A LOOK BACK, A LOOK AHEAD
It has been a week since my father began his gradual slide into unconsciousness, after a short but painful illness....a condition of slumber in the end, that to us, was both merciful and providential. It was exactly how my mother Merle had slipped away, in May 2008, and the kind of peaceful exit Ed had found comforting during that time of loss......and he said numerous times since that he would be pleased to pass from this mortal coil so gently without pain. In those final hours his wish had come true, and he was pain-free and everso subtly set free of suffering with a most soothing music playing in his room. Sherry, our nurse-friend, had seen to this for Ed, and it was a poetic ending, a successful journey’s conclusion, to a man’s life that had endured so many obstacles and challenges....... to follow with that determined footfall, the path from birth to his final reward.
Ed was not a religious man but he had a sincere faith that there was more to life than this mortal conduit, this blood and flesh vehicle that serves us on earth. It was once said by my mother that the only time my father ever called out for "Christ’s sake," was when he fell down the apartment stairs. It was a family joke so I can’t attest to its accuracy. Yet I never felt Ed was resolved of death’s finality, and I’m reasonably sure he was intending to re-connect with his partner in the afterlife......and I knew he’d let us know of his safe passage. As our family generally believes the spirit does "Cross Over," and certainly in Ed’s case, we had many signs after his death, that he was well on his way, we don’t share the fears of "nothingness" or "gone forever"......because we have opened ourselves to the full possibilities of life after death. I have validated those who have crossed for years, and I’ve never once been surprised by coincidence and circumstance that appears to have been of unearthly initiative. It may surprise some readers to learn about these heaven-sent messages, signs and welcome intrusions......but for us, they are nothing new or for that matter exceptional.
Ed had an unyielding, strong spirit, and a stubbornness to soldier on. As he was a beacon of optimism during his life, it’s impossible for me to believe hid didn’t exit with the same intensity he had on earth. While a few might argue it is only pathetic denial, or a harmful fiction, I have never lost faith in the dynamic, the fascinating dimensions of life and death, or on the other hand, denied the mourning process its necessary course. I would suggest to my helpful critics, that they might be open-minded enough themselves, to validate those loved ones who have passed......and be receptive to the messages, signs and feeling of comfort they might receive, in their own faith the spirit carries on.
Ed will always be an inspiration to me because he sought out truths, preferring a critical approach, demanding second opinions, and truly never left a stone unturned. He followed the carpenter’s credo.....measure twice, cut once. As for his health, it was the glaring contradiction due to a life-long fear of hospitals.
When there was something he didn’t know, that he felt disadvantaged by, he made every effort to learn and understand the issue. He wasn’t a scholar but he could talk about a huge range of issues, from politics to the economy, cooking (his favorite subject), to municipal finances. Again, we wish he had addressed his health issues with the same intensity. He would never have denied there was a good possibility death wasn’t all that final. He needed proof. Maybe he got it, and so did we!
We think he most definitely passed this life with a determination to reach the proverbial light. Shortly, on my newly prepared web-site (Ghosts of Muskoka), I will post a short piece that will detail, in actuality, with nary a shred of exaggeration, the way we believe Ed let us know he was contented with his fate, and that we should cease to mourn, as he was on his way to meet his wife, friends and family awaiting on the other side. To some it might read as a preamble to the "Twilight’s Zone" but in fact it was, by itself, a wonderful, comforting communication we will never forget.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
EDWARD (TED) JOHN CURRIE, SR., JULY 22ND, 1925 TO JANUARY 20ST 2010
We lost an old salt this week. Never again will he sing about his days serving with the North Atlantic Squadron, of the Royal Canadian Navy. But I know the words and I’ve been humming the sea faring song since he passed away. I was the proud son of a sailor!
