From activist to academic, Bessie Borwein never stopped connecting people

Bessie Borwein: Matriarch. Scientist. Communicator. Connector. Born March 17, 1927, in Johannesburg, South Africa; died June 9, 2026, in London, Ont., of natural causes; aged 99.

Bessie Flax – not short for Elizabeth or Beatrice, just Bessie − grew up under the dual shadows of apartheid and the Holocaust, danced with Nelson Mandela in her student activist days, married at 19 and spent the next 75 years building a life defined by a relentless impulse to make the world a better place.

Bessie and David Borwein grew up together in the Johannesburg Jewish community. David was three years older and tutored her in math when she was an undergrad at University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. They married in 1946.

The couple left South Africa two years later to live in London where David pursued a DPhil in mathematics and Bessie started a PhD in botany. After the Nationalist Party came to power in 1948, David used to say that they could never go back as Bessie would have spent her life in jail – a statement he made with equal parts pride and genuine assessment of the risks.

David’s first teaching position was at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Bessie cried when she heard the news – she did not want to go somewhere so cold and dark and small. In the end, they loved it and spent 15 happy years there, welcoming three children, Jon, Peter and Sarah. Bessie and her family also became British citizens.

Ever adventurous, in the 1960s, the family of five immigrated to Canada – to London, Ont., a place they had never heard of – for a one-year sabbatical at Western University. They decided to make Canada their home and became Canadian citizens in 1982.

In London, Bessie began working as a lab technician and a professor at the university encouraged her to pursue graduate work. She completed her PhD in anatomy in 1973. Bessie studied the eyes of Anableps anableps, a quirky fish that swims at the water’s surface and thus sees two worlds at once. This was something that her daughter always found fitting.

Bessie was the answer to anyone who ever said it was too late to start. She had an extraordinary, illustrious career that didn’t start until she was nearly 50. She became an associate professor at Western University then associate dean of medical research. She served on the Research Ethics Review Board, founded a non-profit that educated the public on science, worked with the Alzheimer’s Society in Ontario, the Ontario Breast Screening Program, Madame Vanier Children’s Services and the Youth Science Foundation, among other gigs. She also won a list of awards and recognitions too long to recount here.

Bessie was a do-er. If there was a problem, she needed to help solve it. In 1968, when a neighbourhood child went missing, she spearheaded the Block Parent program, a network of safe homes each marked by a sign in the window. London was the first city in Canada to have it and it spread across the country.

She never stopped connecting people to each other – spotting the invisible thread between two people and pulling until they met. Bessie often sent packages of random newspaper clippings to her children, simply to say she was thinking of them. She signed every note “YDM” (for Your Devoted Mother). She also took in a cousin’s daughter and rewrote two futures in a single act of kindness – hers, and Sarah’s, as they became as close as sisters.

Bessie took infectious joy in her grandchildren and became a devoted and loving grandmother to all nine of them. Her home was a haven, full of warmth, heated political argument and David’s dry wit. He used to say their 75-year marriage worked because of the division of labour: He did the division, she did the labour.

She outlived her sons Jon and Peter, and David. Bessie carried those profound losses in her body and over the years, slipped away from the world. But the Bessie her family remembers was a fierce, brilliant, loving woman who made lives better by her presence in them.

Bessie was close to 100 before she died. Had she been a little more present, she might have held on for that telegram from the king.

Sarah Borwein is Bessie Borwein’s daughter.

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