Obituary of Bernice Brown

August 10, 1919 - St. Martins, New Brunswick

December 3, 2024 - Calgary, Alberta

Jennie (Bernice) Brown, a long time resident of Lancaster and the North End of Saint John died on 3 December 2024 in Calgary, Alberta at the age of 105 years and four months. She was born on 10 August 1919 and grew up in the village of St. Martins on the Fundy coast. She is survived by her older son, Brice Brown of Calgary, her younger sister, Freda Weston of Saint John and several nieces and nephews. She attended the local school in St. Martins until grade eleven and, despite hardship and frequent illnesses that often kept her at home, she excelled academically, consistently placing first or second in her class. 

She married during WWII but, following her separation from Edward Brown in 1948 at age 29, she became a working mother and raised her two sons, aged four and five, until Keith's death in a hunting accident in 1961 at age 16 and until Brice graduated from UNB in 1967 and moved to the Yukon before settling in Alberta in 1968. She left Saint John in 1971 to join him in Lethbridge and in 1974 she moved with him to Calgary where she resided for 50 years until her death.

From 1950 until 1955 she was employed with the law firm of Benjamin "B.R." Guss, Q.C. and from 1956 to 1971 with the firm of B.R.'s cousin, William Meltzer who was also her landlord. They provided her with employment and an affordable home at a time when few opportunities existed for single mothers with young children and she was a valued and trusted employee during her time with their firms. Despite her modest means she was known during her time in Saint John for her kindness, hospitality and generosity to her neighbours and the local children, many of whom were from poor families. Despite her own circumstances she fed them, gave them pocket money and bought shoes and winter clothes for many of them. In Calgary she continued to assist people in need, especially the homeless and destitute who inhabited the city centre where she lived, and was well known among the local panhandlers, dumpster divers and other indigents. 

Her English ancestors arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1630 and their descendants migrated north to Kings County and Saint John County, New Brunswick during the late 1700s after having supported the British during the American War of Independence. She was of mostly English, Scottish and Ulster Irish origin with distant French Huguenot, Norman French and Scandinavian ancestry and her two children were of half Irish parentage. During her years in Fairville she was a member of the Anglican congregation of the Church of the Good Shepherd on Manawagonish Road where she attended Mass regularly and taught Sunday School to the youngest children, aged three to five years, from the local Protestant orphanage. She provided more affection, treats and entertainment than religious instruction and incurred the disapproval of some of the older teachers but was commended by her priest, Father Fernand LeRoy, for her unconventional approach and her genuine devotion to the tiny orphans in her class. She and Father LeRoy shared a uniqueness in the congregation, he being the only Frenchman, a native of Dieppe, France, and she being the only young working mother teaching in the Sunday school. 

She had a lifelong connection to the Jewish community of Saint John where she had many friends among the Jewish merchants and legal community and to her Jewish neighbours in Calgary. She was so esteemed among her employers and their colleagues that, when her son died in 1961, a group of mostly Jewish lawyers wished to cover the cost of his funeral. She paid for it from a life insurance settlement secured by Bill Meltzer but was always grateful for their generous offer and for the trust and respect that they accorded her. They had a tree planted in her son's memory in Israel, a tribute that she greatly valued.

Born during the fourth wave of the Spanish flu pandemic at the end of WWI, she was raised in St. Martins with her six siblings in conditions of frequent poverty, extreme hardship and deprivation during the 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s but, like her mother and her grandmother, she exhibited the resilience and perseverance of her generation, exemplifying the principle, "Improvise, adapt and overcome" that was later adopted as the unofficial motto of the United States Marine Corps. She was a small woman but extremely determined and independent and was unwaveringly loyal to her friends. She lived longer than any known member of any generation of her family and will be fondly remembered by her few surviving friends and relatives. 

She was predeceased by her younger son Keith, her parents Henry and Maude (King) Allen, her older sisters Elizabeth Thomas and Crena Knowlton, her youngest sister Lois Barton and her two younger brothers Henry Allen Jr. and Ronald Allen as well as by her young neighbour and close friend Susan Switzer in Calgary and her close friends Rosina Clifford, Geraldine Barrie, Junior Estey and William Meltzer in Saint John. 

Her remains will be sent to Saint John where she is to be interred in the family plot with her younger son. At her request there will be no funeral or burial service.

Condolences, memories, and photos may be shared and viewed with Jennie’s family here.

In living memory of Jennie Brown, a tree will be planted in the Ann & Sandy Cross Conservation Area by McInnis & Holloway Funeral Homes, Park Memorial, 5008 Elbow Drive SW, Calgary, AB T2S 2L5, Telephone: 403-243-8200.