Obituary of David Ewart Rouse

Rouse, David Ewart David was born in Hamilton, Ontario February 26, 1937 to Elva Grobb and Ewart (Jack) Rouse. He passed away on March 31, 2025 at his Orillia home. At heart, David was a keen artist. His hobby for many years was creating ship models which were accurate, detailed depictions of the sailing ships of a bygone era. Not one aspect of his work was prefabricated, right down to the spikes holding down the decks and the pulleys guiding the sail lines. Music, folk music in particular, was also a favourite pastime. Many of his evenings as a youth were taken up learning to play a stringed instrument (either violin or banjo). In his later years, he took up painting. Birthdays and holidays were celebrated with cards bearing his own designs and old black and white photos of the family farms in Beamsville were colorized and brought to life. In his working life, David was a graduate of the Ryerson Institute of Technology (now Toronto Metropolitan University) where he studied Aeronautic Engineering. His hopes for a career in aeronautics were stopped suddenly in 1959 when the Avro Arrow project was cancelled by the Diefenbaker government. David had been working during the summer months for Avro Canada on the wing section of the aircraft. David then found work with IBM in their quality control group where he spent the rest of his working life. He met his lifelong partner, Margaret Picken at IBM and they married in 1985. Following their retirement Dave and Margie moved to Orillia. This took David back to his family roots. His father was born and raised there and his grandparents and great grandparents had also lived in the area, all of which gave Dave the incentive to work on tracing his family history. Left to mourn him are his wife Margie, his brother James, his nephew Edward (Ted) and Ted’s wife Shannon, in addition to many cousins and friends.