BROWN, Irene Irene Brown, a spirited matriarch who embraced the role with delight, passed away March 15, 2018 after a brief illness she fought with her trademark grit. She was 92.
A child of the Depression who never took future comforts too seriously, Irene Cecile Brown and her beloved cardiologist husband Kenneth raised five children in a home with open doors and much laughter. After Ken’s untimely death when she was only 58, Irene became a cherished grandmother of seven and, recently, a great-grandmother. Young Irene Wallace was a tomboy who grew up in east-end Toronto climbing trees and playing softball and tennis.
She attended Bowmore Road Public School, and the then Eastern High School of Commerce, where she was class valedictorian. After graduating, she spent much of the 1940s “going to business,” first at an insurance company she soon left to become executive secretary to a director of the T. Eaton Co., a job she adored. She and Ken married in 1947 and loved nothing more than a full house, especially after the kids had arrived. Their home became a hub for family gatherings that often featured Irene’s culinary favourites: crown roast of pork, chicken pot pie from the Arcadian Court at Simpson’s… and anything made with lemon. But her happiest times were surely spent at the family cottage in Muskoka, where she also relished playing hostess. Whether clustered around the long oak dining table her father had built or pressed into a hootenanny on the porch, visitors felt at home.
She and Ken also loved to travel, leading family convoys to New England in the fall and heading south in winter. (Taught to “drive like a man” by her father, Irene was known to many a highway patrol along the I-75 to Florida.) And these Depression kids never tired of cross-border shopping, returning with the latest in Yankee ingenuity, from aerosol cheese and the neighborhood’s first “chip clips” to wide-mouth jars of ketchup, the trove always photographed for posterity. She had married a pioneering physician with a larger-than-life personality, but being a straight-shooter with a wicked wit allowed Irene to hold her own. Rather than return to work, she volunteered her time, whether as a Brownie leader or with the Canadian Heart Foundation where she helped to organize a gala fundraiser with Prince Philip as guest of honour. A framed picture showing her with the dashing royal hung wherever she lived.
In later life, she was devoted to crossword puzzles and retained her passion both for sports – especially football, figure skating and the Jays – and music, from bagpipes and Broadway to Belafonte. Ever the character, she was also great company, her sense of humour undiminished even by dementia in recent years. To the end, she relished telling funny stories, and it was impossible not to laugh along.
Her family wishes to thank the staff of the Isabel and Arthur Meighen Manor for giving Irene such a welcoming and comfortable home for more than three years and for the tender care provided in her final few weeks. As well as husband Ken, she was predeceased by her mother Norma (Faragher) and step-father William Lawrence, brother Ken and sister Vivian. She leaves her children, Louise (Jerry), Bob (Judy), Jim (Helga), Cameron and Debbie, and grandchildren Clayton (Vincy), Gretchen (Mase), Amy, Samantha, Andrew (Britt), Mitchell and Rebecca. She will be remembered with affection by the broader Brown clan and sister Vivian Hacking’s family.
Visitation will be held Thursday, March 29th from 5 to 8 p.m. and Saturday, March 31st from 10 to 11 a.m. at the Mount Pleasant Funeral Centre, 375 Mount Pleasant Rd., Toronto. The funeral service will be Saturday at 11 a.m., followed by a lunch reception upstairs and then interment for those who wish to attend.
Condolences and donations to the Alzheimer Society of Toronto in Irene’s memory can be made online via www.etouch.ca