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CHRAPKO o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2005-10-07 published
BRATANEK, Frances (née STEFANKA)
At Bluewater Health-C.E.E. Site, Petrolia, on Wednesday, October 5, 2005. Frances BRATANEK (née STEFANKA,) 79 years of Lambton Meadowview Villa, Petrolia and formerly of Oil City. Beloved wife of the late Louie (1986). Dear mother of Louis of Petrolia, Anne HANAGAN of Lambeth and the late Stanley (2000.) Dear mother-in-law of Wendy BRATANEK of Petrolia, Larry HANAGAN of Lambeth and Doris BRATANEK of Sarnia. Dear sister of Anne CHRAPKO and her husband Floyd PAYNE of Sarnia and the late Rudy STEFANKA (1972.) Dear grandmother of Sarah, Laura and David BRATANEK, Randy, Reanna, Melanie and Trevor HANAGAN and Brian BRATANEK. Visitors will be received at the Needham-Jay Funeral Home, Petrolia on Friday from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m and on Saturday morning from 8: 45 to 9: 15 a.m. The funeral mass will be celebrated at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, 652 Lakeshore Road, Sarnia, on Saturday, October 8, 2005 at 10: 00 a.m. with Father George CADLEC as celebrant. Entombment in Lakeview Mausoleum. As expression of sympathy, memorial donations may be made by cheque to the C.E.E. Hospital Foundation. Memories and condolences may be sent online to www.needhamjay.com

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CHREPTAK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-08-03 published
CHREPTAK, Maria " Mary"
On Monday, August 1, 2005 at Humber River Regional Hospital, Church site. Born in Hnylcze, Ukraine on May 27, 1923. Beloved wife of the late Ewhen (Eugene) CHREPTAK. Dear mother to Steve and his wife Anna and Jerry and his wife Wendi. Sadly missed by 8 grandchildren. Friends will be received at the Ridley Funeral Home, 3080 Lakeshore Blvd. W. (between Islington and Kipling Aves., at 14th Street, 416-259-3705) on Wednesday from 6: 30 to 9 p.m. Funeral Mass at Christ the Good Shepherd Parish at St. Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church, 182 Sixth Street, Toronto on Thursday, August 4, 2005 at 10 a.m. Panachyda Wednesday at 7 p.m. Interment Saint John's Dixie Cemetery, Mississauga. Messages of condolence may be placed at www. RidleyFuneralHome.com.

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CHREPTIUK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-12-27 published
CHREPTIUK, Antonina
Peacefully at Southlake Regional Health Centre, Newmarket on Saturday, December 24, 2005. Toni CHREPTIUK of R.R.#4, Bradford in her 83rd year. Beloved wife of Nick. Dear mother of Peter. Dear aunt of Natalie (Peter) PATJEWYD. Dear great-aunt of Roman and Alexander. Friends may call at Skwarchuk Funeral Home, 30 Simcoe Rd., Bradford (1-800-209-4803), for visitation on Tuesday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Prayer service will be held in the Lathangue Chapel on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 at 11 a.m. Panachida on Tuesday at 7 p.m. Interment Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, Bradford.

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CHRÉTIEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-01-19 published
Paul Antonio METIVIER
By Richard OSBORN, Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - Page A20
Soldier, map maker. Born July 6, 1900, in Montreal. Died December 23, 2004, peacefully in his sleep in Ottawa, aged 104.
In March of 1917, at the age of 16, my grandfather lied about his age and volunteered to go to war. He served in England, Belgium and France with the 4th Division Ammunition Column before his true age was discovered and he was brought home in October 1918. After returning from the war, Paul was hired in the map-making division of the Department of the Interior in Ottawa, a post from which he retired 45 years later as the chief of reproduction, a title of great amusement to his large family. In 1921, he proposed to Flore TOUPIN, literally the girl from next door in Montreal whom he'd known since he was 10 years old. They married in 1921 and had celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary before she passed away in 1993 at 92. Together Flore and Paul had five children: Roland, Jean-Paul, Jeanne, Pierre and Monique. The two lived their entire married lives in the Ottawa region.
