Obituary of George Brown

George Brown passed away peacefully at his home in Waterloo on Sunday 24 February 2019. He was ninety years old. He was predeceased by his wife Monica and is survived by daughter Sylvia (John) and grandson Nicholas.

He was born Georg Borkowski in the former East Prussia, now Poland, the youngest of eleven surviving siblings. At home in Lehmannsdorf (Bagieńskie) he remembered the old people speaking the Masurian dialect. At school he was taught high German, however; he loved geography and learning about nature, but because of problems with his hearing he was sent to the back of the classroom for being slow. At the very end of the Second World War he was drafted as a sixteen-year-old German soldier. Almost as soon as he got a uniform, his unit was disbanded in confusion, and he found himself walking in the stream of refugees fleeing the Red Army in the bitter cold of January 1945. Later, he figured his wife-to-be Monica was probably in the same stream of people fleeing, as a thirteen-year-old in a wagon while he was on foot. Immediately after the war, like many others, he looked for lost family and friends, and for work. He hoped to find an apprenticeship to a baker but the only available training was with a butcher in Salzwedel – to his disappointment, as he had run away back home on the farm when an animal was slaughtered. George always remembered the kindness of his boss in Salzwedel, and also that he advised him to flee East Germany before the border was fully closed. So George tried to escape (twice): the first time he was caught and spent a night in jail, but the second time he and a friend took advantage of flooded fields that weren’t guarded. In western Germany, he enjoyed living for a time in Bavaria, working at an inn, and always thought he would have liked to stay there. His eldest brother Otto (born 1909) had emigrated to Canada when George was only a year old, and George decided to join him there and, like his brother, change his name to Brown. In Canada, he met and married his wife Monica, continued in the meat business and eventually became meat manager in a local supermarket. In the 1970s, George decided on a change of career and bought a share in Waterloo Taxi. For the next two decades he enjoyed driving; he always loved to drive, just as he loved to run as a little boy. He also enjoyed and was very good at fixing anything. He used that skill when he and Monica threw themselves into running a couple of apartment buildings: as throughout their marriage, they worked as a team. In her last years of declining health, George became a dedicated carer for Monica. They would have had their sixtieth wedding anniversary in the year after her death.

Burial will be private. Friends and neighbours of George and Monica are warmly invited to an informal reception on Saturday 2 March 3:00-5:30 pm at Erb & Good Family Funeral Home, 171 King St. S., Waterloo.

In lieu of flowers please consider donations to the Kitchener-Waterloo Humane Society or Diabetes Canada.  Donations and condolences may be arranged by contacting the funeral home at www.erbgood.com or 519-745-8445.