Edward John Currie Sr. He made it into his 85th year, although admittedly like his car, in need of some repairs. Unlike his cherished car which can be fixed, his body was too far gone to save. While I loved my father dearly for his many exceptional characteristics, and positive mentorship, he was dishonest with himself. He believed positive thinking alone would repair his various illnesses, and lower hernia that he carried around like an inner tube for more than a decade. He knew many doctors in Muskoka from selling them lumber over the decades, at Building Trades Centre, or when they were treating his wife for her numerous illnesses but he wouldn’t go to them himself......unless of course, he was so out of commission he didn’t know if he was climbing aboard a stretcher or a train to Toronto.
Some who knew him in his youth would no doubt be surprised he made it to 85. Ted, as he was best known, was a fellow who could party at a cottage, on Toronto Island, for example, from one dusk to another, and in fact, party-on for a week if there was anyone still upright to match him drink for drink. Ted didn’t like drinking alone. He needed someone to argue with. There’s nothing Ed liked better than a great no-holds barred debate. He made no apology, except to my mother, and possibly his mother Doris Currie, who didn’t approve of carousing. Her husband, also an Edward, was the king of carousing in that old Irish way but not much of a father-figure. Merle and Doris were quick to remind him of that unfortunate legacy. While he never quit the drink, he was a moderate drinker for the past 25 years, to that I can attest. He also was one of Paul Rimstead’s most loyal readers back in those early days of the Toronto Sun. Paul, a Bracebridge native, was kind of an expert on partying dusk to dusk. My dad liked the fact Paul was honest, thought-provoking, sometimes just provoking, and a gent who enjoyed every day as if it was his last. So did my dad!
And indeed there was a Ted Jr. He and my mother Merle, who passed away in the spring of 2008, got the idea of naming their offspring (circa 1955) the same as my father, which was a generational thing apparently, because it was also the name of his father and my grandfather. It has caused us both some discomfort at times over our lifetimes, as I fielded calls from his lumber industry clients and he took angry calls from readers of my editorials published in the Muskoka press. It happened a lot. He got ten times more misdirected calls than I did, a sort of penalty I guess for naming your writer-son the same.
I think it bothered him but he always defended me to the irate caller any way.....a father’s privilege afterall to look after the well being of his kid. Strangely enough, callers that finally did get turned around, always admitted after finishing with the intended business that they had actually enjoyed talking to either Ted Jr or Sr inadvertently, thus easing whatever anger had inspired the call to begin with.
When Ted Sr. passed away on the evening of January 21, 2010, I’d like to think he and I had mended all those fences, quarrels and misunderstandings of a lifetime of confused names and diverse politics. I’m a political trouble-maker and he wasn’t. When on occasion he’d comment about a call received at home from one of my unhappy readers, I’d just tell him about the times when angry customers from Building Trades Centre would complain, at great length, about the wrong order being delivered to a job-site, or kitchen cupboards that were too big, too small, or hadn’t arrived yet. There were times I couldn’t stop the tirade on the other end, and just decided to be a really good listener and apologize at the end of the call for not being the right Mr. Currie; who had apparently sent the wrong colored shingles. For a time I even changed my name, in print, to Edward Currie but that didn’t fool anyone. The best calls were from old girl friends who would just assume there couldn’t be two Teds in one dwelling, and start reminiscing about the events of the evening before, and ask if I knew where they’d left some piece of intimate apparel. My dad was guilty, on occasion, of not admitting to the mistaken identify right off the bat, and a lot of gals were pretty embarrassed when they eventually found out they’d spilled their guts to the wrong guy. He was pretty good about it with me until I asked for the car keys later that day....suggesting that a car was for driving and was not actually a short-term residence.
My father was born in Oakville, Ontario, on July 22nd, 1925. His real home region, and proudly so, was Toronto’s famous Cabbagetown. He lived on Aberdeen Avenue and on Seeton, and he fondly recalled his Irish dad sitting on the stoop of their small house eating a raw potato as if it was an apple. He loved to tell about running out of the house in the morning, at his mother’s request, to scoop up the fresh road apples left by the delivery horses, to use as fertilizer on their small garden. He used to do the same mindful trot for scattered coal chunks that fell off the wagon, and yes indeed his early days were a lot like the story of "Angela’s Ashes." They were poor and he lived on a street with poor folks, so he didn’t grow up with any illusions about being better off than any one else he knew. He told me how much he hated the welfare shoes he and his brothers had to wear; a real standout in the school yard, but he loved the gift boxes that the church sent at Christmas, particularly if there was an orange to share. While he didn’t wear the reality he had grown up poor, as a lifelong millstone, it was encounters in those quarters that changed him. He was forced to fight his way through those years, and although he never admitted to me, he had alluded to my mother at least, that he had been abused physically in some of the homes he had been assigned, on those frequent occasions when his parents had flown the coop.