After Flore's passing in 1993, Paul's youngest daughter Monique made contact with Veterans' Affairs and mentioned her father who was a Great War veteran. Bilingual, gracious, with a keen sense of humour, Paul quickly became a media favourite and was a regular in print and on television and radio. Until he became an official veterans' representative, all his stories of the war had been humorous, self-deprecating and upbeat. It is only in recent years that we learned of the horrors he had experienced: rivers of blood in the streets, soldiers blown apart by shells, lice and rats in the trenches.
Paul went to Vimy Ridge as part of a Veterans Affairs pilgrimage to France in 1998, on the 80th anniversary of the war's end, where he received the French Legion of Honour. He spoke in front of tens of thousands there and at numerous Ottawa Remembrance Day ceremonies. Paul also accompanied Canada's unknown soldier on his return from France to Canada in 2000. This ceremony had particular significance for Paul as his oldest son Roland, an Royal Canadian Air Force tail gunner in the Second World War, went missing on a mission off the coast of Spain, his body never recovered.
During various events and ceremonies, Paul took every opportunity to offer various dignitaries his personal views on the issues of the day. To then-Prime Minister Jean CHRÉTIEN he stated, "I think you're doing the right thing in not going to Iraq," and to Governor-General Adrienne CLARKSON (one of his favourites,) "You know, whenever any article criticizes you, I don't pay it any attention. You're doing a wonderful job." With these and other dignitaries, including the Queen (whom he reminded that he was the same age as her mother; we joked later maybe he had been looking to be set up), his forthright manner and kind words always provoked warm reactions.
My own memories of my grandfather are of a loving, doting Grandpapa one who would play songs for me (he could play any song on the piano just by hearing it once), make me our favourite peanut butter and banana sandwiches; who taught me to swim on trips to Florida and in his Ottawa pool; who shared and passed along lifelong interests in science and technology (I remember him explaining Stephen Hawking's theories to me when he was in his 90s).
The joy he had when surrounded by his family was remarkable. I remember him saying to me once, very quietly, with his hands on mine: "Always love and treasure your family. There is absolutely nothing more important for a man to do."
Of his many accolades, one of the most touching for Paul was receiving a standing ovation when introduced in the House of Commons. He said afterward, "I never thought to receive such an honour. What did I do to deserve that?"
Richard is Paul METIVIER's grand_son.

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CHRÉTIEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-04-02 published
Milton HARRIS, Chief Executive Officer and Philanthropist: 1927-2005
son of a scrap-metal dealer, he used his genius for business to build a $600-million company, writes Sandra MARTIN. A family man who resolved to keep his children out of the family business for the sake of the family, he supported such varied causes as primate research and the hunt for war criminals
By Sandra MARTIN, Saturday, April 2, 2005, Page S9
Milt HARRIS's business acumen was legendary, but it was only a small part of the man. A self-made entrepreneur who took his family's scrap-metal business and turned it into a hugely successful reinforced-steel business, he was also a crusader, a civil libertarian, and a quiet but generous philanthropist to a range of causes, including the Young Men's Christian Association, opera, First Nations, and especially primate research and human cognitive evolution.
Short, wiry and athletic, Mr. HARRIS hated formality and was rarely seen in a shirt and tie. As a young man, he learned to box and to fly a single-engine plane -- until good sense and his wife persuaded him to ground his aircraft. In recent years, he was a committed cyclist, often riding close to 30 kilometres a day through the ravines of Toronto. Although he couldn't read music, he took up the organ a dozen years ago and learned to play toccatas, fugues and sonatas.
Milton HARRIS was born in Detroit in 1927, one of two sons of Sam and Jenny HARRIS. The family moved to London when Milt was a few months old. His childhood was troubled because his mother was sickly and his father tended to favour Milt's brother, Liebert. Fortunately, the young boy had affectionate and supportive aunts and uncles and, instead of being embittered by his upbringing, he developed empathy and compassion for others.
