Electronics repairman, historian.
Born on the family farm near Abbey, Saskatchewan on 1 November 1923, son of Charles William Brawn and Martha Roland, he enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces after his 18th birthday but developed pleurisy and spent much of the Second World War building military aircraft. Toward the war’s end, he took a job with the police force at Port Arthur [now Thunder Bay], Ontario where he met his future wife, Doreen Lois Hall (1926-2019).
After the war, the couple returned to Abbey where he worked for a time as an agent at a grain elevator. They later moved to Brandon where he worked at several jobs until 1952 when he opened an electronics repair shop in his basement. The business grew and expanded into retail space on Tenth Street. In the mid-1960s, he became a real estate agent and served as President of the Manitoba Real Estate Association.
Active in Toastmasters, Brandon Flying Club, Bethel Temple Church, First Baptist Church, and the Masons, he served on the Board for the Brandon School Division in the early 1960s. In retirement, he and his son Dale Brawn researched and wrote articles on the history of southwestern Manitoba that were published in the Brandon Sun and other community newspapers, and eventually published as a book entitled Every Stone a Story: Manitoba’s Buried History (2008).
He died at Brandon on 25 February 2017 and was buried in the Brandon Cemetery.
See also:
MHS Resources: This Old Stone
MHS Archives: Personal Memoirs: Charles Roland Brawn: My Story (1923-2017) edited by Gary Brawn (April 2025, PDF format)
Birth registration [Charles Roland Brawn], Saskatchewan Vital Statistics.
Obituary, Memories Chapel.
We thank Gary Brawn for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Sandy Jasper and Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 10 April 2025
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