OBITUARIES

Husband, father, friend, teacher, and volunteer worker, Brian Crangle died two weeks before his eightieth birthday due to complications caused by heart surgery. Throughout his industrious and adventurous life, Brian appreciated conviviality and hard graft in equal measure, speaking often and with real appreciation of his own good fortune. Brian was son to Patrick and Norah, Irish émigrés to Liverpool. In spring 1943, with the Liverpool Blitz by the Luftwaffe scarcely over, Norah went home to Dún Laoghaire to have Brian in relative safety, returning to England with her infant son shortly thereafter. Retaining Irish and English citizenship, Brian was never a full British subject despite growing up in Liverpool alongside his siblings Patricia, Barry, Judith, and Suzanne. Raised in a paternalistic Catholic household, Brian recalled himself as the Golden Boy, the blond, blue-eyed, eldest male child fawned over by immediate and extended family. Brian was an altar boy when mass was still said in Latin, a reluctant scholar smart enough to scrape his way into grammar school, and a tall, spindly adolescent fascinated by cars and the emergent musical genre that was rock and roll. His bedroom walls were covered in wires tracking pirate radio stations that played music unavailable on the BBC. As an adult, he listened to a wide range of music, but gravitated toward golden oldies shows, regularly singing the top hits of his day to his children: Buddy Holly's "Rave On"; Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool"; one-hit- wonders like Sheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater". And of course, anything by Elvis, whose nowiconic debut album was Brian's first foray into a lifelong love of vinyl. Brian's mother died suddenly when he was 19, and he came home from teacher's college to run his father's driving school. This willingness to briefly forgo his own education to help a bereft parent proved emblematic of Brian's adult life: as friends and family attest, Brian could not resist a request for help, particularly if that request had anything to do with cars. Anyone who needed to sell, buy, or fix a vehicle was immediately on his radar; he was an invaluable and energetic resource in this regard for even the remotest acquaintance. This altruism extended to a life of unstinting community work: he volunteered for Saint Vincent de Paul Society, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and Five Counties Children's Centre, among other organisations. Brian met the love of his life when he was a student teacher; Elizabeth Birkenhead taught at the school in Liverpool where Brian trained. The courting couple listened to Nat King Cole albums late into the night at Liz's parents' home, where they lived after they married in 1965. Fiona arrived in 1966 when Brian and Liz were each earning roughly a pound a week teaching in state schools in impoverished neighbourhoods. Scraping by and unable to afford a home of their own, the call for British teachers to migrate to Canada proved irresistible; there were hundreds of teachers on the boat when they crossed the Atlantic in 1967. A picture Brian took from the stern captures Liverpool melancholically receding into the distance, but other images from the same journey show Liz beaming at him, Fiona in her arms, a new life in their shared sights. Resistant to the label "immigrant", Brian and Liz embraced all things Canadian: camping, hiking, canoeing, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, wood stoves, expansive gardens. Where expertise was lacking, enthusiasm compensated. Ontario residents from 1967 onward, they lived in Toronto, Whitby, and the fondly remembered cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario where Moya was born in 1969. Then to Brooklin, where their last child Sara (Kate) arrived in 1971, followed by Bethany, and come 1984, Peterborough. Supported by Liz as at-home parent, Brian worked as an elementary school teacher and as what was then known as a special education consultant. Progressively, Brian believed in the integration of all students in the classroom regardless of skill, and actively ensured that children who performed above or below expected "norms" could be part of the everyday working life of their schools. Brian tried managerial work with his school board, but it did not agree with him: His first passion was teaching, working closely with students who remember him as a great jokester who prized camaraderie as much as conveying information. Being the sole provider for a family of five whetted Brian's eyewatering frugality and ingenuity alike. Much to his fashionable wife's chagrin, he had a complete disregard for clothing, and thought nothing of matching an oil-stained gingham shirt with houndstooth check shorts cut from a pair of twenty-year old pants. He was a great do-it-yourselfer, keen for the quick if often temporary fix, and lived in dire horror of having to hire a mechanic, plumber, or electrician. He set to on all repairs while boasting that he never read an instruction manual (or, for that matter, a book of any kind). Filled with restless energy and curiosity, Brian was prepared to turn his hand at anything: he learned carpentry, guitarplaying, and photography, and liked to share these newfound skills. He taught one daughter to play the guitar, and they became the mainstay of the local Catholic church choir. Much of the furniture in the family home was made in his workshop, and he was an early, apolitical advocate of upcycling, regularly scavenging his neighbours' garbage or the local dump for a child's bike or the raw materials for an aboveground family swimming pool. Later in life, he was a beloved member of the Peterborough Photography Club, where his good eye and near-daily commitment to capturing images were widely admired. Brian truly loved children, and was genuinely happy to spin a tale, play a game, or sing a song with his grandchildren. His daughters remember nightly bedtime singalongs. The anti- soporific "Does your chewing-gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?" was a family favourite. Brian was sincerely fascinated by how children's minds work; one granddaughter cherishes how, unique among the adults she knew, he praised her for being smart with humour. Brian was an unabashed master of the terrible joke, clunky pun, and comic story, and enjoyed provoking groans or laughter equally. This extraordinary outward affability was an act of generosity that occasionally masked the complexities of his private self, complexities that could prove overwhelming, as when Liz was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and he became her primary carer. Everyone who knew Brian remembers his quick wit; his fast (most thought too fast) driving; his fondness for Liverpool Football Club, Formula One racing, and beer, Molson Stock Ale, and Old Speckled Hen in particular. But what comes to the fore in all recollections of him is the ground and centre that was Liz, his wife of 57 years. Brian and Liz embodied the romantic cliché that well-matched lovers cannot be apart. This truth was foreseen in the songs Brian often sang, among them Marty Wilde's "Endless Sleep", a ballad that regularly concluded bedtime medleys with the children he and Liz shared. That Brian died within six months of Liz's passing is a truth both apt and painful for those they leave behind. The loss of Brian is profoundly felt by his three daughters; his grandchildren Ace, Wyatt, Seth, Quinn, Guthrie, Po, and Maia; his sonsin-law Denis, Alan, and Sam; his surviving siblings Barry, Suzanne, and Judith; and by countless friends and community members. A Celebration of Life will take place at Highland Park Funeral Centre on June 3, 2023, between the hours of 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Donations in Brian's memory can be made to St. Vincent de Paul or Big Brothers and Big Sisters.