To view Cathie's visitation (beginning approximately noon on 1/30/22), please click this link which will bring you to the live stream.

Saratoga Springs, NY - Catharine "Cathie" Currin, formerly of Aylmer, Ontario Canada and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, passed away peacefully on January 22 at the Wesley Health Care Center due to natural causes related to Alzheimer's Disease. She was 82.

Cathie was born on March 9, 1939, in Aylmer, Ontario Canada, where she was the first girl in the Aylmer boys band and played on the girls basketball team in high school, then played on a half-court. One of four sisters, she grew up in a house where reading and music were valued and she enjoyed both until her declining health made them impossible, to her great sadness.

She graduated from the University of Western Ontario in 1959 with a dual major in French and English Literature. That same year, she married Hunter Currin, and the two moved to the U.S. in 1960 for him to attend graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. The family relocated to Schenectady, New York in 1965 when Hunter found work at GE's KAPL. She became an American citizen in 1967. She was always torn about being so far from her family in Canada, and family vacations often involved trips back to Aylmer.

Cathie earned a Master's degree in Library Science at SUNY Albany. She worked as a school librarian in the Scotia-Glenville and Niskayuna School Districts, and as a part-time children's librarian at the Saratoga Springs Public Library.

Cathie was an avid traveler. She went hut-to-hutting in the Alps, spent a year teaching English in Thailand, and planned trips with each of her grandchildren, who all had a special and cherished relationship with her. After her divorce, she and her beloved Portuguese Water Dog, PT, traveled extensively in a Roadtrek camper van. It was on one of her RV trips that she fell in love with Charleston, South Carolina, where she lived for a few years.

Cathie valued diversity and multiculturalism, and for much of her adult life she hosted foreign high school teachers and students through the exchange program AFS. It was rare for a holiday in the Currin household to not have at least one exchange teacher or student included. Many of them became beloved members of the extended family. In 2002, she received the Galatti Award, given annually to an AFS volunteer for outstanding commitment to promoting international understanding.

She was an active member of Unitarian Universalist congregations in the various places where she lived. She ran a small bookstore at First Unitarian Universalist Society in Schenectady for several years and sang in many UU choirs.

Some of her favorite activities were building wacky gingerbread houses with her grandchildren, making ice rinks for the neighborhood in the backyard, family camping trips (at least once the tent was put up), and singing with the Schenectady Melodears.

Throughout her battle with dementia, Cathie never lost her love of singing or her memories of beloved exchange students and teachers.

Cathie was preceded in death by her parents James and Wilena Barnum and her sister Marilyn Benner.

She is survived by her sisters Barbara Hoecht and Dorothy Ingram; children Cailie Currin and her wife Margaret Jones, Zan Currin, and Chad Currin and his wife Lisa Currin; many nieces and nephews; and grandchildren Sydney Boles, Marley Bonacquist-Currin and Biruk Currin. They all miss her dearly.

Relatives and friends may call from 12:00 noon to 3:00pm on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at the William J. Burke & Sons/Bussing & Cunniff Funeral Homes, 628 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 (518-584-5373).

Donations in Cathie's memory can be made to the Community Hospice ( https://www.communityhospice.org )

Online remembrances may be made at www.burkefuneralhome.com