Gerald Brewster

Gerald Weldon Brewster was born to Weldon Upham Brewster and Minnie (nee Sieffert) at the end of the Great Depression on August 14th, 1937, five years after his sister Sheila. They lived at 15-1/2 Somerset Avenue in Toronto, near Casa Loma. Minnie died tragically of an abscessed tooth at age 36, when Gerry & Sheila were children of just 3 and 8.

Life was hard, and money was tight. Weldon had many unpaid medical debts and needed help and so, his parents, Eliza & Eldridge came from Harvey, New Brunswick to lend a hand. He met, and after a brief courtship, he married Janet Shanks in March of 1941 to be a wife and a stepmother to the children.

Early in 1944, the family house on Somerset had been sold and they were advised to vacate. This resulted in the purchase of the house at 1739 Jane Street in Weston where the family would spend the next 20 years. Gerry then attended Hardington Public School and Weston Vocational School.

Gerry was not especially fond of school, although he did well in applied physics, shop, math and English. He considered himself very enterprising as he signed the initial slip of paper for the school so that his own signature would be on file for future absence notes. He was caught one day when he was legitimately off, and his mother had provided the note. The school observed that the signature was different and called to inquire. Janet said it was right and when the school asked why ALL the other notes had a different signature, there was some deep trouble.

EARLY WORK YEARS

Always a hard worker, Gerry worked from a young age as a delivery boy for Ron's Fish & Chips (bike delivery even in snow), a stock boy at the supermarket, caddy at the golf course, and a labourer at a roofing company handling bags of loose asbestos fiber at age 12, eventually becoming an electrician.

DRIVING

While the drive was less than 500m from his home to Weston Vocational School (as it was known in those days), he drove. In high school, he acquired a Morris Minor, one of several cars he had that included a '32 Chevy; he wasn't sure where he got them. Meanwhile, his father decided that the time was right to teach Gerry how to drive. Gerry had to pretend he didn't know in order to keep up appearances! He would park behind the Supermarket across the street at night. It was wintertime and there was no antifreeze in the car. He had to drain the rad and block before leaving it overnight and had to refill them in the morning to drive to school. It was cool to drive, and he made the 500m trip considerably longer. At some point, he was caught by the police so his father took him down to the Police station, 'explained' the situation and the police agreed to issue him a driver's license in 1950 at the age of 13 or 14.

PORT ELGIN

Spending summers in Port Elgin was the highlight of Gerry's young life and beyond. Aunt Mabel would take out an ad in the local newspaper advising the arrival of Minnie's son each year. His kinship to the farm community and family in Port Elgin was strong. It represented freedom to him, and was the source of unlimited, love, good cooking and delicious fresh food. He absolutely loved it up there, and had many, many good times. This is also where he developed his taste for dairy, including whole milk, cream and his true favourite: real buttermilk.

Even after he was a working fellow, he would take a 'sabbatical' and head to Port Elgin. On one such night, he was coming home from Port Elgin in the middle of winter, blinding snow and realized that he would not make it. He got out the phone book, and looked up his cousins Allan and Marilyn Gregg and asked if they would put him up for the night. This is how they started their close friendship.

MEXICO

Gerry was in love with Mexico since his first trip in 1956 with 4 friends. It was on this trip that he met Ronald Findlay and they became life long friends. He returned in 1960 with Eddie Bell and again with Pat in the 1980’s.

There were terrible, terrible road conditions on the 1960 trip to Mexico with Eddie Bell. It took twelve hours to drive 120 miles when they came to a river. They could see dump trucks driving through the shallow water, bouncing up and down on the large rocks. They wouldn’t dream of driving the car through. Instead they had to drive up on planks onto two rowboats side by side. Gerry was behind the wheel of his '56 Buick. Eddie wanted no part of this, so he got out and took a picture instead.

Ophelia Martinez was Gerry’s companion for a few weeks from Monterrey to Guadalajara. She was a super gal, and they provided free transportation for her back to her home in Guadalajara. He met her family. She was very well educated and when he got home there was a letter from her in Spanish waiting for him. Janet got her hands on the letter and used the Spanish-English dictionary to translate. It was addressed "Salutations to me mother-in-law and me father-in-law!" Obviously she had a sense of humour like Gerry's. He recalled recently that "she took us places we would never have seen. Lake Chapala, from the shoreline, there was a solid mass of blooming purple flowers on green leaves. He loved nature, Mexico and the Spanish language.

ANIMALS

Gerry enjoyed animals from early on, having had a large German Shepherd when he still lived at home. During a trip to Winnipeg in 1960 he came across a motherless baby skunk which he took a shine to and named Suzie. There were also many dogs and ferrets.

LOVE & MARRIAGE

Gerry met Patricia Anne Phillips on a blind date! The rest is history. Baby Stephen arrived, and was a source of much pride and joy. Six years later, a baby sister arrived, but fate was cruel; Baby Sheila Anne died at 2 days old, from SIDS while in hospital. Pat was determined to have another child, and baby Susan arrived the next year.

