Beatrice Terlecki

Terlecki: Beatrice Elaine (nee Bishop),

Peacefully at home, on Monday April 20, 2026, at the beautiful age of 102. Beatrice ‘Bea’ Terlecki (nee: Bishop), devoted wife of the late William Terlecki. Bea is the loving mother of daughter Janice Willaine Terlecki (predeceased in 2022), daughter Nancy Ann (Terlecki) Henstra and husband Pieter Henstra, and son Billy Gregory Terlecki (predeceaced son in law Miguel Monast in 2021). She is survived by sister-in-law Dawn Bishop, along with many nieces and nephews of both sides: Joyce, Angela, Judy, Susan, Bruce, Pat, Adrian, Gary, Erick, Heather, Karen, Dirk, and Connie and all of their families in Canada and the USA. Bea is predeceased by siblings: Archie, Marie, Donald, Carolyn, Cameron and other relatives; husband Bill’s brother Frank, and his family members.

Bea Elaine Bishop Terlecki, having reached 102, is the oldest Bishop in that family’s tree. Having reached 102, and with clarity, Bea often repeated until a few days ago: “I don’t know how I got to be this age. I was the sickliest with asthma of us six children. Couldn’t go near the sawmill and flour mill down at the river for that dust. They could hear my coughing at the far end of the house. Dot Long was my nurse. Didn’t have full electricity until after the war when Dad wired the house. We didn’t have drugstores for everything. I remember some people would give a teaspoon of sugar soaked in kerosene. You’d swallow it, and it would take your cough away. I’m sure kerosene would burn anything away!” Such were the stories, timeline history, and photos of that era collected from the elders by her son and many others for a hardcover book of a very different world then: “The Lost World of River de Chute.” That house was above the general store her grandfather Sam Bishop Sr. built in 1898, overlooking the banks of the St John River, and the beloved 1923 built covered bridge at the border crossing of River de Chute and Easton Maine. Her mom, Charlotte Cameron of Andover, who would live to ninety-one, married at sixteen to Sam Jr. in 1917. He soon opened up western New Brunswick’s first border crossing there, when they moved in from the farm outback to the village of a few dozen scattered houses and businesses. The year was 1929, and she remembered it well. Before a Custom’s house was built, it was a simple affair of him waiting on a chair at the bottom of the hill for people crossing from Maine. Processing was done up in the house on the dining room table. Bea recalled moving in day: “My older sister Marie and I sat on the back of the horse wagon after the last furniture was moved in. We were wearing Mom’s hats. I would have been five. I remember singing “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Our legs were swinging off the back. By now, covered in dust from the unpaved roads, a local came by to comment: ‘Now who are these two tramps coming into town?’ “Growing up there, we didn’t go many places, but the most exciting event was driving down to Fredericton to see the Royal visit: (the date was June 13, 1939, to join 7,000 other children, as noted by The Telegraph Journal – the first Royal visit of a reigning monarch to Canada: King George VI and his wife Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Almost fifty years later, Bea’s son in law Miguel Monast would have the honour ((and resulting humorous stories)) of serving the Queen Mother while working as Purser on a special Air Canada return flight to London.) Bea continued: “Winter’s, we tied flattened tin cans to our boots and skated on the mill pond, skied the hills, and walked across the frozen St John. Summers were fun times: crossing on Tom Stewart’s hand cranked wire ferry for five cents to RdeC Siding on the other side, swimming and trout fishing up the brook, or at the dam below the bridge. The boys would show off, balancing across that skinny guardrail over the dam’s top to the other side, taking bets for a bottle of pop who could do it best as us girls were chewing our nails. My brothers and others would climb the beams of the covered bridge – hide up there, in wait for a girl to walk through it, then jump down and try for a kiss. The same trick at nighttime with a scream, would be to scare them… Behind the one room school on the river bank’s highest edge, was the outhouse. Us girls would hide a lipstick up on a beam. Recess, we’d go out, try it on, act smart, play on the log teeter totter, then wipe the lipstick off before returning to class. A monthly water pail monitor would go up to a nearby farm, pump water, and bring it back where we’d all share the same drinking cup. Don’t think we ever got sick from passing it all around, but some boys would spit in it and think that was funny. My grandmother Emma Bishop, was the local midwife who delivered everyone around. She was also the church organist. Grampy built that church in 1898. I learned to chord on a piano they dragged way upstairs, also played the ukulele – Little Brown Jug. Grammy also enjoyed the social life at the other end of life: funerals. It was common practice then to lay the person out in the parlor of their home for a few days so that people would have time to travel the rough roads to attend. Grammy would drag me to every funeral, sit me in a chair next to the deceased, lay one hand on their hand, and tell me to stay and keep it there. She would then go gather me a few sandwiches and a piece of pie or baked goods, put it in my other hand, and chat for ages with her lady friends. Wintertime, the deceased were kept in padlocked ice houses on shelves of all the churches until spring thaw. Bill always had a saying that you should never be afraid of the deceased or cemeteries, that it was the living who would harm you. On leave from the War, I took the train down to see family in 1943. Grammy had the flu, and said she didn’t want to hug me in case I caught it. I went back, and in a short time, she passed. I couldn’t return for the funeral. When the church Grampy built, accidentally burned in 1944 – it was across from our house-store, Mom was told to grab a few things quickly and run out. All she took in the suitcase were two framed photos of her sons overseas: Archie and Donald, fearing they may never return. I have the letter Dad wrote to me soon after, filled with hope for a good life soon, everyone together, and for the War’s end. There weren’t greeting cards: we’d just hand write on paper and deliver them to people and make it a social visit. Not like nowadays. End of year, we didn’t have yearbooks. Instead, we’d buy autograph books. Still have them. (An entry from Bea reads: ‘ U R 2 sweet 2 me 2 be 4 gotten / 10 derly, Beatrice E. Others from Jan. 26, 1938 to best friend: “Dear Phylis: “Times are hard. Boy’s are plenty. Don’t get married, until you’re twenty”. .. “Life is sweet, but oh so bitter, to court a gal, and then not get her. “) – And soon, those adult lives unfolded. Bea left for later business schooling in Woodstock, where her uncle was a judge. “Phyllis and another gal and I rented in a boarding house. We’d pay twenty five cents for a bundle of firewood to heat our room and cook on the woodstove. After graduation of secretarial and shorthand – kept that book, I went back to the ‘Chute. There was a big potato farmer across the line who liked me, Clarence Wolverton. He’d skied over. One time he came with a wedding ring. I liked him, but not to marry. so went down to St John with Phyllis and we both signed up with the Canadian army. As we joked then – lots of fellas to choose from; rows of them. A girl could sure have her choice! My officers training was at Barriefield, St Anne de Belleview, Quebec. Went back to the old classroom on a visit in 2000, now McDonald College. An army man there, Stan Stysowski, asked me if I wanted to go on a blind date with his army pal Bill Terlecki. I said – nah, just going for a pack of smokes and go wash my hair. He said the guy was good looking, and had dark hair. I always preferred dark haired fellows, so I went. We really liked each other. (Bea always found Bill and Elvis to have similar smouldering looks.) Soon Bill was shipped overseas, where he took twelve rolls of 35mm film to capture WWII. “Us CWAC’s (Canadian Women’s Army Corps) weren’t allowed to fight or carry a gun, but we carried typewriters. I was the head in parade formations in the many marches we did. (Photos of them.) After the war, Bill and I married at my Uncle Percy Bishop and Aunt Isobell Shaver Bishop’s church in Etobicoke at Burnhamthorpe and Renforth. Bill donated them a painting that is still there, one of many he bought from starving Dutch artists in Holland at War’s near end.” (Their farm across from the T Eaton farm at Highway 27 and Burnhamthorpe had the farmhouse moved to a park nearby in 1980: Broadacres Park as development creeped in.) “Bill’s friends were Bohemian artists Emanual Hahn (Canadian coin designer), Pauline and Willie Fediow, and also John Candy’s parents. (Bill photographed his parents wedding.)

