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Memorial Keepers(4)
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Greg Gerard
January 19th, 1966 - November 29th, 2020
January 19th, 1966 - November 29th, 2020
Forever in our hearts.
We are deeply saddened to have lost dear Greg to Covid after 4 years of battling his brain tumour diagnosis. He was a wonderful husband, devoted father, and a loyal and loving friend to all those who were lucky enough to know him.
Greg was born in St Mary's, Ontario, Canada on Jan 19th, 2019 to Cameron (Greg) Gerard and Helen Gerard. Greg joined his older sister Danielle and was quickly joined by his younger brother Shawn - together, they all formed a very young, tightly knit family. Greg was an extremely bright and curious boy - although he quickly established a nickname among extended family members, "The Little Professor's" interests ranged broadly beyond precocious use of his science kits. Greg played all manner of sports with friends and siblings and he loved schlocky horror and science fiction books and movies. Much to his friends and family's perturbance, Greg was masterful at parlour and board games. A grand scheme or project was something that Greg always embraced, whether it was designing and building a tree fort, making his own functional radio, or dismantling a rifle, crafting his own walnut stock for it and then reassembling it into a working firearm. Those who knew Greg as an adult may not quite envision the rural Canadian outdoorsman he was in his youth. Greg hunted and set trap lines with his father and brother and tanned pelts in order to sell them to the Hudson Bay Company - the proceeds of which were used to buy a John Deere snowmobile which Greg enthusiastically drove through the backwoods of Huron and Perth Counties. Greg did chores every night in our barn, feeding hounds, chickens, rabbits and even our family pet raccoon. The long summers of Greg's childhood were spent swimming in ponds, bushwhacking through forests, plotting the future from the comfort of our tree fort, eating fresh fruit and vegetables he picked directly from his family garden, cycling through the countryside, and tossing a baseball or shagging flies with his brother, sister, and dad until it got so dark the bats in the night sky would swoop down to chase our ball.
As a teenager, Greg really found his element as he transitioned from a scholarly boy to a ambitious young business man, gregarious and social friend to many, and pop music aficionado. Greg quickly grew his part time stockroom job at the local grocery store into the assistant manager who supervised dozens of staff and ran the large supermarket in the evening after school. Greg used the proceeds of his role to fund one of the largest and loudest stereo systems in the county. A child of the 80's, he lived on the cutting edge of the local rock music scene and had his finger on the pulse of upcoming hits and the next big import band to transition to North America. Greg turned his interest into a small business by DJing local dances and engagement parties and by hosting the sort of parties that would some day be called raves!
Greg managed to walk a tightrope through high school - when he wasn't in school, he was working and when he wasn't working he was either DJing a party, attending one, or giving one. To this day, none of us understand when he slept as a teenager!
As a physics student at the University of Waterloo, Greg managed to maintain an uncanny balance of academic excellence, volunteering and leadership roles, and high powered co-op jobs. There are those who can speak with more authority about his university days but his achievements and the lifelong friendships he built there stand as a testament. In my minds eye, I will always remember the sight of Greg leading the 1987 Frosh Week at UW - organizing and planning the entire orientation week for thousands of first year students. I caught sight of Greg once at a massive outdoor event standing humbly to the side, smiling with eyes flickering and darting everywhere as he monitored an event he'd planned and how it was unfolding live in front of him. He didn't need to lead from the stage and no one in the crowd even knew the lengths he'd gone to ensure they had a great but safe evening. But I knew and I eyed him humbly and asked myself as I have so many times before and after - just how exactly does Greg DO this?
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Tributes
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Meredith Scarf
Thank you to everyone who donated to Brainstrust in Greg’s memory.