He grew up fast and tough, and he was most definitely a fighter. At one time or another he had broken all his knuckles and I knew they had connected with many an adversary’s nose. There was no choice. He was often abandoned by both his mother and father, as their marriage collapsed, and looking after three younger brothers, he held dearly to them through a variety of city run homes for orphans. While his mother did come back and assume her responsibilities, it was one important issue that bothered him throughout his life. He often said it was the reason his brother Bill had suffered a mental collapse, and had to be institutionalized at the Orillia mental health facility. He died several years ago. My mother told me once that his mother would take the four wee lads to the park and then suddenly disappear, leaving my father in charge of the day’s survival. By all accounts, he did lead the way, and it took him years to come to terms with his mother. It can be said all was healed before the end of both their lives.
He volunteered for the Royal Canadian Navy with a boyhood chum, Norm Cathcart, I believe, and joined the crew of the River Class Frigate, Coaticook. He was both an Asdic operator.....looking for underlying U- Boats, and a gunner of twin Oerlikon guns. He told a story about shooting at approaching German aircraft, flying over the huge North Atlantic convoys, and how the pilots dipped their wings in salute, when his tracer fire fell short of their range. He offered back a little salute of his own, of some sailor, fighter-pilot protocol, as if to suggest "nice try, see you later old sport."
Before I was ten I knew the words to the Navy song, "The Boys of the North Atlantic Squadron," and a tune about Hitler’s genitals but I shall not repeat them now. He was "no angel," as my mother often noted. On one of his first stints in the ship’s Crow’s Nest, mid Atlantic, he made a teenager’s mistake. He loved to spit and spit he did! From the Crow’s Nest onto the uniform of His Majesty’s Navy......onto the brim of the Captain’s hat. When he was called into the Captain’s office, (although he was hoping for a promotion), he was informed that his week-long penalty, would be to re-paint the smoke stack of the ship, from a swinging scaffold......on a rough, rough body of water. He was proud of being an "Old Salt," and I was proud of his service on our behalf. His one great regret was that, because of the nature of the convoy and the danger beneath, it wasn’t always possible to save sailors and ship-hands that had survived a U-boat or plane attack. He said that they would wave at you, at first hoping rescue was possible, then waving out of mutual respect, when it was obvious the ship could not risk dropping their position to pull survivors aboard. "They knew they were going to die but they also knew we were doing what we had to in order to protect the convoy." When they were able to provide a rescue, he said the oil covered sailors, many badly injured, were always so thankful to have been spared a watery grave, only to die a short while later of hypothermia. "It was awful to watch them die in front of us like that," he confided.
Ted was a career lumberman. Although he had worked as a taxi driver, an embalmer’s assistant, a driver for New Method Laundry, in Toronto, it was lumber that most attracted him. He worked with Paul Hellyer (former Canadian Minister of Defence), and his former development interests, in Toronto, side by side his then father-in-law Stanley Jackson (of Jackson Avenue near Old Mill / Jane Street), a well known and respected builder. Stanley was also a concert violinist when not building things.
He worked at many lumber companies in the Hamilton and Toronto area. When he married Merle Jackson, on Valentines Day, 1948, they lived in Toronto for awhile. In fact, I was born there and spent my first waking hours amidst the urban chaos of Toronto the good. My dad wanted a smaller community to raise his son, so our young family soon moved to Burlington, Ontario, circa 1956, where I spent my first decade-plus before moving to Bracebridge, Ontario, where Ed had secured a job with the Shier’s Lumber Company. He would later work at Building Trades Centre and then Northland Building Centre in Parry Sound, before returning to BTC for its final years of operation in the 1990's.
