Obituary of Anne Brewster

Anne Armour Brewster June 28, 1917 June 12, 2020 Nurse, wife, mother, grandmother, great-and great- great-grandmother, WWII veteran, Bible storyteller, Rabbie Burns reciter, keen knitter, gardener and devout Christian Anne died peacefully at home on June 12. 2020, two weeks shy of her 103rd birthday. Her story begins in 1917 in a white stucco cottage beside a millpond near the village of Newton Mearns, Scotland. The mill was called Pilmuir and she was named Annie, which she later shortened to Anne. Her father, Fred Rodger, ran the mill at Pilmuir and her mother, Christina Osborne Rodger, had been a teacher in the village school. Annie gained a sister, Jean, when she was two. and another sister, Christine, was born two years after that. When Annie was 17 her father died of Bright’s Disease and Christina and the three girls had to move into a tiny house in the Glasgow suburb of Giffnock. Money was tight but Christina still managed to send the three girls to Hutcheson’s Girls Grammar School. It was at "Hutchie" that Anne first came to her Christian faith through attending a Scripture Union group at the school. At the age of 18, she started nursing training at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow. Later, she nursed at the Royal Glasgow Infirmary and trained as a midwife at Rottenrow Maternity Hospital. Annie Rodger met Ormond Brewster at a Scripture Union camp on the island of Arran in 1936 when they were both 18 years old. They were married in 1943 by which time both were serving in the British Army. Ormond was the medical officer for a cavalry regiment and Anne was in Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service with whom she nursed during the Blitz in London and Glasgow. In early 1944 Ormond was posted to Bangalore, India, and Anne became determined that she would get herself transferred to India as well. By late ’44 she was nursing at an army hospital in Nagpur, an overnight train journey from Bangalore, and was thus able to see Ormond on leave. When the war ended in 1945, Anne was working in a British military hospital in Kamtee in central India, where a son, Frank, was born in 1946. In 1947 the family returned to Glasgow and lived with Anne’s mother and sister Christine in Giffnock. A second son, David, was born there in 1948 while Ormond was getting his FRCS surgery degree in Edinburgh .In 1949, he began a resident’s job at Oldchurch Hospital in Romford, Essex, where a third son, Hugh, was born in 1950. In 1952 Ormond became a physician at the infirmary in Arbroath, a fishing town on Scotland’s east coast, and a daughter, Christine, was born there in 1954. Anne was very happy in Arbroath but Ormond was keen to obtain a surgery post though jobs for young doctors in Britain were scarce. In 1956 he agreed to join Alistair MacIntosh, a friend from medical school, in his practice in Georgetown, Ontario. Shortly after the family arrived in Georgetown, an Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship staffer named Tony Tyndale came to visit and told them about Pioneer Camps. This began a relationship that has lasted to the present day with three generations of Brewsters attending the summer camps. Ormond served as camp doctor and Anne as camp nurse during the late 1950s and ‘60s. In 1963, Ormond launched a practice in Guelph, Ontario, and the family moved into a house on Maple Street where Anne started an after-school Bible Club. Over the years hundreds of children listened to her tell Bible stories with a flannel board. When Ormond retired in 1985 they purchased the former Pioneer Camp doctor’s cottage on Lake Clearwater and spent summers there as well as doing three short-term mission projects in Nepal. When Ormond had a stroke in his mid-eighties Anne became his caregiver–– providing full nursing care for him even though she was also well into her eighties–– right up to his death in February of 2005. She lived another fifteen years after Ormond’s passing, spending summers at the cottage until she was 99 and devoting herself to her many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The Brewster family are grateful to the PSWs of ParaMed for their loving care of Anne during her final years, which allowed her to stay in her own home until her death. Many became personal friends and enjoyed her Scottish expressions and stories from her long life. Donations in Anne’s memory may be made to Ontario Pioneer Camps (1-800-361-2267), Kortright Presbyterian Church (519-836-9400), and Foundation of Guelph General Hospital (519-837-6422). Arrangements entrusted to GILCHRIST CHAPEL – McIntyre & Wilkie Funeral Home, One Delhi Street, Guelph, (519-824-0031). We invite you to leave your memories and donations online at: www.gilchristchapel.com and they will be forwarded to the family. Service Information Requested Charity Ontario Pioneer Camps, Kortright Presbyterian Church, Foundation of Guelph General Hospital