, she helped curate documents, photographs and interviews, and pored through old copies of The Briny Bugle for interesting articles to display.
“She was competitive,” her daughter said. “She would go into the Everglades and take pictures of different birds. One time a gator was coming up behind Mom while she was trying to get a bird. She got the bird and the gator didn’t get her. She was fearless with a camera in her hand.”
Joan Pamela Gates was born in Eastleigh, England, on June 14, 1934, and arrived in Canada in 1949, three weeks before her 15th birthday. She lied about her age to secure a job with the American Consulate in Toronto, where a coworker introduced her to William Nicholls, her future husband. They married June 20, 1953.
The Nichollses were dedicated travelers.
During their early days in Briny Breezes, Bill and Joan Nicholls often traveled with their friends and neighbors, Willard and Ella Mae Hartz. Mrs. Hartz died in 2008.
“One time around 2010, they took me along as a driver,” Willard Hartz recalled. “We were hauling a trailer, and Bill made a fake license plate and put it on the back. We traveled all the way from Florida to right outside my summer place in Sunrise Beach, Missouri, before we got stopped.”
At 96, Hartz still laughs at the memory.
“We fooled everyone for about a thousand miles,” he said. “Joan just laughed about it and said, ‘Well, we’ll get out of this one way or the other.’ And we did.”
Her daughter laughed, too, when she heard the story.
“No, I never heard that one,” she said, “but I wouldn’t put it past them.”
After Mr. Nicholls’ death in 2012 after 58 years of marriage, Joan and Willard Hartz became friends.
“I was what you’d call a sidekick,” Hartz said. “We never married, but just very, very good friends. We traveled to England together, Spain, France, Italy, Gibraltar, Scotland and Ireland. Joan would say, ‘We’re going here,’ and I’d say, ‘OK.’”
Mrs. Nicholls died in the same home where her husband had spent his final days.
“She wasn’t ready to go,” Sandy Miatello said. “She was still talking to my niece about her upcoming nuptials next August. But she got to meet her newest great-granddaughter.
“Sofia Yolevski was born on March 24. My mother met her on March 31 and passed away on the morning of April 1.”
In addition to her daughter, Sandra, she is survived by her son, Scott, and his wife, Debbie; her grandchildren, Melissa (Matt), Mandy (Alex), Emily (Marcus), Amber (Peter), Kelsey (Brad), and Sarah (Justin); four great-grandchildren, Aubrey, Elio, Rory and Sofia; and thousands of photographs.
Memorial donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society.
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