He retired with his wife Merle and spent their final years together, happily at the Bass Rock apartments on Bracebridge’s River Road. Merle predeceased Ed by less than two years. He loved his car, his comfortable abode, his grandkids, (both musicians) Andrew and Robert, and loved to make preserves with his daughter-in-law Suzanne (nee Stripp, of Windermere, and presently Gravenhurst).
Ted Sr., was known in his youth as both an exceptional hockey player and as a fastball pitcher, and the last game I saw him pitch was at Lions Club Park in Burlington, Ontario, in the very early 1960's, and I was truly impressed by his style, speed and successive strike outs. He was a great hockey dad, getting up at three in the morning, circa 1963-65, to take me to my open-air hockey games at the Kiwanis Rink in Burlington, or at the Burlington Arena if ice time prevailed. Imagine that? Our minor hockey league games were midnight shift and we were just grateful to have that opportunity. When we moved to Bracebridge our games were normal times on Saturday mornings and at sensible hours on weeknights. He’d get home from my games and then have to drive to Hamilton to the lumber-yard.. There were times when we couldn’t make the games because the battery of our car would be dead, the result of a frigid January night, and he used to feel horrible if I couldn’t secure a back-up ride to the rink. While I’ve never once had the urge to make a hero figure of my father, because I knew his failings just as he knew mine, I had a stalwart respect for the man who always provided for his family regardless of the compromises he had to make. He and my mother loved to travel, particularly to Florida, and I enjoyed many opportunities those adventures afforded the young and impressionable. They took me to every historic site along the way.
They weren’t wealthy and they made no pretense about their social standing, or tried any measure to make social leaps and bounds, even when they had the opportunity. Merle and Ed were happy to live a minimalist lifestyle, travel a bit, garden on their apartment balcony, and enjoy morning coffee at a McDonalds where they knew staff by their first names. When my mother became seriously ill, and was confined to hospital and then The Pines, in Bracebridge (a retirement facility), Ed never missed his afternoon appointment with his sweetheart of sixty years. He kept this routine up for about five years until Merle’s struggle was finally over. When a nurse from the Pines called our home, early one morning in May, to tell us my mother was taking her last breath, she called, not at my father’s urging, because he had said he would eventually call us himself, but her own conscience that she just couldn’t let the dear, punctual, reliable oldtimer, sit alone in that room with her for too long...... without someone’s embrace to catch his eventual fall into that cold reality of profound loss. He didn’t collapse. He didn’t cry, and he stood by the top of the bed with a most calm and lovely expression, knowing full well Merle’s suffering had ceased, and her heavenly reward had commenced. In part it was because of that "old sailor"ilk, like a sort of spiritual tatoo.......the words his naval instructor impressed upon the new recruits at Cornwallis. "Your mothers aren’t here to protect you now boys!" A sailor who would never admit he couldn’t handle challenges. He did seem relieved to see his grandsons, son and daughter-in-law line up, without saying a word, around her bedside as a sort of unofficial honor guard for a grandmother, mother who had been stoic to the end. Come to think of it, that sailor stoicism has rubbed off on all of us, I just never knew how much.
On the 15th of December, we arrived at the apartment, at his beloved Bass Rock, to find the elder statesman had become very ill over at least 48 hours.....and we found out later that after he had been heard falling in his apartment, kindly neighbors, who had grown concerned about his condition, had been turned away from his door by the man who believed he could fix any ailment with ginger-ale, an aspirin and positive thinking. "I’ve called my son," he said. "He’ll take me to the hospital." Well he never called. And he had no intention of being dragged to the hospital any way. So I called the ambulance and didn’t worry a bit about offending him. As it turns out, even if he had been taken to the hospital earlier, he would not have had a different outcome. I had many good moments with Ed during his recent stay in hospital, and we talked about the good old days.....which as an historian I always hold dearly to my heart.