In a eulogy for Mr. HARRIS, his son, David, attributed his father's affinity for the oppressed and dispossessed to those early struggles. "I think that Milt built his life in opposition and reaction to the parenting he received and... this explains... his most prominent character trait: He was a fighter, a go-getter, a man of action."
Mr. HARRIS grew up in the scrap-metal business, which had been in the family since before the turn of the century. At 13, he was driving a truck, and working part-time for his father, his grandfather and his uncle. The business went through good times and bad -- his father lost a fortune during the Depression and made most of it back early in the Second World War.
There was certainly enough money to send Milt to St. George's School and Central Collegiate Institute in London and to Camp Winnebago in Ontario's Muskoka region for at least one summer. That's where Milt met Max MILSTONE in 1943, the year he turned 16. The two boys became lifelong Friends, a connection that was strengthened at the University of Toronto because they both belonged to the Beta Sigma Rho fraternity. "He was the sharpest man I ever knew. He had a mind like a steel trap and he could remember everything," Mr. MILSTONE said this week.
"He was the best friend I ever had," he said. "A friend is somebody who can be truly happy when something good happens to you, and not with any jealousy or competition, but he also felt my pain."
It was also at the University of Toronto that Mr. HARRIS met his wife, Ethel. They knew each other socially, but they really connected one rainy evening in 1948 when they were both studying for exams in the reference library (now the University of Toronto Bookstore on College Street). "Milt walked me home and he told me later that he knew then that he was in love with me," Mrs. HARRIS said this week. They were engaged that September and married a year later, a partnership that lasted more than 55 years. She is credited with expanding his interests in the arts and encouraging his fascination with primates and human evolution.
Milt HARRIS wanted to become a lawyer after graduating with a commerce degree in 1949, but his father suffered a heart attack, and so the young couple moved to London and Mr. HARRIS took over the day-to-day running of the family business. In 1954, he bought out his grandfather or, more accurately, assumed the company's liabilities. By then, he had a new vision for the business. He had bought a load of reinforcing steel, detritus from the construction of the Welland Canal, and realized that he could cut, bend and resell it, rather than throwing it onto the scrap heap. "That was the beginning of the rebar business," said nephew John HARRIS, who has succeeded Milt HARRIS as Chief Executive Officer and chairman of Harris Steel.
Focused and imaginative, Milt HARRIS was able to envisage the future of the steel industry and to take advantage of it to manufacture a product that could be used to reinforce concrete in construction projects. In the mid-1960s, he began branching out into other businesses, including Laurel Steel, and took his company public in 1967. Today, Harris Steel Group is a leading North American steel fabricator and processor with 34 facilities in Canada and the U.S. and annual sales in excess of $600-million.
Harris Steel is not a family business in the usual sense. Unlike many self-made entrepreneurs, Mr. HARRIS discouraged his children (Judith, Naomi and David) from joining the company. There was a lot of business-related conflict within his family over the generations, according to John HARRIS, and he didn't want to inflict that on his own children.
The same stricture seemed to hold for John HARRIS. "He was more than an uncle to me, he was an idol," he said, explaining that his parents had divorced when he was very young and Uncle Milt and Aunt Ethel had stepped into the emotional gap. After John graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1974 from Trent University, he was thinking of taking a year off before going to law school. At a party, his aunt "dragged me over by the ear" to his uncle and said, "Why don't you give Johnny a job for a year."
At the end of his stint, John wanted to stay with the company. "I was working as an ironworker out in the field. The hours were great, I had all the overtime I wanted and huge money." His uncle listened, wrote the name of his biggest competitor on a piece of paper, gave it to his nephew and said: "Phone him. Maybe he'll give you a job, because if you don't go back to school, I'm firing you."
John got the message. He went to University of Toronto for an M.B.A., continued to work for his uncle part-time for two years and went back to the firm in the spring of 1977. He's been there ever since.
When asked why his uncle was so successful at founding and growing a business, John HARRIS said: "It was really a matter of culture." Long before "empowering people" became business buzz words, his uncle always saw beyond the exterior and saw the heart and intelligence workers brought to their jobs. "He treated them like real people, whether they were labourers or truck drivers or rocket scientists and let them try to do their best."
