Dresen, Niels Ernst Hansen
JULY 22, 1922 - APRIL 14, 2014
Niels Ernst Hansen Dresen has passed away, his light going out on April 14th, 2014 at 11:01 AM in Burnaby, BC. Pre deceased by his parents, Marie and Karl Hansen Dresen, brother Esbern, sisters Eleanor Krogh and Ellen McDougall, and his son Joel, Niel is survived by sons Neil, Ken, Ross, and daughter Angela, his grand children Jeremy, Katrina, Harlen and Erik, and great grand children Kelly, Aidan, and Bria. Born July 22nd, 1922 near Wayne, Alberta, he was the second of four surviving children born to immigrants from Denmark. Speaking Danish as a boy, only learning English at the age of six, Niel had a dual-patriotism that embraced the old, Denmark, and the new, Canada. He had a life-long love of laughter, joking, word play and music. Swept up by World War II and crossing the North Atlantic as a depth charge man on Canadian corvettes, Niel in peacetime worked from the Lakehead in Eastern Ontario, through the Prairie Provinces, to the BC Coast and Vancouver Island, as Rodman, surveyor, and Engineer.
He was City Engineer in Courtney, BC, the town of Merritt, and also in the district of Valleyview before its amalgamation into Kamloops; after that he sold, water mains and sewer systems to towns, villages and cities throughout BC until he retired in Kamloops; in his last three years he moved to the coast to be closer to his family. Niel will be remembered in a Memorial held in the Lakewood Room at the Trout Lake Community Centre in Vancouver, BC, on Saturday May 10th, 2014 at 4PM.