He loved Bracebridge and never regretted moving here in the spring of 1966. A Cabbagetown boy did well in small town Ontario. He gave his son a hell of a life and our family times were purposely modest, inexpensive, but always good fun. His pride was watching his grandsons Andrew and Robert open their own music store, in the old Muskoka Theatre building in Gravenhurst, and it was his mentorship and knowledge of retail business that gave the boys their earliest knowledge of the trials and tribulations of main street business.
One of his proudest moments, and ours as a family, was when Ed graduated from secondary school several years ago, after working via correspondence to get his final credits for his grade twelve diploma. Having joined the Navy and going overseas, he missed his final years of school, and it wasn’t until his late 70's, that he decided to make the grade once and for all. He was indeed a great source of inspiration and proof beyond doubt, that he had succeeded in a life that had, at times, thrown him many obstacles.
As it was his request, there will be no formal funeral service. Seeing as he always offered donations through us, toward our family’s work to help fund local food banks, we would suggest that in lieu of flowers donations be made instead, to either the Manna Food Bank in Bracebridge, or the Salvation Army Food Bank in Gravenhurst, two wonderful organizations that help our less fortunate citizens.
We would also like to include a special note of thanks to the nurses of South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, who treated him with the utmost respect and kindness during his stay. And we would like to extend heartfelt appreciation to Sherry, the nurse who spent those final moments with Ted Sr., and offered the hand of friendship and compassion to strangers who just happened to pass, like those proverbial ships in the night, everso briefly but profoundly along life’s difficult journey. To all who wished Ed well, and visited to cheer him up, and offered him a kind word in passing, thank you so much for caring.
I will miss my father dearly but as someone who believes in the eternal spirit, and in the ability of those who have crossed over, to communicate with the living, I will continue my conversations with Merle and Ed......whether they want to hear from me or not! That was pretty much the case in life so.......
Thank you for reading this memorial tribute.
We lost an old salt this week. Never again will he sing about his days serving with the North Atlantic Squadron, of the Royal Canadian Navy. But I know the words and I’ve been humming the sea faring song since he passed away. I was the proud son of a sailor!
Edward John Currie Sr. He made it into his 85th year, although admittedly like his car, in need of some repairs. Unlike his cherished car which can be fixed, his body was too far gone to save. While I loved my father dearly for his many exceptional characteristics, and positive mentorship, he was dishonest with himself. He believed positive thinking alone would repair his various illnesses, and lower hernia that he carried around like an inner tube for more than a decade. He knew many doctors in Muskoka from selling them lumber over the decades, at Building Trades Centre, or when they were treating his wife for her numerous illnesses but he wouldn’t go to them himself......unless of course, he was so out of commission he didn’t know if he was climbing aboard a stretcher or a train to Toronto.
Some who knew him in his youth would no doubt be surprised he made it to 85. Ted, as he was best known, was a fellow who could party at a cottage, on Toronto Island, for example, from one dusk to another, and in fact, party-on for a week if there was anyone still upright to match him drink for drink. Ted didn’t like drinking alone. He needed someone to argue with. There’s nothing Ed liked better than a great no-holds barred debate. He made no apology, except to my mother, and possibly his mother Doris Currie, who didn’t approve of carousing. Her husband, also an Edward, was the king of carousing in that old Irish way but not much of a father-figure. Merle and Doris were quick to remind him of that unfortunate legacy. While he never quit the drink, he was a moderate drinker for the past 25 years, to that I can attest. He also was one of Paul Rimstead’s most loyal readers back in those early days of the Toronto Sun. Paul, a Bracebridge native, was kind of an expert on partying dusk to dusk. My dad liked the fact Paul was honest, thought-provoking, sometimes just provoking, and a gent who enjoyed every day as if it was his last. So did my dad!
And indeed there was a Ted Jr. He and my mother Merle, who passed away in the spring of 2008, got the idea of naming their offspring (circa 1955) the same as my father, which was a generational thing apparently, because it was also the name of his father and my grandfather. It has caused us both some discomfort at times over our lifetimes, as I fielded calls from his lumber industry clients and he took angry calls from readers of my editorials published in the Muskoka press. It happened a lot. He got ten times more misdirected calls than I did, a sort of penalty I guess for naming your writer-son the same.
