Obituary of Marjorie Bryant
Our dear mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and cherished friend graced our world for nearly 90 years. Sadly, this era has come to an end with the passing of Marjorie Bryant on April 9, 2022. She spent her last beautiful day visiting with her best friend, sipping a Timmies, and singing along to Al Martino while they worked on her daily crossword. As she lived, so did she pass, and we are ever so grateful for the joy she brought to our lives.
Marjorie was born to Frederick and Dorothy Greenslade, on a farm in Culmstock, Devon, England on May 16, 1932. She was only seven years old when war broke out and she was sent to a Catholic boarding school for her safety. Raised in the Church of England, this was a life-changing event that led my mother to respect and admire many religions and lifestyles throughout her life. (Had she been born just a decade later, she might easily have become a flower child of the ’60’s.) As it was, she went from one boarding school to another and eventually earned a teaching certificate from the City of Bath Training College of Domestic Science, where she lived in residence at Claverton Manor. “Miss Domestic Science,” as her mother jokingly referred to her when she sometimes did not live up to the title, moved to Bedford to start her first teaching job at a secondary school in 1953. This is where she met and fell in love with John Bryant. It was love at first sight as she spotted him across the room at a popular dance hall above Dudeney and Jonhnson’s department store in the High Street. It was mutual and so was born their lifelong love of dancing together.
When John emigrated, Marjorie soon followed him to Canada, sailing on the newly built Cunard Whitestar ocean liner, Ivernia. (Six years later, this same ship would take Marjorie and her two infant daughters back to England to meet their grandparents.) Marjorie and John married in February 1956, surrounded by their newly minted British expat and Canadian friends. They lived for a time in Toronto where they made lifelong friends, but soon moved to the country, and settled in the village of Greenwood, Ontario. Here, they raised their two daughters, Sarah and Leslie, and their menagerie of pets. Being a farm girl, Marjorie had a natural affinity for animal husbandry and was a wealth of knowledge when it came to raising their goats and horses. If she didn’t know the answer right away, she was known to say, “Get the book”! This is also where her passion for horticulture flourished and she went on to win many awards for her gardens, flower specimens, and floral arrangements. While she did not pursue her teaching career in Canada, she worked for over 20 years as a bookkeeper, executive assistant, and property management administrator, along with always volunteering in her community.
Besides gardening, Marjorie had a lifelong appreciation for classical music and opera, which she said made house-cleaning easier. (She’s left us with a strange affinity for lemon paste wax and Jussi Björling.) A lifelong learner and avid reader, she kept a journal of the books she had read and was an early adopter of “Can Lit.” With her college training, she was a natural hostess with a flair for table setting, complete with candles; and she was an accomplished seamstress and lifelong knitter. She was brilliant at solving cryptic crosswords, Sodoku, and dominated in Scrabble, Dominos, and Jeopardy. Always a doodler, she later took up adult colouring (and obsessive pencil sharpening), producing some beautiful works of art.
Not an athlete, but always a good sport, she learned to swim and ski during mid-life. She went wilderness camping and canoeing in Kilarney and skied the Alps! One of their greatest achievements as parents and newly minted Canadian citizens, was making sure their daughters gained an appreciation for the vastness of Canada, camping with them from coast to coast. Marjorie loved to travel. Besides visiting family in England, she toured the Holy Land and attended the Oberammergau passion play in Germany with her church group, and visited India, Pakistan, Australia, Austria, and the USA with John. For many years, they wintered in Ajijic, Mexico. Although she was not a photographer, Marjorie always recorded these trips by writing travel journals. With her happy, outgoing, and live-and-let-live attitude, she made friends wherever she went.
When John died in 2011, Marjorie seamlessly embraced the life of an independent woman. Prior to the pandemic, she was out and about every day of the week, connecting with her family and friends. She often remarked how lucky she was to have so many families: her traditional family, her St. George’s family, her Mexican family, her Heather’s coffee shop family, her Senior’s Center family, and her Portuguese bakery family. When this last group grew too big to fit in the coffee shop, she was disappointed that they had to move to the mall. What a wonderful problem to have at over 80 years old!
Marjorie was a lifelong member of St. George’s Anglican Church – first in Pickering and then in Georgetown, where they moved in 1996. She was a member of the Georgetown Horticultural Society, Friends of the Old Seed House Garden, Canadian Federation of University Women Georgetown, and most recently, a founding member of 100 Women Who Care Halton Hills.
Marjorie was predeceased by her younger brother, John Greenslade (2011) and son-in-law, Mark Burrows (2014). She is survived by her only sister, Betty Beedell, in England. She will be sadly missed by her daughter Sarah Burrows and husband Larry Sartor in Georgetown; and her daughter Leslie Steinberg and husband Jeffrey Steinberg in Toronto. Nana leaves five loving grandchildren and their partners: Bryce Burrows and Andrew Baker in Puslinch, Christian and Hope Burrows in Hillsburgh, Thomas Burrows in Thunder Bay/Georgetown, Hilary Steinberg in Toronto, and Andrew Steinberg and Paige O’Connell, in Toronto. Little Nana was delighted to learn that she was to become a great-grandmother to Hope and Christian’s daughter this summer. She is also fondly remembered by her sister-in-law, Anne Lea, and family in Australia, her brother-in-law, William Bryant, and family in Spain, and many nieces and nephews in the UK, Australia, USA, and beyond.
Friends will be received at the Jones Funeral Home, 11582 Trafalgar Road, Georgetown, (905) 877-3631, on Saturday, April 30th from 10-11am, followed by a funeral service at 11am. Reception to follow in the Trafalgar Room. Interment Greenwood Cemetery, Georgetown. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Cancer Assistant Services (CAShh) – cancerassistance.org/donate – or joining 100 Women Who Care Halton Hills – 100womenhaltonhills.com/join-us . To send expressions of sympathy or to view the funeral service by livestream, please visit www.jsjonesandsonfuneralhome.com
Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Marjorie
Bryant 1932 2022..
Death notice for the town of: Georgetown, Province: Ontario