Honoring My Parents’ 100th Birthdays - Sun, 7 Apr 2024

Bertha German was born April 1, 1924 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The youngest of 7 children, living together in a small house at 524 Flora Avenue.

Toby Braunstein was born on April 7th, 6 days later and 600 km (370 miles) to the west on the farm in the rural municipality of Tullymet, Saskatchewan, Canada. He was the youngest of 4 children.

Toby’s father died of Tuberculosis when he was just 7 months old. Toby’s older siblings went to the Jewish Orphanage in Winnipeg, but Toby being still a baby, was allowed to stay with his mother. The matchmakers of the community went to work and just over 4 years later, Toby’s mother married Louis Kessler who was a recent widower himself. She and Toby moved 240 km (150 miles) south to Louis’ farm in the Sonnenfeld,Colony in Saskatchewan and she was able to take Toby’s older sister out of the orphanage to be with them.

Bertha’s mother died when when Bertha was just 9 years old. Her older sisters and brothers helped her father raise her.

When she was in grade 1, Bertha’s sister saw a “Baby Peggy” in a movie and liked the name and started calling by the name of “Peggy”, and somehow Peggy became the name everyone called her and the name she called herself.

Toby and his sister went to a one-room schoolhouse about 2.5 km (1.5 miles) away in the nearby town of Ratcliffe, Saskatchewan. Their surname at school was Kessler.

Life in a small 6 room home in the city for a single father and 7 children was not easy. But the children went to school and the older ones soon married. Peggy finished high school and got a job as a secretary after becoming proficient at typing 90 words per minute.

Life on the farm in a small 4 room home for Toby’s family of 4 was not not easy. Prairie winters were brutal. In 1932, Toby’s stepfather was disabled by a sleigh accident and Toby had to take over running the farm. They had 320 acres with horses, cows, chickens, ducks, turkeys, dogs and cats and also planted crops and grew vegetables. Toby loved doing the farm work, and he would hitch two horses to the sleigh to take him and his sister to school on school days. His brothers, who were still being schooled at the orphanage in Winnipeg, visited Toby on the farm several times.

Above: Toby (back row, center) with his brothers, sister and mother at his farmhouse in 1941.

Toby’s stepfather passed away in 1940, when Toby was 16. He, his mother and his sister stayed on the farm during the war years. When the war ended, they looked for a better life in the big city of Winnipeg. There, Toby started work as a taxi driver.

Toby courted Peggy, picking her up at her house in his taxi. Peggy was worried that Toby was several years younger than him, but was relieved to find out he was only 6 days younger. They married in 1950 in Winnipeg. Toby legally changed his surname from Braunstein to Kessler prior to getting married. Peggy didn’t legally change her given name, but signed her name as Peggy Bertha Kessler.

Above: Toby and Peggy on the steps of their first home at 408 Rupertsland Avenue in Winnipeg in 1950

They had a daughter Esther in 1951 named after Peggy’s mother, and a son Louis (me) in 1956 named after Toby’s stepfather.

The next year they purchased a newly built 1040 square foot three bedroom bungalow at 375 Perth Avenue which was at the time at the edge of the city for about $9,000.

Toby took a real estate course and became a real estate broker and started his own company which he called T. Kessler Realty. He built an office in the basement of their home on Perth Ave and worked from their home. Over a 38 year career, mostly on his own, he gave personalized service and helped hundreds of people in the neighborhood sell or purchase a home.

Peggy was a stay-at-home mom who helped Toby with the paperwork for his business and for a time worked from the house as an insurance agent.

Toby and Peggy both had lots of family – aunts, uncles and cousins –living in Winnipeg. Peggy loved to have family over and would entertain any and all who would come by with pastry and drink ready at a moments notice.

They loved and enjoyed their children and gave them life experiences taking them everywhere, from playgrounds to parks to beaches and summer cottages, to the zoo, the planetarium, the museum, to movies, to supermarkets and shopping malls, on horseback rides and car trips to the Rockies and Vancouver.

To instill independence into their children, they made sure that by high school their children took an after school job at the library a block away. And Toby set up a youth organization so that they’d meet others and maybe meet their future spouse.

They were successful in their efforts and both children married giving their parents four grandchildren for them to spoil.

Toby and Peggy sold the house and moved into an apartment. They had their children and grandchildren over every Sunday for dinner together.

Toby had an angina attack in his 40’s and took up jogging years before jogging because a thing. Ten years later, they joined the newly built Reh-Fit Centre where both Toby and Peggy would go together to do their exercises three times a week.

Once preparing the Sunday dinners became too difficult for Peggy, the family switched to eating out on Sundays, testing out dozens of different family restaurants in the city. Toby and Peggy always enjoyed attending their grandchildren’s events, from dancing to school plays to graduations.

Peggy Kessler (1924 – 2008) and Toby Kessler (1924 – 2014)

In 2007, Peggy was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. She worked her hardest to fight it but succumbed 6 months later at the age of 84 on her youngest granddaughter’s 16th birthday.

Toby then moved to a retirement home. After 3 years on his own, he had a heart attack and was relocated to the nursing home where his sister and one of his brothers were living. He spent a happy last 3 years there, enjoying visits at least 3 times a week from his children, before passing away on the day that would have been his 64th wedding anniversary, just short of his 90th birthday.

Thank you Mom and Dad for the life you instilled upon me and your daughter and your grandchildren. We’ll always love and remember you.