I think it bothered him but he always defended me to the irate caller any way.....a father’s privilege afterall to look after the well being of his kid. Strangely enough, callers that finally did get turned around, always admitted after finishing with the intended business that they had actually enjoyed talking to either Ted Jr or Sr inadvertently, thus easing whatever anger had inspired the call to begin with.
When Ted Sr. passed away on the evening of January 21, 2010, I’d like to think he and I had mended all those fences, quarrels and misunderstandings of a lifetime of confused names and diverse politics. I’m a political trouble-maker and he wasn’t. When on occasion he’d comment about a call received at home from one of my unhappy readers, I’d just tell him about the times when angry customers from Building Trades Centre would complain, at great length, about the wrong order being delivered to a job-site, or kitchen cupboards that were too big, too small, or hadn’t arrived yet. There were times I couldn’t stop the tirade on the other end, and just decided to be a really good listener and apologize at the end of the call for not being the right Mr. Currie; who had apparently sent the wrong colored shingles. For a time I even changed my name, in print, to Edward Currie but that didn’t fool anyone. The best calls were from old girl friends who would just assume there couldn’t be two Teds in one dwelling, and start reminiscing about the events of the evening before, and ask if I knew where they’d left some piece of intimate apparel. My dad was guilty, on occasion, of not admitting to the mistaken identify right off the bat, and a lot of gals were pretty embarrassed when they eventually found out they’d spilled their guts to the wrong guy. He was pretty good about it with me until I asked for the car keys later that day....suggesting that a car was for driving and was not actually a short-term residence.
My father was born in Oakville, Ontario, on July 22nd, 1925. His real home region, and proudly so, was Toronto’s famous Cabbagetown. He lived on Aberdeen Avenue and on Seeton, and he fondly recalled his Irish dad sitting on the stoop of their small house eating a raw potato as if it was an apple. He loved to tell about running out of the house in the morning, at his mother’s request, to scoop up the fresh road apples left by the delivery horses, to use as fertilizer on their small garden. He used to do the same mindful trot for scattered coal chunks that fell off the wagon, and yes indeed his early days were a lot like the story of "Angela’s Ashes." They were poor and he lived on a street with poor folks, so he didn’t grow up with any illusions about being better off than any one else he knew. He told me how much he hated the welfare shoes he and his brothers had to wear; a real standout in the school yard, but he loved the gift boxes that the church sent at Christmas, particularly if there was an orange to share. While he didn’t wear the reality he had grown up poor, as a lifelong millstone, it was encounters in those quarters that changed him. He was forced to fight his way through those years, and although he never admitted to me, he had alluded to my mother at least, that he had been abused physically in some of the homes he had been assigned, on those frequent occasions when his parents had flown the coop.
He grew up fast and tough, and he was most definitely a fighter. At one time or another he had broken all his knuckles and I knew they had connected with many an adversary’s nose. There was no choice. He was often abandoned by both his mother and father, as their marriage collapsed, and looking after three younger brothers, he held dearly to them through a variety of city run homes for orphans. While his mother did come back and assume her responsibilities, it was one important issue that bothered him throughout his life. He often said it was the reason his brother Bill had suffered a mental collapse, and had to be institutionalized at the Orillia mental health facility. He died several years ago. My mother told me once that his mother would take the four wee lads to the park and then suddenly disappear, leaving my father in charge of the day’s survival. By all accounts, he did lead the way, and it took him years to come to terms with his mother. It can be said all was healed before the end of both their lives.
He volunteered for the Royal Canadian Navy with a boyhood chum, Norm Cathcart, I believe, and joined the crew of the River Class Frigate, Coaticook. He was both an Asdic operator.....looking for underlying U- Boats, and a gunner of twin Oerlikon guns. He told a story about shooting at approaching German aircraft, flying over the huge North Atlantic convoys, and how the pilots dipped their wings in salute, when his tracer fire fell short of their range. He offered back a little salute of his own, of some sailor, fighter-pilot protocol, as if to suggest "nice try, see you later old sport."
