‘She was a model of consistency’

For Bernice Giesbrecht, music was at the heart of everything.

While in Pembina Place Mennonite Personal Care Home, staff quickly recognized that Giesbrecht could play the piano. They would wheel her out to the keyboard in the dining hall where, to the delight of other residents and guests, she would play before meals.

Right until the end, even with dementia, she could still play and remained a central part of the regular sing-alongs. An electric keyboard was always readily accessible in her room.

Wife to husband Vince for 68 years, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Giesbrecht died on Jan. 10, 2026 at age 93, in a room filled with family and her favourite hymns.

Born in 1932, she began life in Lac du Bonnet and later moved with her family to Winnipeg, where she graduated from Daniel McIntyre High School, singing lead roles in the school operettas Pirates of Penzance and HMS Pinafore. She excelled in school and won the Governor General’s Academic Medal for highest academic scores in 1951.

That same year, she and her sister joined a friend and together sang on the radio broadcast of a Winnipeg mission. Having become known in 1956-57 as the Winnipeg Youth for Christ Trio, they recorded two LP records, My Father Planned It All in 1962, and His Love about 10 years later.

Giesbrecht discovered her love for music early. At the age of four she sang in public for the first time at a family wedding, and continued throughout her life. She sang in and directed her church choir. For 50 years she was a major figure in the chorus on Faith To Live By — the longest-running religious television program in Canada — where her contributions were felt far and wide and continue to have positive effects to this day.

After the death of Calvary Temple’s Pastor H.H. Barber in 2020, his son, Jim Barber, took on his father’s role. He was a child when he first met Giesbrecht, and fondly remembers being in one of her many choirs and collaborating musically over the years.

“She was a tremendous musician as well as an educator,” said Barber. “She really embodied those two things — unbelievably organized with all the balls that she kept flying in the air. It’s a bit mind-boggling. Married, they had one son, home life, working full-time, church volunteering; how she was able to keep all those things going. She was a woman of tremendous energy and fantastic organization.”

Giesbrecht was essential in encouraging hundreds of children and adults to get involved in music, Barber said. He added that her faith was something particularly meaningful to her.

“She did have opportunities to excel and to advance in the wider musical world. She specifically chose music in church, in praise of the Lord — music of the church is what she wanted to zero in on.”

In her half century with Faith to Live By, the organist, pianist and soloist developed a certain renown.

“Until quite recently, people periodically write or phone in and ask, ‘How’s Bernice,’” Barber said. “These are people who had never met her, knew that she was elderly. She had an interesting impact, literally all across Canada. She has friends that she had never met or even talked to who considered her as someone who had blessed them ever so briefly.”

When she wasn’t singing, Giesbrecht was actively looking for and finding ways to bring music into teaching. For 30 years she taught elementary school classes in the Winnipeg School Division. In the late 1960s, the division started an itinerant music program, where teachers taught in more than one school so more students could be exposed to music.

Giesbrecht was one of a few teachers to pilot the new music program to help make music available to every student in Winnipeg. She didn’t hesitate to throw herself into it and started with nine schools. Every week, she taught in one school during the morning, drove to another school during lunch, taught there that afternoon, and repeated this every day of the week except for one half day, to allow for preparation time. As more music teachers were hired due to the success of the program, Giesbrecht eventually slowed down the pace to two schools before she retired. Because of her efforts, thousands of students received the opportunity to experience music through choruses, instrument instruction and singing in the Manitoba Music Festival.

Giesbrecht is credited for encouraging and establishing a music program in every school she visited and inspiring many others to do likewise.

Gordon Giesbrecht was always proud of his mother, recognizing the quality of her voice and admiring her capacity to do everything she did.

“When I started putting the eulogy together, it made me recognize the enormity of the entire body of work,” said Gordon, known by many as “Professor Popsicle” for his own work as a thermophysiology professor studying hypothermia, ice safety and cold-water immersion at the University of Manitoba before his retirement.

“What a machine she was. In the ’60s and ’70s: teaching full time, leading the choir of 80 to 100 — the housewife responsibilities, working at night. How did she do all that?”

Determined to continue her education, Giesbrecht completed one year in Teachers College at Manitoba Normal School, now Canadian Mennonite University.

“She wanted to increase her education and pay,” explained Gordon. “She worked towards getting the equivalent second year university and took 10 courses, evenings and summer school courses. She was very efficient with everything. No wasted time.

“I just remember, in our basement there were piles of sheet music on the floor, lined up on the wall and the floor. There was choir, and then teaching. She was an unsung hero. She was very unassuming about everything. Christian service was the main motivator in her life, serving Jesus. She was a model of consistency of Christian service, supporting kingdom work, both with volunteerism in a huge way, and also in giving financially, regularly — tithes and offerings from everything they (my parents) made over many years,” Gordon said, emphasizing that his parents both made that commitment and lived up to it.

That promise, to further Christian humanitarian work, fundamentally integral to both of his parents lives — means a legacy of continued giving. Part of their estate has contributed to an agricultural and water program in Zambia and equipping an operating room in a remote hospital in northern Kenya. Gordon will be seeing first-hand how his parents’ contributions have made a difference when he visits those countries in April.

Giesbrecht’s generosity included supporting local groups as well. When she retired at 55, Gordon remembers a different scene in their family home in East Kildonan. The basement went from being filled with stacks of music to becoming a sewing factory.

“She got into quilt-making,” Gordon recalled. “She made scores, if not hundreds, over 30 years of patchwork quilts and wall hangings that many people have. She was always making a quilt, very intricate things.”

Giesbrecht also made quiet time books, giving toddlers opportunities to learn numbers and other skills. Many of her creations were donated to various charities, personal care homes and women’s shelters.

Giesbrecht’s long-standing service through music has been honoured on the Faith To Live By program and can be viewed on their YouTube channel.

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca