Jack Pryzner

Jack Pryzner passed away suddenly on October 28, 2025 in the Brandon hospital with family who dearly loved him helping to make his journey to rest. He was 93 ½ years old.

Born on April 19, 1932 in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, during a thunder and lightning storm, he subsequently moved with his family to the farm east of Shoal Lake. Jack worked hard his whole life, first as a child and teenager on the farm. He then moved to Winnipeg where he worked lumber retail. There, he met Gladys (Roebuck) whom he married on April 28, 1962. When their first child Ruth (named after Jack’s beloved sister Ruth Rose Pryzner) was 8 months old, Jack and Gladys moved back to his parents’ (Mike and Kathryn) new Shoal Lake area farm site. Their family grew with the births of Michael, John and Grace.

Jack farmed debt free until his retirement in 1990. He was an award winning commercial Hereford, and later a Hereford-Short Horn, cattle producer, as well as a stellar gardener and well respected water dowser. In addition to his family, Jack’s mixed farm fed thousands of people through an environmentally nurturing farming system. He correctly believed that access to, rather than ownership of, land was the key to food security, teaching his children that if you have access to land you would not go hungry.

Jack embraced Chief Seattle’s words, “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” Most of the land, which Jack had nurtured throughout his life, became the “Pryzner Parcel”preserved for wildlife habitat.

Those who knew Jack well were blessed by his boundless generosity, kindness, compassion, empathy and his deep sense of justice. He never failed to help a person in need and served his community.

Jack’s sense of humor, creativity and imagination often brought gales of laughter, immense joy and smiles to those he entertained, up to the day he died. He especially loved to play with his grandchildren Cassandra (Ruth and Joe), Destiny (Grace) and Brad (John) and hear their laughter. His sense of humor, his joy in having fun and his deep appreciation of the artistry and beauty of life was infectious.

His love of nature has been embraced by some of his children and his granddaughters. Ruth and Cassandra share and practice Jack’s ecological farming values, while Destiny has worked in nature.

Jack’s commitment to community, his work ethic, his insistence on performing an honest day’s labor and his satisfaction with a job well done made him especially proud of Michael, who shares these values, excels at his place of work and is always ready to serve the community.

Throughout his life, Jack had the courage to stand against corruption, theft, oppression, greed, selfishness, bullies, arrogance, ignorance, homophobia, transphobia, racism, colonialism, bigotry and injustice. Attending countless farm meetings, he actively supported the Wheat Board, Co-ops, the Crow rate and the right for farmers to save their own seed, opposing corporate plant breeders’ “rights” to adulterate seed and force farmers to purchase their seed.

He was a passionate defender of non-industrial farmers against the invasion of corporate factory farming, inhumane treatment and genetic modification of animals, devoting endless time and energy in pursuit of fairness in the marketplace for those real farmers who nurture the land and feed us. For Jack, this fairness would allow these farmers to make a decent living and permit future generations to farm free from debt-bondage.

Jack is lovingly remembered by those who survive him, including his wife Gladys, his sister Shirley Padgett (Graham), his children, Ruth (Joe Dolecki,Michael, John and Grace, grandchildren Cassandra (Peter Sherman), Destiny and Brad, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws and his many friends as a truly decent human being, a man of principle, honor, compassion and integrity. The world is a lesser place without him.

“You can have all the material wealth in the world, but if you don’t have integrity, you have nothing” – Jack Pryzner, 1981

JACK: A POEM FOR A MAN

A poem for a man
who worked the land
who lived for the land
and loved the land
that grew the food
that fed his soul
that fed his family
that fed the people
and the spirits
of the indomitable
like him
always fighting
for justice
against the tyranny
of ignorance and greed
fighting for the rights
of farmers and others
to a decent life
no nonsense
no poison in the deep dark earth
or the cool clean water
watched over by the star thick heavens above
and this man
who worked the land
who lived for the land
and loved the land
that fed him and the whole world
now returns
to nourish the soil
and the heart of
freedom.

 Norman Nawrocki, Friend, 10/30/2