Before I was ten I knew the words to the Navy song, "The Boys of the North Atlantic Squadron," and a tune about Hitler’s genitals but I shall not repeat them now. He was "no angel," as my mother often noted. On one of his first stints in the ship’s Crow’s Nest, mid Atlantic, he made a teenager’s mistake. He loved to spit and spit he did! From the Crow’s Nest onto the uniform of His Majesty’s Navy......onto the brim of the Captain’s hat. When he was called into the Captain’s office, (although he was hoping for a promotion), he was informed that his week-long penalty, would be to re-paint the smoke stack of the ship, from a swinging scaffold......on a rough, rough body of water. He was proud of being an "Old Salt," and I was proud of his service on our behalf. His one great regret was that, because of the nature of the convoy and the danger beneath, it wasn’t always possible to save sailors and ship-hands that had survived a U-boat or plane attack. He said that they would wave at you, at first hoping rescue was possible, then waving out of mutual respect, when it was obvious the ship could not risk dropping their position to pull survivors aboard. "They knew they were going to die but they also knew we were doing what we had to in order to protect the convoy." When they were able to provide a rescue, he said the oil covered sailors, many badly injured, were always so thankful to have been spared a watery grave, only to die a short while later of hypothermia. "It was awful to watch them die in front of us like that," he confided.
Ted was a career lumberman. Although he had worked as a taxi driver, an embalmer’s assistant, a driver for New Method Laundry, in Toronto, it was lumber that most attracted him. He worked with Paul Hellyer (former Canadian Minister of Defence), and his former development interests, in Toronto, side by side his then father-in-law Stanley Jackson (of Jackson Avenue near Old Mill / Jane Street), a well known and respected builder. Stanley was also a concert violinist when not building things.
He worked at many lumber companies in the Hamilton and Toronto area. When he married Merle Jackson, on Valentines Day, 1948, they lived in Toronto for awhile. In fact, I was born there and spent my first waking hours amidst the urban chaos of Toronto the good. My dad wanted a smaller community to raise his son, so our young family soon moved to Burlington, Ontario, circa 1956, where I spent my first decade-plus before moving to Bracebridge, Ontario, where Ed had secured a job with the Shier’s Lumber Company. He would later work at Building Trades Centre and then Northland Building Centre in Parry Sound, before returning to BTC for its final years of operation in the 1990's.
He retired with his wife Merle and spent their final years together, happily at the Bass Rock apartments on Bracebridge’s River Road. Merle predeceased Ed by less than two years. He loved his car, his comfortable abode, his grandkids, (both musicians) Andrew and Robert, and loved to make preserves with his daughter-in-law Suzanne (nee Stripp, of Windermere, and presently Gravenhurst).
Ted Sr., was known in his youth as both an exceptional hockey player and as a fastball pitcher, and the last game I saw him pitch was at Lions Club Park in Burlington, Ontario, in the very early 1960's, and I was truly impressed by his style, speed and successive strike outs. He was a great hockey dad, getting up at three in the morning, circa 1963-65, to take me to my open-air hockey games at the Kiwanis Rink in Burlington, or at the Burlington Arena if ice time prevailed. Imagine that? Our minor hockey league games were midnight shift and we were just grateful to have that opportunity. When we moved to Bracebridge our games were normal times on Saturday mornings and at sensible hours on weeknights. He’d get home from my games and then have to drive to Hamilton to the lumber-yard.. There were times when we couldn’t make the games because the battery of our car would be dead, the result of a frigid January night, and he used to feel horrible if I couldn’t secure a back-up ride to the rink. While I’ve never once had the urge to make a hero figure of my father, because I knew his failings just as he knew mine, I had a stalwart respect for the man who always provided for his family regardless of the compromises he had to make. He and my mother loved to travel, particularly to Florida, and I enjoyed many opportunities those adventures afforded the young and impressionable. They took me to every historic site along the way.
