Ernest Manera

Ernie Manera, 93, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, May 20 at Hart House Seniors Residence in Victoria, B.C., with his daughter, Anne, at his side. Ernie was born in Welland, Ontario on November 16, 1920 and grew up in Timmins, Ontario where, at the age of 17, he began his first big band, Ernie Manera and the Royal Knights Club Orchestra. Though he owned and operated Port Credit Taxi in the early 1950s, he was a musician for most of his life and ended his working career as a music teacher at Loyola Catholic High School in Mississauga, Ontario in 1984. In 1945, he married Helen Franchetto and was with her for 67 years until her death in June, 2012. They lived in Clarkson, Ontario from 1952 to 1993 in a house he had helped build himself. He and Helen moved to Nanaimo, B.C. in 1993 and then to Victoria in 2010, where they lived at Carlton House until Helens passing. He was a resident at Joan Crescent Manor in Victoria from December 2012 until April 2014, and spent his last weeks at Hart House. Ernie is survived by his three children: Matthew, of Victoria, B.C.; Larry and his wife Anne, of Mississauga, Ontario; and Anne (Manera) Curry and her husband, Glen, of Victoria, B.C.; and by his brother, Elvi, of Port Colborne, Ontario and his sister Yole, of Barrie, Ontario.