Donna Gerard
A tribute from Greg's friend Neal. Tribute To a Friend By Neal Flemming I first met Greg in the early 90's, I was working as part of a technical assistance and support group known then as TAS. We worked reasonably well but were, in those days, in need of some expertise. Our manager Bob Turner had informed us that we were to have a Canadian join our ranks. 'Great !' , we thought, if he was half as good as the likes of Chris Burke and Vince Maltese then we could pile all our hard work onto him and head down the Pub! The day came when our new Canadian arrived, we were sat around the 'coffee box' as usual, the 'coffee box' being a redundant (or so we thought) piece of electronic kit that had gathered dust in the corner for several months and was now used as a storage place for our coffee cups. In walked Greg Gerard, a tall impressive guy at first sight, he introduced himself, shook everyone's hand and was perfectly polite with charm and charisma, it was like meeting royalty ! Now it was approaching lunchtime and once the formalities had been concluded we invited Greg down the pub, his eyes lit up and he wanted to go but as this was his first day he politely declined, explaining that he wanted just to orientate himself etc. Just as we started to leave he noticed the 'coffee box' in the corner. 'Is that an LB501-AA load builder you have over there in the corner with all the coffee mugs on it ?' he asked, 'No Greg ' we replied, ' it’s the coffee box !' 'I think it is actually a useful piece of kit' Greg went on to say and said he would see if it could be fired up. We left him to it and headed to the pub. After a leisurely lunch we returned to find our beloved 'coffee box' lit up like a Christmas tree, LED's flashing, disks whirring and a myriad of cables connecting the old 'coffee box' to a local server. Greg, in his first hour and a half had produced a load building server. He had doubled the production of our department instantly. Fantastic we thought, at this rate by the end of the week we fully expected Greg to have built a time machine and a matter transporter ! Now Greg had a meteoric rise through the IT world and rightly so, his technical ability combined with his leadership qualities and warm personality meant he was a much sought after individual and he deserved all the success that came his way. His vibrant personality endeared him to our group of friends and he soon became an integral member of our social circle. There have been so many memorable days and nights out with Greg a few of which have been declassified and can now be spoken about. These stories have been rated '15' by the Board of Censors and may contain strong language, violence ,alcohol but no scenes of nudity nor drugs ! As Greg is Canadian it was assumed by the Nortel Softball team that he could swing a bat, he was quickly press ganged into a soft ball tournament that was to take place in Cork in Ireland. He was their secret weapon. Greg took me along as the 'cultural attaché'. Some 30 of us arrived in Cork on a Friday evening ready for the tournament on Saturday and Sunday morning. However, the first Greg saw of a softball bat was when he and I rocked up at the end of the tournament on Sunday lunchtime ! The look of anger in the team was fairly obvious but it mattered not to us. We had one of the most riotous weekends of my life, what happened between our first 5 pints of Guinness on the Friday and meeting the team on Sunday lunchtime still remains a mystery to me, I simply cannot remember, nor could Greg. We do know we had the wildest of continuous parties. Strangely enough, neither of us were invited to further softball tournaments. Greg did get a chance to display his prowess with a baseball bat soon thereafter. Each year I would hold an all-day house party on FA Cup Final day, we would watch the football, followed by a barbecue and various alcohol fuelled shenanigans . Our favourite game was to hit a half full tin of beer over the roof of my house. I lived in a mid-terrace, it was no easy achievement. Several folk had attempted this challenge and the cans ended up liberally spread over the roof, the gutter and unfortunately next doors garden. No one had made it over the roof. We sent Greg down the bottom of the garden and chucked him a half full tin of beer.
Patrick
Greg always commented on my FB posts, and we often chatted in messages. This week a memory came up when I asked people what their earliest of most embarrassing memories were and Greg commented " my most embarrassing...I got got locked out of my flat naked at 2am. Finally one of my neighbours opened their door... turned out he was our company MD's son. By morning the entire company knew."
