Lillian Leonarda (Grygorcewicz) Pearson of Fort Frances, Ontario, passed away gently under moonlight, with family at her bedside, in the early hours of Tuesday, May 13, 2025, at 92 years of age.
Lilly was born on November 7, 1932, in Jankowice, Poland, a small village near the Naliboki forest, now part of Belarus. Her family was part of a Polish off-grid farming and bartering community that sustained itself with fields of wheat, oats, barley and flax, gardens with vegetables, fruit bushes and herbs, farmyards with chickens and pigs, and a surrounding wilderness with wild boar, mushrooms and berries. Her mother wove linen from the flax to make the family’s clothes, baked bread in a stone oven, dried apples and herbs, pickled vegetables, and churned her own butter. Her father smoked and cured meat to store with the apples in the rafters, made the family’s boots and shoes from cow and boar hide and grew his own tobacco.
Lilly loved to reminisce about these times of her childhood, when there were no telephones, no television, and no cars, hospitals or stores, just people simply living, working hard, and cooperating together. She emulated this living-off-the-land grit and spirit throughout her life.
Although her childhood seemed idyllic, the Naliboki region was in a tangled zone variously contested by Russian and German troops during World War Two, and her father left the farm to join the Polish Resistance movement. When Lilly was ten years of age, the Germans, in their final retreat, burned the village houses and contents, took the animals, and purged all the remaining women and children and old folk with just the clothes on their backs to cattle cars and eventually a concentration camp. Separated from her mother and brother, Lilly survived the camp with her sister, and found friendly faces in the Red Cross medic stations. The medics gave her little jobs to do, and she found her calling in nursing. With her sister, she was moved to other camps, escaped, hid, and eventually became a child labourer with a German farm family until the end of the war, when they were liberated by American soldiers. Her sister went with her partner to his Polish community. With no place to return to, Lilly became a refugee in a German Displaced Persons Camp for four years, studying English, German and nursing. She eventually found and reunited with her father.
Lilly was sponsored to immigrate to Winnipeg and continue to study nursing through a convent-run hospital there, but ended up settling in Fort Frances when she unsuccessfully tried to cross the border there to join a friend in Chicago.
In Fort Frances, Lilly boarded with the Ukrainian Andrews family, and became a nurse at the LaVerendrye Hospital. She was able to arrange a sponsorship for her father to join her in Fort Frances, until his death in 1955.
Lilly married Vernon Pearson in 1954, and paused her nursing career to have a family. Lilly and Vernon (Vanny) built a home in McIrvine, where they raised their three children; Tina, Victor, and Ruthann. Lilly followed her Polish family’s footsteps in gardening and preserving, baking bread, hunting mushrooms, berry picking and making traditional Polish foods. She returned to nursing, while also helping Vanny with the logging, sawmill and tourist businesses he started, especially assisting at Pearson’s Red Pine Resort, and later Red Gut Bay Landing.
Lilly eventually trained to become a paramedic, a position she held until her retirement. She was also a fervent believer in unions, and was a member of her nurse’s union board for many years.
During her retirement years, Lilly became an avid and successful fisherwoman, and hunter of grouse and deer. She loved spending time in the wilderness, and hunted right up until her final season in 2024.
Known for her green thumb, Lilly maintained productive and beautiful vegetable, herb and flower gardens around her home, frequently sharing produce with family, neighbours, and friends. She was also known for her generosity in sharing her baking with folk in the neighbourhood, surprising them with butter tarts, cinnamon rolls, cakes and pies.
Lilly was a feisty, determined survivor with a mischievous sense of humour. She touched all who knew her, and she will be deeply missed.
Lilly was predeceased by her father Francis Grygorcewicz; her mother Maria (Sobel) Grygorcewicz, her sister Janina; her brother John; her former husband Vernon Pearson; and her granddaughter Samantha Pearson. She is survived by her daughter Tina Pearson of Lekwungen Territories (Victoria, B.C.); her son Victor Pearson of Mine Centre, Ontario; her daughter Ruthann Pearson of Harrowsmith, Ontario; her granddaughters Jessica Pearson of Devlin, Ontario; Lyssa Pearson of Lekwungen Territories (Victoria, B.C.); and Julieanne Pearson DeBruyn of Vancouver, B.C.; and her great-grandsons Nick Pearson of Devlin, Ontario; and Dylan Sobkowicz of Crozier, Ontario.
An informal Celebration of Lilly’s Life will take place on Thursday, May 22, at 6 p.m. at the Metis Hall, 714 Armit Avenue in Fort Frances. Lilly’s friends, former coworkers, neighbours, and acquaintances are welcome to join us in a fish fry and storytelling to say goodbye to a remarkable woman.
Arrangements entrusted to Northridge Funeral Home Ltd., Emo, Ontario.