“After the war, I worked for the Bank of Montreal in dealing with the accounts for deceased soldiers who never made it back. Bill asked me to marry him. I said before I’d do that, he’d have to meet my family, so we took the train down. It was love at first sight for all. We moved to NB, and had eleven beautiful years there raising a family with dozens of my relatives nearby. He fell in love with the place. About the only time I ever saw Bill cry, was when we had to leave to move back to Toronto on our daughter Janice’s tenth birthday (November 16, 1959), due to the recession that came in fifty eight. At the time, there was a polio outbreak across in Maine. After the war, Dad built an autobody garage for my older brothers return from WWII, but they went on to other careers, so Bill was right at home there as a panel beater, fixing the first roll over car of McCains Foods when they began nearby in Florenceville, down river in fifty seven or so. We ran it as a Texaco, and later Irving station.” Living in Toronto’s west end of Central Etobicoke, after Bill’s passing, Bea kept house until age ninety-six. She was one of a very few working women in the early sixties there. Her position was head of order desk at A. Staimen & Sons steel company for twenty five years. A lifelong avid news and politics follower right up to her last day – Bea canvassed for hockey player Red Kelly when he went into politics – her dad ran in politics, as did her judge-uncle, and also Percy Bishop was an Etobicoke Alderman. Bea was very proud on her 100th birthday, to receive greetings of that occasion from King Charles and Queen Camilla, PM Justin Trudeau, The Governor General of Canada, and Pope Francis.

Bea’s years of disciplined living stemming from army training, saw her even at 101 – up and dressed at 7:45 AM on the edge of her bed at son Billy’s home. Pre Covid years Sunday Mass with Miguel playing the organ, and son cantoring with the choir, were followed by the big dinners afterwards. Each morning, she was eager for the window of her favourite chair downstairs where devoted, retired service dog Tommy Boy awaited, Bea would remark: “Thank you God, for the sunshine, and another day.” Visits from Nancy, Pieter, and neighbours, were great memory makers. Bea loved the car trips back to the old neighbourhood, and Popeye’s chicken or whatever treat planned. Having out lived everyone in her phone book except a few, Bea was profuse in her “thank you’s” for the smallest thing, action. It didn’t seem necessary, but to her it was, constantly to that last moment. Giving thanks back also for giving us life, and devoted care ~ we now continue our thanks to Bea Terlecki: mother, friend, and more…

“As for us, our life is like grass. We grow and flourish like a wildflower. Then the wind blows on it, and it is gone – No one sees it again.” Psalms 103: 15,16.

The family will receive friends at Rod Abrams Funeral Home, 1666 Tottenham Rd., Tottenham 905-936-3477 on Friday April 24, 2026 from 10am until 11am. A Graveside interment service will follow at Glendale Memorial Cemetery, 1810 Albion Road, Etobicoke at 12:30pm. Online condolences and memories may be left for the family at www.RodAbramsFuneralHome.com.