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Weber
Weber.GertrudeWeber1915enr1.1 - 12 Sep 2017 - 15:17 - Main.guesttopic end
---+ Gertrude Ethel Weber

_Family reference:_ 615.165.83
| :born:    |Born   |13 Feb 1915| |Rosenfeld, Manitoba|
| :married: |Married|24 Dec 1954|Douglas Singleton Lawrie|Toronto, Ontario|
| :died:    |Died   |30 Aug 2011| |Sidney, B.C.|
|     ^     |Buried | 3 Oct 2011|Queen's Park Cemetery|Calgary, Alberta|

Parents:
   * Father: [[EmilWeber1879en][Emil *Rusey* Weber]]
   * Mother: [[Acheson.SarahAcheson1879][Sarah *Sadie* Acheson]]

Children:
   1. Douglas *Dal* Acheson Lawrie; 1956-1991
   1. Richard *Rick* Singleton Lawrie; 1958-living

---+++_Gert’s Early Years_


---+++_Gert and Doug_

---+++_The Final Years for Gert_
Gert, Doug and Dal are buried together at lot 43, block 3, section I in Queen's Park Cemetery, in Calgary, Alberta.  This is the family plot for Gert's mother, [[Acheson.SarahAcheson1879][Sadie Weber]].

---+++_Footnotes_

---++++_Eulogies by Rick Lawrie_

Douglas Singleton Lawrie <BR>
Dec 6, 1920 - June 12, 2009

Survived by wife Gert, son Rick, daughter-in-law Barb, grand daughter Sarah, preceded by son Dal, and sister Betty. You would be gone in the Manitoba bush for days with Yeats' poems and a .22, then the army, BA at University of Manitoba, railway job gandy dancing until you hopped out at UBC (1950?) almost a degree in social work, back in a box car, home to Winnipeg, then Toronto, vat cleaning at O'Keefe's [Brewery] until the day you caught a glimpse of my mother and you said your life began, then night school for a CGA, Ontario Corporation Tax job, down payment on a near mansion filled with art students to swing the mortgage, two sons, early retirement in '75, back to B.Cc writing gum-shoe mysteries by the sea, granddaughter, then loss of Dal, care of my mother... 

Thank you, you taught us honest, humility, humour, you gave depth.

Gertrude Ethel Lawrie<BR> 
February 13, 1915 - August 30, 2011

Her favourite song was 'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell, and she would quit her job every spring because '...that way I could distinguish between the years,' she said. The third of eight children, she was born in Rosenfeld, Manitoba on February 13, 1915, at the back of a country store.

The early part of her life was spent bouncing between rental houses and towns, often on the advice of her mother's Ouija board. 

In the fall of 1923, the family settled in Calgary. They lost brother Joe in the War and sister Mildred to cancer but thanks to her Aunt Gertie's generosity, my mother trained as a teacher and spent the last years of the Depression through the later 1940's in one-room school houses in farming hamlets. Not to be tied down by any man or Board of Education's increasing attempt to rein in her 
creativity, she stopped teaching and began a series northern odysseys. 

A fumble of events found my mother walking in summertime Toronto 1954; my father shot by her on a street car, several stops later he got off and ran back and begged to buy her a coffee. "In my life I had never met anyone like her," he said and they were married on Christmas Eve of that year. Soon they were buying a 20-room home, filled with boarders to swing the four mortgages, two children, night schools and difficulties. 

Starting as a secretary, eventually becoming copy editor of the Observer magazine, she felt a part of the country getting its identity; pictures of Trudeau, Yorkville filling up with hippies, and reviews of the Canadian novelists all were noted on the galleys she brought home and scribbled on. In 1975 they retired to Pat Bay BC, buying a country cottage and a grocery store.

The community embraced her. Not since her teaching in the Peace River country had she felt such a sense of belonging. She began to write a family history and juvenile fiction. When we lost my brother Dal in a car wreck 1991, a large light for her was extinguished, yet she continued her stream of letters to the editor in causes ranging from conservation to social justice. She lost our father Doug in 2009; she is survived by her son Rick (Barb), granddaughter Sarah d'Ambros-Lawrie, sister Edna Keene (née Webber). She was, in a word, unique. My mother never failed to show us the way to the adventure.

   1. TNG family tree page for Gertrude Weber can be found at [[http://acheson.familygenes.ca/getperson.php?personID=I4&tree=Weber][Family Genes | Acheson]].

%BIBLIOGRAPHY{header="---+++_Sources_" referenceTopics="BibliographyReferences" order="citation"}%

-- Main.JimBenedict - 04 Oct 2011
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