Linda Ann Keruzore (Fitzsimmons, nee Gray)

Loving wife to Claude Keruzore who passed in 2023.

Retired Federal Express Executive Assistant;

She was mother to Kathie Vanular, Stephen Fitzsimmons, Penny Greczi, Mark Fitzsimmons and Wendy Hebert; She was stepmother to Claude’s children Paul (retired CP Police) and Renee Timmins; and Beloved Grandmother and Great-Grandmother to many.

Linda was born on April 5, 1938, in Toronto, Ontario. She was raised by her maternal grandmother Muriel Karl at 39 Huron Street in Toronto. Her uncle Norm lived there sometimes. Linda spent many Sundays at the Art Gallery of Ontario nearby listening to live piano music. Her grandmother and step grandfather Richard Wigley (she called Daddy) raised Linda and she began to play piano as a young girl.

Living in downtown Toronto in the early 1960’s with five young children, our mother said it was constant work. After our baths, each night she read to us from the Bible. She took us to church on Sunday, and the Saturday night before shined up our shoes with red shoe polish. She helped at the church teaching in the children’s Sunday school by reading stories from the Bible.

Life was outdoors in front of the house for us children living in Toronto. There were many ways we could imagine stories when building a tent with a bed sheet over the dining room table. Mom made this easy and cheap solution for us to playhouse under the table.

The church gave us recreational clubs like bowling, Guides and Scouts clubs, making art projects and Christmas pageants, with Kool-Aid and cookies for children’s breaks.

One day when there was nothing to eat for our family, Linda looked in the newspaper and saw there were jobs for the Sick Children’s Hospital. She had no shoes for work or clothes and went to the church to pick out white shoes and a couple of nursing uniforms, as in those days it didn’t matter and you could do that. She got the job and started in the Emergency department taking x-rays out of the photography bath, dried them, and gave the x-rays to the doctors.

In the 1960s, Linda got ready for work in her nursing uniform with her hair done and walked down Claremont Street to the streetcars on Queen Street. The garbage men whistled at her, and that had never happened before, she remembers in 2025.

Linda applied to the School of Nursing as a secretary. In the 1950’s girls in grade 10 who didn’t have money to attend college learned secretarial skills for typing, bookkeeping, English and shorthand. From this training she qualified to work in their School of Nursing.

Her job back then was typing exams. She gathered oranges that were used by students to learn how to inject people in the beginning of training. She remembered the 60 to 70 students swishing around in their white uniforms. Many didn’t make it through training. She spent ten years here, and after arriving in Bramalea to her new home on Evesham Crescent in 1968, she took the bus from the end of the subway line to Steeles Avenue and Torbram Rd from the hospital.

Part of the excitement of working at the Sick Kids Hospital, Linda was present with the nursing students to see the first pioneering operation to separate conjoined Siamese Twins in 1966. The hospital gained international recognition for this specialty after.

The home the Fitzsimmons family bought was through an Ontario Government program for poor families to provide cheap prices. The H.O.M.E. homeownership program allowed them to buy their house with a $15,000 deposit.

Back then there were no buses in Bramalea, and Linda walked to Avondale Plaza for groceries. Much later Dial-a-Bus was introduced in the 1970’s.

In her new secretarial job at Cleveland Twist Drill, Linda met her longtime friend Sylvia Van Der Klaauw sharing that friendship until present living at Holland Christian Home in Brampton.

Linda’s career matured into the Executive Secretarial position, becoming an Executive Assistant at Federal Express for two Vice-Presidents in Mississauga for Canada retiring after 14 years.

In the 1970’s, a new chapter began after Claude Keruzore and Linda met. Through one of Claude’s work friends in the coffee truck business, Linda began another longtime friendship with Pauline Pegnam until today.

In the years that followed this time, Claude made memories together with Linda for dinners and special occasions for their two families, friends and neighbours in their Evesham home. Claude’s children, Paul and Renee, entered our family life in shared memories.

Neighbours like Patricia, Diane and Ina and other neighbours like Tony, Linda and Dave stopped by their house sharing stories with Claude and Linda, coffee, special foods and picked flowers from their garden and helped shovel snow in their later years until 2022.

The Bramalea Baptist Church provided a community within a spiritual life for years. The close friendships built in their small group lasted until this final year. Shirley, Yvonne, Bob, Al and Corey gave their time and friendship, making a better life for Linda and our family.

Linda and Claude began traveling abroad in the 1970’s and later bought an RV to travel around North America. A personalized licence plate was made for the RV, ‘FRM C2C.’ And that they did; travel ‘from sea-to-sea' for years. A life well lived.

Kathie

Family and friends can meet to remember Linda at Andrews Community Funeral Centre, 8190 Dixie Rd, Brampton, Ontario on Thursday, December 4, 2023, from 11am-12pm. Celebration of Life at 12pm. Reception in the lounge of funeral home following the Celebration of Life.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to; The Scott Mission, Toronto, or Bramalea Baptist Church in her honour.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.andrewscommunityfuneralcentre.com for the Keruzore family.