RUSH bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee is in mourning due to the passing of his mother. Mary Weinrib passed away last Friday (July 2), not far off from her 96th birthday.
Mary was born in 1925 in Warsaw, Poland, and grew up in Wierzbnik, a Jewish shtetl that was part of Starachowice, Poland, which was occupied by Germany beginning in 1939. According to her obituary, she “endured the labor camp at the munitions factory in Starachowice and the concentration camps at Auschwitz, where she met and fell in love with her husband Morris Weinrib, and at Bergen-Belsen, where she was finally liberated in April 1945.
Reunited and married in 1946, Mary and Morris emigrated to Canada. After her husband Morris’s sudden death in 1965, Mary was left with three young children and a variety store that her husband had owned and managed. Mary was determined to learn the business, and, against the advice of well-meaning friends, she took over managing their store in Newmarket, and she successfully ran the business until she retired.
Mary was an early supporter and a fixture at RUSH concerts. When the first RUSH album was released, Mary plastered the windows of her store with RUSH posters and gave albums away to any kids who wanted them but didn’t have the money to buy them.
Weinrib’s family asks that donations made in her honour to the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies.