‘A beautiful spirit’ remembered
Struggles with alcoholism persuaded Grace Brabazon to reach out and help others
“Mommy, are you drunk?”
Those four words uttered by a 10year-old girl changed Grace Brabazon’s life one morning over four decades ago as she was drinking a glass of scotch on the rocks.
Brabazon had never been fall-down drunk, said her only child, Claudia, but she was a little unsteady at 7:30 a.m. on that fateful day. Her struggle with alcoholism had started in earnest a year earlier when Brabazon’s 50-year-old husband, Claude, survived a heart attack.
After hearing Claudia’s question, Brabazon had a “light bulb moment,” said Claudia. She almost immediately joined the12-step program at Alcoholics Anonymous.
Later, as a recovering alcoholic, she helped other alcoholic women out of their predicament. That desire to help others continued for decades.
“People were comforted by knowing my mother was there,” Claudia said. When Brabazon was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2014, a social worker asked her what she most wanted to continue doing during her illness.
Claudia recalled her mother saying: “I want to be able to help people and make a difference in people’s lives.”
Brabazon died on May 27, just two weeks shy of the 40th anniversary of her sobriety. She was 89. Brabazon was a “marvellous woman,” said Rocco Rossi, a close friend of Claudia’s since their teenage years. “Her wit and sharpness of mind was such a defining feature.”
Walt Macnee, who was Brabazon’s next-door neighbour for years, said she was a “beautiful spirit,” never patronizing, and with an unbelievable way of making people feel good about themselves.
She had humility and kindness, said Claudia, and never judged people. She believed in a constant obligation to serve.
Grace Marie Derbyshire was born in Toronto in 1927, the youngest of two children.
Her father, an artist who painted stained glass in some Toronto churches, died when Brabazon was only 7 years old.
As he didn’t leave much of an inheritance, her mother became a bookkeeper and took in boarders to make ends meet while raising her two young children.
Brabazon was “extraordinarily attractive,” Claudia said. In the 1940s, modelling scouts searching Toronto high schools chose the 5-foot-9 1⁄
2 Brabazon from Malvern Collegiate to appear in catalogues and fashion shows.
Brabazon continued modelling after high school and even became the face of a campaign for the Ontario Society for Crippled Children, known today as the Easter Seals. She also worked as an executive secretary at Duplate Canada Ltd., a company that produced windshields for North America’s automobile industry.
She met and later married Claude Brabazon, an executive at the company, and they moved to Lawrence Park.
Brabazon quit her job to raise her family and live the traditional upper middle-class lifestyle. She did volunteer work for organizations such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the University Health Network and Renascent House, an addiction treatment centre.
In 1972, as Claude recovered from his heart attack, doctors told him he had four years to live. Brabazon was overcome with worry that she would soon become a widow just like her mother had been. She turned to the bottle and became a functioning alcoholic.
As a sponsor of many women in Alcoholics Anonymous, Brabazon answered phone calls at all hours of the day and night
When Brabazon recovered from her addiction, she volunteered on crisis phone lines weekly and attended AA meetings regularly until Alzheimer’s disease started taking its toll. As a sponsor of many women in AA, Brabazon answered phone calls at home at all hours of the day and night, protecting the anonymity of her callers. For instance, one caller turned out to be a neighbour, but Brabazon never revealed her identity to anyone, not even to her husband or daughter.
At Brabazon’s funeral, one woman told Claudia of the time she walked hesitantly into her first AA meeting and was comforted to see a beautiful and well-dressed woman à la Audrey Hepburn in the group.
“If she can be an alcoholic, I can be too,” the woman said.
“Everyone in our family was always struck by what a caring elegant, stylish and classy woman our Aunt Grace was,” nephew Glenn Derbyshire said in a eulogy delivered at her funeral, “with a wry wit and a hearty laugh, the true embodiment of her name.”
Brabazon leaves behind her daughter and many nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her husband, who ended up living a full life for 14 years after his heart attack.