| <--back to George |
| George Michael Brown III, gentleman tattooist, altruistic sophist |
| It was in a tarpaper shack (literally) in New Scotia that the man, the drifter, the jack-of-all-trades master-of-fun, George Brown III was born. Poor and too proud to remain in the sparsely settled backwoods of Antigonish, his mother Mirjana, an immigrant from Germany, insisted on what would be an ill-fated trek to York Region in the year of 1974. The journey produced a healthy baby brother, Johnny Nicholas, but George Brown Sr. was lost to the wilderness on a search for demon-whisky somewhere around the now thriving city of Toronto. |
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For years, the family drifted around southern Ontario until they settled in County Niagara, where young George began to show promise not only as a polyglot and orator, a scholar and an instrumentalist, but also as an enthusiast and budding designer of the visual arts. |
| Working various jobs to help support the family, as well as his two children, George found himself dabbling in carpentry, apothecary work, stocking groceries journalism and bartending. The tremendous and exhilarating nightlife and saloons, joints and dancehalls of the otherwise sleepy canal ports of Thorold and St. Catharines were appealing, and he made his way as an amateur musician from time to time, but the idea of becoming an apprentice in the bewildering art of tattoo had always nagged at him. |