Married in 1961, Pat and Gerry enjoyed a loving and mutually respectful marriage. They would have been married for 45 years if Pat had lived to see their next anniversary in 2006. Their first apartment was a triplex and then they moved to their second apartment – a brand new in low income housing, but it soon started to become a ghetto and they wanted out. They managed to buy 46 Portage Avenue for about $12,000 in 1964, where they lived the rest of their married life.

These were good years, with wonderful friends and neighbours.

SCOUT CAMP

Gerry was a leader for 3rd Weston Scout Troop that included Stephen. This was a testament to him being a great father because he had never spent time in Scouts but when the troop was in danger of closing without enough leaders Gerry stepped up to assist. There were several trips to the Haliburton Scout Reserve for one-week scout outings during the summer. On the first trip Gerry had his old 1968 Dodge Fargo pickup pulling a box trailer that he had borrowed from his boss John Colburn, which could not get up one of the long hills into the scout reserve. That year was very rainy and the campsite flooded. With no sun it was very difficult to dry out all the camping gear. There were nightly visits from raccoons and bears that were never a problem but did make mother very nervous. The week was topped off when one of the campers, Trevor Douglas, fell and sliced open his knee requiring over a hundred stitches. This is where Stephen remembers having canoe lessons and where Gerry got the bug for canoeing. In the picture “Haliburton Scout Reserve” circa 1970, Gerry is on the right and Evert Douglas behind the table.

WORKING LIFE

Gerry worked as an electrician for the TTC back in about 1955, making $2.42 per hour. He ultimately had to quit in order to join the union. He was accepted by the IBEW the same day, and immediately went to work for Fischback and Moore Electrical, who then sent him back to the TTC. Since no one at the company wanted to work in the tunnels, he found an extra $0.25 cents in his pocket, bringing his total pay to $4.25 per hour. Jackpot! Now they could get busy paying off the house.

He went on to work for Roxborough Electric at Crown Cork & Seal where he met John and Shirley Jenkins. They became life-long friends, and Gerry considered John his best friend at the time of his departure. After a back injury in 1973 he decided to change his work venue and worked at a few contract positions including; Ontario hydro looking after pilot projects in various seniors residences which is where he met Bill Edgecomde at L'Amareau Centre who became a good friend.

Another contract position was at Erich machines were Gerry traveled to various steel plants servicing equipment. One trip was to San Diego where Pat and Susan tagged along.

Early in 1979 Gerry went to work for the Oshawa Group as maintenance supervisor in store maintenance. In the early eighties Gerry returned to his roots at Roxborough Electric where he started the mechanical division where he worked closely with Danny Manes and from where he retired in the early 1990's.

WORKSHOP

Gerry wouldn’t have said that he had any hobbies but he was always busy in the garage building or fixing something. He spent countless hours there. It’s no coincidence that this is around the time he stopped smoking cigarettes and switched to a pipe. One of the larger projects that Gerry took on was to build a complete 17 1/2 foot cedar strip and fiberglass canoe that was inspired by his brother in law Kelly Fraser who taught a night school class in King City. Gerry and one of his friends Bill Edgecomb worked together in the garage preparing the frame and cutting all of the lumber and building two canoes. They turned out pretty good and as Stephen, who learned to canoe at the same time as Gerry at the Haliburton Scout Reserve, can attest, that canoe was very fast. See the picture of Gerry in the canoe titled Maiden Voyage.

COTTAGE

Gerry was very intrigued by Round Island and really appreciated the log buildings and the history & craftsmanship of the seven builders none of whom were professional carpenters. Gerry and Stephen worked diligently, with the help of some of his work friends like George Bober, to dig the trench from the water to the cottage (about 110 feet) so we could get power to the island which is something we enjoy to this day.

The workshop was originally the ice house which Gerry converted and where he spent many hours tinkering on various projects. When the family first moved into the cottage in the fall of 1984, most cottagers had left for the season. Walter, the original builder, still had some of his possessions there that were yet to be removed including a strawberry basket that contained several live sticks of dynamite. Walter said that it was fine as long as no one touched them or made any loud sounds like hammering. One night Gerry and Stephen went to the ice house with a flashlight looking for something and the wind grabbed the door and slammed it shut behind them with a mighty bang that nearly scared them to death.

Most of the tinkering Gerry did in the workshop had more to with the fact that he could smoke his pipe with his favorite tobacco Borkum Riff. There are many of his old tobacco tins, which he used to store nuts, bolts and sundry hardware that remain there to this day.

LAMBTON SQUARE

After nearly 50 years, and 8 years after Pat’s passing, he made the choice to sell the house and move to Lambton Square. His condo, overlooking the Humber river and the Golf course was a source of wonderful entertainment and optimism. He enjoyed it much more than even he thought he would. He made a few friends, and his dog Sarah made even more until her passing in 2015.

Survived by his children Stephen (Susan Lue) and Susan (Alan Atkinson) and his grandchildren Chelsea and Marshall and his loving sister Sheila (Kelly) Fraser. He was truly an exceptional person to all who knew him. Please share your memories and stories.