Tribute

Pearl Patricia Brinson was born during the middle of the Great War, on August 11, 1916, near the hamlet of Rumsey, Alberta, to parents who were immigrants from the U.S.A. She spent most of her girlhood on a farm in the hills above Peachland, B.C., where her father continued his Ozark ways, until the day after Christmas of 1934 she married the schoolteacher Ewart Bowering, who was also born in Alberta and raised in the Okanagan, in his case West Summerland. The couple lived at first in Peachland, then moved to Greenwood for a while, before settling in Oliver in 1943, where Mr. Bowering became the chemistry teacher at Southern Okanagan High School.

          Before the Great Depression had eased, the Bowerings included two children, George in late 1935 and Sally-Ann in early 1937. After the Second World War they added Roger in 1946 and Jim in 1949. Pearl carried on the full-time job that was home-making all those years, but like many women in the region, she worked in orchards and packing houses when workers were needed.

          She was also, like her husband, an athlete. In Greenwood she was the women’s spike-driving champion two years in a row. In the Okanagan she played softball, basketball, track and field, badminton, golf, bowling and curling. With a motherly smile she offered to give one of her two hole-in-one trophies to her avid golfer son Roger. With her husband she won bridge tournaments, filling their house with the tri-lights and card tables they won. She was a member of Royal Purple and countless charity organizations.

          Ewart Bowering died in 1974, and Pearl began a widow’s life that would be longer than her marriage. She was loved and visited by her seven granddaughters and one grandson, as well as a horde of great grandchildren. All her brothers and her sister predeceased her, which is likely to happen when one lives for a century. On November 8th, 2016, seventy-three years after coming to Oliver, PB passed on quietly during her sleep. On Boxing Day, which would have been her 82nd wedding anniversary, her body’s ashes will be interred in her husband’s grave at the Oliver Cemetery.