Donna Gerard
A tribute from Greg's friend Neal. Part 2 Boom ! Over the roof it went, not to the left, not to the right but dead centre. Beginners luck we thought. we sent another tin in his direction, boom, over it went again ! Now Greg had an interesting look on his face at this point, he ran back up the garden and said 'you've gotta let me back in the house, your neighbour is doing his nut, he is shaking his fist at me through his window'. Bearing in mind it was now raining heavily we said 'OK, but just one more can'. Greg returned to the bottom of the garden in the pouring rain, his face a picture of anxiety and hilarity at the unfolding events. We swapped out a can for a hard baked potato wrapped in tin foil. This was tossed in Greg's direction and he duly hit it perfectly. The potato headed straight for the neighbours window and splatted right in front of the neighbours angry face..... 'You gotta let me in now !' Greg shouted, 'The neighbour is going mad'. We let Greg back in , his relief was obvious and filled with nervous laughter. The rest of the day was a party to remember, as they always were. Greg was quick to latch on to any comical situation, whilst in Covent Garden on a summers evening we overheard 3 ladies discussing how attractive they found Greek men and the fact that Greek men treated their women so badly was an immense turn on for them ! Greg quickly renamed us as Gregus Maximus, Nealus Onasis and Bobus Theodopolis. He introduced himself as such to the young ladies and explained that we all 'really hate women'. It brought a smile to everyone's faces and made for an enjoyable evening. We never stopped calling ourselves Nealus and Gregus and would quite often shout, 'Gregus, what you having to drink ?' 'Thanks Nealus, I'll have a bottle of Becks'. Still to this day I think of Greg as ' Gregus Maximus'. Our party nights out didn't always go to plan. At times I would perhaps 'push the boat out' a bit too much and become somewhat unruly. Greg would always see the situation unfolding and reel me back into the land of the living. He most definitely saved me from several situations that would have resulted in myself receiving a good 'kicking' as we used to call it. He wouldn't let me off the hook and ensured I knew how annoyed he was with me. After a couple of weeks we would meet up again, I would apologise and we would move on. 'Don't be such an Arse' Greg would say. He was always right. Not all our shared time was alcohol fuelled parties, in those days I had a private pilot’s license and Greg and I frequently went flying together. We ventured off to France for the day as part of a 15 aircraft group and Greg flew us all the way back with gentle encouragement. He wasn't half bad ! Greg was mostly unflappable when under pressure, that was always evident at work and when out and about. Even when flying he remained in control despite my best efforts to injure us both ! I had gained a flying qualification that enabled me to fly in poor weather should we be unable to see the horizon. I was keen to demonstrate these new skills to Greg and after half an hour flying around the Wycombe area I headed to what I thought was a small cloud. We entered the cloud horizontally and emerged with the nose of the aircraft pointing straight at the ground. As we accelerated under gravity towards earth I tried desperately to regain control, my heart was beating and I was having trouble getting my words out. Greg turned to me in the middle of all this melee and said in a calm clear Canadian voice , 'Hey Neal, did you actually pass that course ?'. We recovered and stayed away from clouds from then on. Over recent years we would have many deep conversations , Greg has always and still is an influence in my life. We see things in a similar way but Greg was always able to add perspective and enable me to think on a different level. The concerts that we enjoyed together were brilliant and I treasure those memories. My life is richer for knowing Greg, he is an intelligent man of courage, a man of conviction and a very proud Husband and Father. For me he will always be a 'Man of Steel'. I am sincerely sorry for not being able to be there in person for the memorial. I shall listen to the ceremony that I am sure is filled with love and kindness and wonderful memories of our dear friend Gregus Maximus, aka. Man of Steel'.
Donna Gerard
St Georges Chapel Windsor. Greg and his dad visiting a friend of Richard Lucas who is a Military Knight and attending a choir service. Oct 2019. (Thanks for sending Richard).
Patrick And Lynne
We remember Greg for his love for life, for his his of sports, of music, of travel, of politics and of people. But most of all we remember Greg for his love of Donna and his family. and for that, and all the happy times we shared together and online, we loved him.
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