G. M. NESBITT

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G. M. NESBITT (nee BARRETT- HAMILTON) 1910 - 2003 Peacefully at home March 22, 2003. Peggy was born on January 28, 1910 at Kilmanock House, County Wexford, Ireland. She immigrated to a farm at Balmoral, MB with her widowed mother and her three brothers and two sisters in 1922, before moving to Winnipeg soon after. She and her younger sister Jane attended Daniel McIntyre High School and the University of Manitoba where they graduated in 1931. Peggy was the first woman in the city to obtain a BSc Honours, demonstrating in Chemistry and Zoology and was recommended for a teaching position at what is now Balmoral Hall. In 1933 she married Rex Nesbitt who also had emigrated from Ireland in 1917 at age 15 to join his brother farming in Lashburn, SK. Soon after he left to work in the Union Bank and became a partner in Crabb and Company, the predecessor of Montrose Mortgage Corporation Ltd. She was proud of her father, G.E.H. Barrett-Hamilton, a prominent zoologist, who wrote the History of British Mammals. He died at age 42 on the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic while leading an expedition investigating whales for the British Government. Her mother she admired for her strength in settling her young family in Canada, and her move to Southern Rhodesia to help her son Sam manage his tobacco farm. After raising her children she returned to the University of Manitoba to study Fine Art in the early 1960s. Her family and friends of all ages have long enjoyed her colourful and lively paintings. Many are of places she and Rex visited in their travels around the world. She was predeceased by her mother, her brothers Frank and Sam, who had immigrated to Southern Rhodesia, by her brother Gerry and sister Jane of Winnipeg. Ethel, her oldest sister, is living in Australia with her husband David Gardner. In addition to her son Michael and her daughter Clare of London, England, she is survived by her grandchildren, Tracy and her husband Steve, Shawn and her partner Gino, Drew and his wife Shelley, and her great-grandchildren, Johann and Alex Josephson, Everest Rymer, Caelan Stephanson Nesbitt and Tali Nesbitt and her stepgreat-grandchildren, Lee and Tommer Shalom of Toronto. Special thanks to the loving care generously given by Nancy Fullerton, Margaret Klassen, Evidelia Luna, Wihemina Gaburno and Lisa Fullerton. A private memorial service will be held at St. Georges Church at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 3 at the corner of Grosvenor and Wilton. Flowers respectfully declined. Donations, if desired, to a charity of your choice.

As published in Winnipeg Free Press on Mar 29, 2003