Garret (Garry) Herbert Heiman
12 April, 1943 – 28 August, 2025
On August 28, 2025 Garry Heiman passed away unexpectedly while vacationing in Kenora, Ontario.
Garry was born in Swan River, Manitoba, the eldest of 7 children born to Herbert and Martha Heiman. His elementary school years were spent in that community and as a teenager he often worked alongside his father in the family drycleaning business.
Growing up in the Swan River Valley developed Garry’s lifelong affinity for water sports. He was among a cohort of young people who spent weekends waterskiing at Wellman Lake and sailing a homemade boat he fashioned when he was in Grade 11 from plans out of a Popular Mechanics magazine.
He attended high school at LCBI, a bible school in Outlook, Saskatchewan which informed his decision to enroll in theology at the University of Saskatchewan in Regina. That proved not to be the best fit for Garry’s mathematical and physics formidable mindset; he switched to engineering, graduation as a civil engineer in 1968 and easily launched into a long successful career in that field that took him to places around the world.
It was while studying for his degree that the engineering students — most of them young men — hosted a dance and invited student nurses to create some gender equality that he met soul mate Alice Weger and the two subsequently married.
Starting his career in the Department of Highways in Saskatchewan, he became a bit of an asphalt geek, serving as a member of the national Pavements Advisory Committee looking to create uniform regulations for vehicle weights on roadways and development pavement management approaches. To the rest of his siblings — who leaned towards creative pursuits — this fixation on asphalt was mystifying but explained why many of his family slide presentations were periodically interspersed with slides of large grey masses as a piece of roadway distracted him from events going around him and he just had to have a photo of it.
Garry and Alice raised their two children, Trevor and Jannel, on a farm in Balgonie outside of Regina. This was an intensely busy time with the parents working full time while hobby farming, breeding and showing Doberman dogs, getting kids to hockey and skating practices and summer weekends at lakes.
When Trevor and Jannel were teenagers the family moved to Burnaby, BC and shortly after, Garry launched his international engineering career which took him to Trinadad, Indonesia, and lastly Peru.
He returned to Canada — first to Coquitlam and then to Nanaimo — ostensibly to retire. But retirement didn’t suit so he continued to consult, working on highway projects well into his 70s.
Throughout all these moves, the couple had a huge capacity to develop close and enduring friendships wherever they went. No matter where, Garry engaged in community-building activities: Hash Runs in Indonesia, dragon boat racing, boot camp, and curling in Nanaimo, and sailing in the British Virgin Islands and South Pacific.
Missing life abroad and warmer climates, Garry and Alice moved to Mazatlan, Mexico but maintained connections with friends and family around the world and kept their spiritual life alive through Zoom worship at the Hope Lutheran Church in Nanaimo.
On Garry’s LinkedIn profile he called himself “Retired, Enjoy helping others.” The latter remained very true for the 10 years they lived in Mexico. Garry remained a very active member of the Peninsula Condo in Mazatlan, often taking critical roles in large projects that benefitted from his engineering background. In more recent years he was the primary and devoted caregiver to Alice, who predeceased him in December 2024.
He returned to Canada in August 2025 to visit family, rekindle past friendships, and have a memorial for his wife in Nanaimo. Driving across the Prairies for the first time in dozens of years, he captured nostalgic photos and made a point of visiting friends not seen in decades, ending at Clearwater Bay where several of his sisters and a cousin gathered for old times. A mere day after arriving he collapsed and passed days later at Lake of the Woods District Hospital in Kenora.
Garry is survived by his son Trevor (Elise) of Victoria and their children Quade and Macie, daughter Jannel of Victoria, five sisters Trudie of Victoria, Millie Stovel (Richard) of Calgary, Carolyn Heiman (Wayne Jensen) of Victoria, Darlene Heiman of Winnipeg, and Christine Hansen (Greg) of Kenora.
He was predeceased by his wife Alice, parents Martha and Herb Heiman, and brother David.
The family would like to thank the doctors and nurses and other staff at Lake of the Woods District Hospital who provided professional and compassionate care over a number of distressful days.
A memorial service will be held at Hope Lutheran Church, 2174 Departure Bay, Nanaimo on Saturday, October 25 at 1:00 pm.
