Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Jan 30/02) - For many of us, Mel Brown was a 40-year Yellowknifer, a long-time mining engineer and a pioneer in the geophysics and geology world with a terrific story.

Mel Brown, shown here on a canal boat in Amsterdam, returned to the Netherlands in 2000 for the 50th anniversary of the country's liberation. - photo courtesy of the Brown family

Brown, who died Saturday evening at Stanton Hospital of respiratory failure at the age of 84, was a Second World War veteran who grew up a Saskatchewan farm boy. His funeral, which is open to the public, is Thursday at 2 p.m. at Northern United Place.

Legion members will act as pallbearers, honour guard and deliver the eulogy. Following the funeral, the Legion hosts an open reception from 3-5 p.m.

Brown came to Yellowknife shortly after receiving his degree in engineering, and traveled far and wide across the North, playing an important role in the development and inspection of mining in the Northwest Territories.

To those who knew him, the man beyond the resume, he was remarkable because he wasn't remarkable. He was, in the words of long-time friend Dusty Miller, "special ordinary." He wasn't outwardly ambitious, never criticized and kept judgments internal.

Those who survive him use words like humble, gentle, quiet, thoughtful, brilliant, strong and literate to describe him.

He was other-minded. During the Depression, he refused to wear shoes to school even though his parents, who were property owners, could have afforded them. Shoes were a mark of of wealth and Brown eschewed such trappings. It was the same reason he never owned a car after handing in his government vehicle: he wasn't impressed by material possessions.

Fighting from Holland to Italy in the 1940s, Brown was a decorated veteran who once took a bullet in the neck and walked alone to the nearest Dutch train station for help. A dedicated 55-year member of the Royal Canadian Legion, he dusted off his medals every Remembrance Day, but only began talking about the war with his families a few years ago.

He was witty in a sly sort of way. Once, when asked if he could still feel the results of the bullet he took, he replied, "I must. I'm still getting a pension."

He was a faithful churchgoer whose favourite songs were hymns. He called his pastor to his hospital bed before he died.

His daughters say he could have been close friends with Mahatma Gandhi - he was peaceful and unwaveringly non-interventionist. Joanne Burns, one of six children born to Brown before he was divorced from his wife 30 years ago, remembers how he once watched without blinking an eye while the family dog ate her entire dinner, which had been set on the table. She was angry at the time, but laughs now: it was just part of who her daddy was.

In the words of his other daughter, Rai Brown-McCutcheon, "It was an honour to have him as a father."