Maria Verbena Donati Jenkins

It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of our beloved mother, Maria Verbena Donati-Jenkins, who left us on April 25, 2025, after a long rich life. Vibrant and creative, Verbena was the role model of the liberated woman who lived life on her own terms, forging new paths, always focused on the future. She was a wonderful mother, a passionate multi-talented artist whose life work and legacy are reflected in her many paintings, drawings, prints and wall hangings. Driven and restless, she also expressed herself through designing and renovating houses, moving every three or four years when the work was complete.

Art was first and foremost in Verbena’s life. Her love for painting began during her high school years in Italy, where she won national art competitions. At university, she studied art, education and social work, and began a teaching career. She married her first husband, Leo Donati, at the end of the Second World War, and had two daughters, Ileana and Genni, before the family immigrated to Canada in 1960, where their son, Leo, was born. Verbena continued her studies first at the University of New Brunswick, then at the University of British Columbia, where she attained a master’s degree in art and education. After years of teaching art and Italian at Templeton School in Vancouver, Verbena took early retirement in order to resume painting full-time. Since then, she has had a number of solo exhibitions, has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has had her paintings housed in the permanent collections of art galleries. Her body of work forms a type of self-revelation, a history of self-discovery. “Women often dominate my work,” she said, “embodying my duplicity by exhibiting an extroverted, happy exterior while masking a lonely, unhappy interior.” During her 90s, she began to record her memories and on her 100th birthday, she published her memoir, Unsettled.

Verbena is predeceased by her husbands, Leo Bernardino Donati, Cedric Hawkshaw and Alan Jenkins, as well as by her brothers and sisters Ida, Mario, Alberto, Pippi and Bianca. She is survived by three children and their spouses – Ileana (Peter), Genni (Frank), Leo (Carol), as well as three grandchildren, Lloyd, Cyan (Alex) and Coco (Austin), two great-grandchildren, Charlie and Calla, her brother Bruno, nieces and nephews in Italy, her beloved dog Lucky, and countless friends in Italy, Vancouver and Ottawa who felt her warmth, resilience and generosity.

To commemorate her incredible journey and to celebrate the love she spread, a celebration of life will be held in her honor both in Ottawa and Vancouver.