Perc Burrows: My Most Unforgettable Co-Worker

By Neil Earle

SPEECH CLUB 1989 – Perc on front row right, David Bacon our webmaster back far right.

On Tuesday, May 26 Percival Durnford Burrows died of pneumonia in a Toronto, Ontario hospital. He was 88 years old and had suffered many health problems these past ten years. Yet his optimism and cheerfulness that marked his life stayed with him till the end.

“Perc” as everyone called him was a minister in the Toronto churches of the Worldwide Church of God/Grace Communion International. 400 people attended his funeral and Facebook tributes are still pouring in. He was an unusual man. Many of his pastor/colleagues were there for the tribute on Friday, May 29 and all saluted his unique traits and contributions to the Toronto churches of which he was a founding member in 1964.

I came to pastor Toronto in 1984 and had already heard about the sterling reputation of Perc and Shirley Burrows long before. Frankly, it was an honor to be sent to Toronto and to work with such fine people. I remembered Perc from my first visit there in April, 1968 and all who passed through Toronto would remember him, respected for his unfailing good cheer and enthusiasm for the things of God and loveable for his many eccentricities that in him were healthy marks of a genuine original.

“Mr. Facts and Figures”

We worked together in Big TO from 1984 to 1992 and he was an unfailing source of help, encouragement and strength. As retired pastor George Lee noted on May 30, Perc was many things – Mr. Facts and Figures, Mr. Quick With a Quip, Mr. Service and Hospitality, Mr. Shirt and Tie, Mr. Slo Pitch (a reference to his softball days over many decades).

VIPs VISIT TORONTO, 1987 – Perc and Shirley Burrows fourth and fifth from the right with President Tkach Sr. (center, in striped shirt).

“Mr. Shirt and Tie” referenced his habit of always wearing a shirt and tie – so much so that his softball team gave him a team shirt with a tie printed onto it. Priceless. You had to know him.

His influence spread far and wide. When I mentioned his passing in Glendora, CA this week a visitor piped up “I worked with him on counting the offering at a convention in the 1980s – a very through man.”

Thorough hardly begins to describe it. Lynn mentioned how he kept a map in his house of where all the TO brethren were located and would move the pins when they moved. Some 1700 pins, I think she said. When the churches were involved in a big Plain Truth magazine newsstand drive in the 1980s Mr. B was in the middle of it. I specifically asked him to tabulate the results for the whole city, Canada’s largest. His accurate count was key to helping us reach our goal of 257,000 free sample magazines on the streets of Toronto in July, 1986. A year ahead of schedule!

NEWSTAND DRIVE, late 1980s – Toronto Singles prove good customers.

No fudging here!

Others recall how his wife helped deliver 200 babies in their house in the 1960s and 1970s and the host of water baptisms that issued forth from a portable tank he kept in his basement. During those deliveries Perc would sleep on the couch downstairs, never complaining.

A Gift to all

We spent untold hours together in the car visiting the 1150 brethren and driving often to Niagara Falls where he was a mainstay for about twenty successful conventions across the decades in upstate New York, hosting almost 5000 people at a time. I remember what a relief it was to know he was at my side. Always, always, always positive, optimistic and cheerful. And competent. That was Perc. He was one of those people whose name brings a smile to your face. You could joke with him about his fixation on Tim Horton doughnuts, a prominent restaurant chain. Or how he would defend his parsininomious habits by saying, If you keep your razor blades long enough they will self-sharpen. The same with his ties, he would joke. The 1950s style is coming back, he once told me. Why throw it out?

Always there to joke and tease – that was Perc Burrows. And yet as daughter Lynn mentioned he was a most undemonstrative man – a true conservative Torontonian of the old British stock of which he was most proud. I have no doubt that his cheerfulness in any and all circumstances had to be a gift of the Holy Spirit – a gift from God in which we are all privileged to share and enjoy. Thank God for his unspeakable gift.

“Our wonderful fellow-traveller”

As pastor Doug Smith said in his message, Perc was exceptionally non-judgmental. He always took people at face value – rich or poor, brown black or white. I always saw him as part of the “glue” that held the church together when the city of Toronto moved from an old British bastion in the 1960s to a multicultural church hosting people from 60 nations. What a servant.

NEIL EARLE, M.A. – U of T graduation 1992, Burrows on the right.

To Doug Smith, Perc was a “wonderful fellow traveler on the Christian journey.” Doug asked, “How many people do you know like Perc Burrows?” No hands went up. “He was extremely passionate about God and devoted to the Bible which he read every day and always carried with him. He loved church,” Doug added, “He had since he was a boy as an Anglican." Mr. Burrows chuckled when he joked with me how he met his wife, Shirley, at a holy communion service. How economical and efficient – how committed. How much like Perc.

As Doug said: “He came to church to be transformed not to be entertained. He was a man who lived in grace, who was comfortable and relaxed in the presence of God, assured of his acceptance by God and so went about his life overwhelmed by the certain fact that God liked him…and loved him. You enjoyed being with him because he himself was at home with his God. He never argued theology he just went about living it.”

Doug then concluded his message with a rephrase of Philippians 2:19, St. Paul’s tribute to his disciple Timothy – “I have none like Perc, who will naturally care for your state.”

This is true of the dozens of tributes on Facebook and elsewhere which testify to how many lives this great man touched. My most unforgettable co-worker – yes, by a long-shot. We could not have done it without him.


I Remember ‘Mr. B’

By David Bacon

Thirty years ago as a young adult with no church background, I began reading copies of the Plain Truth magazine that I would pick up in a magazine box in suburban Toronto. I was hooked, and within a couple of years I worked up the courage to request a ministerial visit.

Perc Burrows was my first contact with the church, and his common good sense and hospitality were a source of stability to me in the mid- to late-1980s.

On two or three of my visits to his Horsham Avenue home in North York, I brought a long list of Bible questions – and other questions about the Church – that I was eager to go over. He humored me by answering a few of the questions, but said not to worry, eventually I would have answers to these questions at Sabbath services and Bible studies.

Mr. Burrows had a great work ethic. One time while having dinner at his home, he hurriedly forked down the broccoli on his plate – he wouldn't sit at the dinner table, but stood the whole time – so eager was he to get back to his office work downstairs in his freezing cold basement.

Once I came down with chicken pox and had to miss work. This coincided with one of the holy days. Mr. Burrows gave me the keys to his place and said to come over and watch a video – (Young Ambassadors? can't remember) – and he said to make sure that I watch it at the exact time that the rest of the church was meeting for the holy day service.

Once at church Mr. Burrows was speaking at the podium when Gord Donnelly – newly ordained as a deacon – approached, stage right, with a poster of Raveen the psychic. Mr. Burrows replied to this goofy joke with a one-liner of his own: “I think he's taking his new job too seriously!” This brought the house down.

The unique Perc Burrows was one of the great servants we looked up to in the Toronto churches. He addicted his life to the saints.