Mary Uzarowski

Mary had a tumultuous life. In 1942, when she was just 17, she was taken from her home village in Ukraine and sent, first by truck and then by train, to Germany to be a slave worker in the German war effort. She spent two years forced to work in a munitions factory that was regularly bombed by Allied planes.

At the end of the war Mary found herself in a Displaced Persons camp. She married a Polish man, gave birth to Halina, told the authorities she was Polish and not Ukrainian (to avoid being sent back to Russia), and eventually migrated to Canada and a hard-scrabble existence in the mining towns of northern Ontario.

When the first marriage failed, Mary married former Polish freedom fighter Frank Uzarowski. For a time they ran a fishing lodge on an island off Killarney in Georgian Bay and later Mary became an activist for workers’ rights in the retail industry. In retirement Mary and Frank settled in St Catherine’s, Ontario. Frank died there in 2012 and Mary moved to Nova Scotia to be closer to her daughter.

Mary is survived by her daughter, Halina St James, and son-in-law Neil Everton. Our sincere thanks to family doctor Dr Bharti Verma, who was in attendance.