About Jakub.
Jakub Marshall battled with schizophrenia privately and bravely until it took his life at age 26 on March 11, 2022. We remember and honour him forever as an amazing, caring and accomplished young man. This webpage was created to preserve some of the memories and creative works that Jakub made in the time he was with us.
Jakub was born in Toronto and spent several childhood years in Seattle before the family settled in Winnipeg, just in time to start kindergarten at Riverview School. As a child he loved building massive brio train tracks, Lego and reading Harry Potter. He enjoying fencing, which appealed to his castles and dragons imagination and individualistic way of thinking, and fenced his way up to the provincial team. He started going to Camp Stephens every summer, often with neighborhood friends, and made many wonderful memories of island camp and canoe trips. Winnipeg Folk Festival was another summer highlight, where he enjoyed the people, music, camping, mosquitos, sunburn and roaming free on the prairie grass. Music lessons began very young and involved some varied piano teachers before settling on the Music Cellar, which provided a fantastic community of aspiring musicians. By the end of high school his music interest had morphed into full blown high school bands, regular jamming, song writing and some performing gigs. Going to music school became the obvious choice for him, and with encouragement of some music teachers he joined the Brandon University School of Music.
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Jakub completed his Bachelor of Music Composition at Brandon University where he won a silver medal. He went on to Carleton University to obtain a Master of Arts degree in Music and Culture. He wrote his thesis about punk and new wave’s connection to the work of General Idea and the politics of the time. He loved the world of ideas and became passionate about the history and philosophy of political movements and revolutions. He loved group music projects and was a participant and leader in many creative works over the years. He learned from summer jobs working for the Winnipeg Jazz festival and later the Toronto for Arts in the Park program. He enjoyed travel and felt a strong affinity for Toronto and urban culture. He was equally comfortable in the outdoors, camping, canoeing and chilling at the cottage.
Jakub loved music and books throughout his life; he learned about and interpreted the world through them. He was a unique and critical thinker who had recently started studying city planning and was working as an intern for the provincial government. He had hopes to build a career in government to make a difference developing public policy or working with not-for-profits. Jakub was thoughtful, sensitive and idealistic, and challenged all who knew him to dream of a different world. As he was working through the typical struggles of a 26 year old finding his place in the world during these difficult times, he kept his enormous internal struggles with schizophrenia private.
