Geologist.
Born at Winnipeg on 26 March 1922 to Florence May Orton (1886-1974) and Charles Bragg (1883-1953), he grew up in the community of Elmwood, where his parents ran Bragg's United Grocery on Henderson Highway. In his youth, he was part of “The Old Maids,” a group of five adventurous boys whose friendship lasted a lifetime. He also worked as a delivery boy at the store, went roller skating, played tennis, and attended Saturday-night dances at the pavilion at Frasers Grove. He graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1943 with an Honours Degree in Geology. His summers during university were spent working as a geology student at Bissett. Upon graduating, since it was wartime, he could either join the military or work on metallurgy projects that supported the war effort. He took the necessary courses to become a metallurgist and was stationed for a time at Comox, British Columbia. In 1945, he married Marion Ruth Gowan (1922-2010), and they went on to have six children.
For the majority of his life, he and his family moved from one mining community to another as he built his geological career, beginning in a small log cabin on the shores of Island Lake in northern Manitoba, where he was sent as a prospector in 1946. At Flin Flon, he worked for Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting. In 1953-1954, he was in charge of the diamond drilling program in a number of locations around Flin Flon and Snow Lake using a new strategy of Saturation Geophysics. The discoveries he made resulted in the Coronation Mine and the Chisel Lake Mine. After moving to take a position at Dobie, Ontario, in the Kirkland Lake area, he would spend summers in the Arctic, prospecting near Resolute Bay, which he described as the one of the most interesting periods in his life. His work took him back to Flin Flon in 1968 with a new company, Western Nuclear, which eventually provided him the opportunity to move his family to Sydney, Australia as Chief Geologist for Western Nuclear. The stories he liked to tell of his adventures in his far-ranging career then included 20-foot pythons, tea breaks, and camps in the desert. He returned to Hudson Bay Exploration in Flin Flon in 1974 and ended his career with them as the Eastern Canada Division Exploration Manager based in Toronto, Ontario.
He was also involved in community work, such as the Bissett School Board and Flin Flon School Board. Because his wife was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at a relatively young age, he became not only her devoted caregiver through the rest of her life, but also involved with the Parkinson's Society, first in Toronto, where he served as President for many years, and then in Winnipeg when he and Marion moved there post-retirement in 1995. He advocated for people coping with Parkinsons, from a governance level to fundraising, and started and led exercise classes for Parkinsonians in Toronto. He led similar exercise programs in Winnipeg until he was 85 years old.
It was during his time at Bissett that he showed a talent at the piano, and he often entertained at dances there. He kept at the piano throughout his life, playing in the evening for his children to go to sleep to, and playing for his wife the songs from their courtship days. He also continued to stay physically fit with canoeing, tennis, golf, curling, and badminton, and was still playing tennis with his friends at the Winnipeg Winter Club until he fell going for a short net shot in November of 2011, at the age of 89. Having decided many years earlier that he would swim lengths of the pool based on his age, until the tennis fall resulted in a broken arm he was swimming 89 lengths of the pool at the Winter Club. He was also the undefeated champion of crokinole as of Christmas 2011. It was not until after retirement that he surprised everyone with a hidden talent as a wood carver. His work captured intricate scenes in relief, 3-dimensional pieces made from a single block of wood, and his art pieces won awards on a local and national level.
Even though his job took him to many places, and despite Marion’s progressing illness, they loved to travel, in the earlier days with only a large tent for accommodation, later continuing to cross Canada by specially equipped van from Vancouver Island to St. John's, Newfoundland, to Inuvik, with various family members joining them for assistance. Although trips became shorter, they were still going on road trips together until Marion's death in December of 2010, followed by a few more with his children and on his own during 2011. He was planning another four-week travel adventure for the spring of 2012, but passed away in March.
One of his final legacies began in 2010 when he decided to write his life story. It was self-published in 2011 and at the time of his death he was already documenting stories for future chapters.
He died at Winnipeg on 4 March 2012.
Birth registration [John Gordon Bragg], Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 10 March 2012.
“Gordon Bragg,” Bragg Family Tree, Ancestry.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 19 January 2026
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