BETTY DE WET

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BETTY DE WET Betty de Wet, a dedicated gardener and tireless world traveller, died peacefully on Wednesday, January 25, 2006 at Oakview Place nursing home at the age of 93. A memorial service in her honour will be held at St. Andrew's Anglican Church, 2700 Portage Ave. at 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 31. Miss de Wet never used her officially recorded names, Vera Mary Elizabeth, but was known universally as Betty. She was born in Winnipeg on July 20, 1912 when her father, South African-born Jacobus Petrus Palmer Pete de Wet, was a journalist at the Free Press. The family had moved to Valour Road by the time Miss de West graduated from Daniel MacIntyre school. In 1937, her sister Iris married actuary Jack Moorhead and her mother, the former Gertrude Amy Emmeline Gostling, died. It fell to Miss de West to care for her father and to support his passion for gardening and landscape. She worked a few years at Great-West Life then moved in 1944 to Federated Insurance, where she worked until her retirement in 1975. Father and daughter moved to Whytewold Road in 1953. As Pete's strength declined, Miss de Wet bore more of the burden of producing the prize-winning gladioli for which he was famous in gardening circles. Upon his death in 1978, she sold the house and moved to an apartment on Moray Street. Miss de Wet's photo albums record her visits in Calgary, Edmonton, Jasper, the Fraser Canyon, Mackinac Island, Agawa Canyon, Halifax, Alaska, Yukon, San Juan Capistrano, Bermuda, Auckland, Fiji, Hawaii, Copenhagen, Bergen, Stockholm, and many other destinations. Wherever she travelled, she visited and photographed the best botanical gardens, the most carefully landscaped parks, because gardening and landscaping were her dad's passion and she carried on his work. She especially treasured the memory of visiting London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953. Her huge circle of friends from Federated Insurance, from St. Andrew's Church, from the Valour Road and Whytewold Road neighbourhoods and from her other connections found they could always count on Miss de Wet for loving attention and practical help in difficult moments. She was a volunteer in the Altar Guild of St. Andrew's Anglican Church and in the Anglican Church Women. She also belonged to the Ex-Army, Navy, Air Force chapter of the Business and Professional Women's Club, to a canasta club and to a book club of women who met to discuss the books they had agreed to read. Miss de Wet is mourned by Pat Mackinnon of Sherborn, MA, Tony Moorhead of Groton, MA, and Sheila Kelley of Gainesville, GA. The family thanks the caregivers of Oakview Place for their kindness to her.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Jan 28, 2006