They weren’t wealthy and they made no pretense about their social standing, or tried any measure to make social leaps and bounds, even when they had the opportunity. Merle and Ed were happy to live a minimalist lifestyle, travel a bit, garden on their apartment balcony, and enjoy morning coffee at a McDonalds where they knew staff by their first names. When my mother became seriously ill, and was confined to hospital and then The Pines, in Bracebridge (a retirement facility), Ed never missed his afternoon appointment with his sweetheart of sixty years. He kept this routine up for about five years until Merle’s struggle was finally over. When a nurse from the Pines called our home, early one morning in May, to tell us my mother was taking her last breath, she called, not at my father’s urging, because he had said he would eventually call us himself, but her own conscience that she just couldn’t let the dear, punctual, reliable oldtimer, sit alone in that room with her for too long...... without someone’s embrace to catch his eventual fall into that cold reality of profound loss. He didn’t collapse. He didn’t cry, and he stood by the top of the bed with a most calm and lovely expression, knowing full well Merle’s suffering had ceased, and her heavenly reward had commenced. In part it was because of that "old sailor"ilk, like a sort of spiritual tatoo.......the words his naval instructor impressed upon the new recruits at Cornwallis. "Your mothers aren’t here to protect you now boys!" A sailor who would never admit he couldn’t handle challenges. He did seem relieved to see his grandsons, son and daughter-in-law line up, without saying a word, around her bedside as a sort of unofficial honor guard for a grandmother, mother who had been stoic to the end. Come to think of it, that sailor stoicism has rubbed off on all of us, I just never knew how much.
On the 15th of December, we arrived at the apartment, at his beloved Bass Rock, to find the elder statesman had become very ill over at least 48 hours.....and we found out later that after he had been heard falling in his apartment, kindly neighbors, who had grown concerned about his condition, had been turned away from his door by the man who believed he could fix any ailment with ginger-ale, an aspirin and positive thinking. "I’ve called my son," he said. "He’ll take me to the hospital." Well he never called. And he had no intention of being dragged to the hospital any way. So I called the ambulance and didn’t worry a bit about offending him. As it turns out, even if he had been taken to the hospital earlier, he would not have had a different outcome. I had many good moments with Ed during his recent stay in hospital, and we talked about the good old days.....which as an historian I always hold dearly to my heart.
He loved Bracebridge and never regretted moving here in the spring of 1966. A Cabbagetown boy did well in small town Ontario. He gave his son a hell of a life and our family times were purposely modest, inexpensive, but always good fun. His pride was watching his grandsons Andrew and Robert open their own music store, in the old Muskoka Theatre building in Gravenhurst, and it was his mentorship and knowledge of retail business that gave the boys their earliest knowledge of the trials and tribulations of main street business.
One of his proudest moments, and ours as a family, was when Ed graduated from secondary school several years ago, after working via correspondence to get his final credits for his grade twelve diploma. Having joined the Navy and going overseas, he missed his final years of school, and it wasn’t until his late 70's, that he decided to make the grade once and for all. He was indeed a great source of inspiration and proof beyond doubt, that he had succeeded in a life that had, at times, thrown him many obstacles.
As it was his request, there will be no formal funeral service. Seeing as he always offered donations through us, toward our family’s work to help fund local food banks, we would suggest that in lieu of flowers donations be made instead, to either the Manna Food Bank in Bracebridge, or the Salvation Army Food Bank in Gravenhurst, two wonderful organizations that help our less fortunate citizens.
We would also like to include a special note of thanks to the nurses of South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, who treated him with the utmost respect and kindness during his stay. And we would like to extend heartfelt appreciation to Sherry, the nurse who spent those final moments with Ted Sr., and offered the hand of friendship and compassion to strangers who just happened to pass, like those proverbial ships in the night, everso briefly but profoundly along life’s difficult journey. To all who wished Ed well, and visited to cheer him up, and offered him a kind word in passing, thank you so much for caring.
I will miss my father dearly but as someone who believes in the eternal spirit, and in the ability of those who have crossed over, to communicate with the living, I will continue my conversations with Merle and Ed......whether they want to hear from me or not! That was pretty much the case in life so.......
Thank you for reading this memorial tribute.
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