Milt HARRIS had a genius for business. "He just wanted to bring his mind and energy to the game every day," said his nephew, adding that he "had a tremendous mental toughness." He brought that toughness not only to his own business, but also as a director of other companies, including Air Canada and Canadair.
In the early 1980s, he became involved in the Canadian Jewish Congress, serving on its war-crimes committee and as president from 1983 to 1986. After reading None Is Too Many, by Irving Abella and Harold Troper, their landmark exposé of anti-Semitism in Canada, he invited Mr. Abella to speak to the Canadian Jewish Congress. "He was a dynamo -- single-minded, generous, energetic and gutsy," said Mr. Abella. "He knew what he wanted to do and how to do it."
What he wanted was to find war criminals who had found refuge in Canada. "Although he had no relatives that he knew of who had died in the Holocaust and he'd had a pretty comfortable life in Canada, he was angry that Canada had allowed people who have committed such horrific crimes into this country, allowed them to stay and made no pretense at prosecution," said Mr. Abella. "His sense of justice and his sense of the values this country represents were assaulted."
At the time, Jim PETERSON, now Minister of International Trade in Paul MARTIN's cabinet, was parliamentary secretary to then justice minister Jean CHRÉTIEN. Mr. PETERSON worked closely with Mr. HARRIS, arranging for him to meet senior Justice Department officials. "He did as much, or more, as anybody in Canada to advance the cause of bringing war criminals to justice."
In her eulogy, Mrs. HARRIS described her husband as someone who was "never afraid to stand alone for what he believed, never afraid to fight for the underprivileged and the scapegoated or against any violation of human rights." As Canadian Jewish Congress president, for example, he supported the right of Palestinians to a homeland. Later, he campaigned on behalf of Japanese Canadians seeking redress for being interned and having their homes and assets confiscated during the Second World War. "He took on causes that were his and not necessarily the community's," said Mr. Abella, "so he was often fighting solitary battles, but the right ones."
A big supporter of the Liberal Party, he was the campaign manager when Clarence PETERSON (father of former Ontario premier David PETERSON) ran against John ROBARTS in the 1963 Ontario election. In that pre-cellphone era, Mr. HARRIS invented a concept called home centres for election days. The idea was to place election workers away from headquarters in houses close to the polls, recalled Jim PETERSON, Clarence's son. This practice was later adopted by the party on a much wider scale.
Mr. HARRIS never ran for office himself, but he publicly denounced the Liberal Party for its anti-free-trade stand against the U.S. in the 1988 federal election. "He phoned me and said he could not, in principle, support a party that had always supported free trade and wouldn't in these circumstances," said Jim PETERSON. "When we later endorsed free trade, he came back to us," adding: "He was right."
About five years ago, Mr. HARRIS phoned York University president Lorna MARSDEN, an acquaintance from the Liberal Party and their days sitting on the board of Air Canada, and invited her to talk to him about the university's research projects. One of the qualities Dr. MARSDEN always appreciated about Mr. HARRIS was his low-key style. "He had conversations, he didn't lecture you," she said.
Since that telephone conversation, he quietly financed scholarships for francophone students to study at the university's bilingual Glendon campus. He also become heavily involved in funding research into brain development in humans, an outgrowth of his long-time interest in and support of anthropologist Jane Goodall's work with primates.
"His gifts were such involved philanthropy. He wanted to be there and talk to the people," said Ms. MARSDEN. " That's an incredible gift to a faculty member to have somebody who is interested in their research, understands their research and supports it."
The energetic and fit Mr. HARRIS was complaining of a stomach ache before he and his wife headed to their Florida home a month ago. He became progressively sicker and was diagnosed three weeks ago with a rare and aggressive form of abdominal cancer. His family gathered around him, making the last week of his life a very emotional time. He loved his family and he made sure each of them knew it, said Mrs. HARRIS.
Milton HARRIS was born in Detroit on July 26, 1927. He died on March 26 of cancer. He was 77. He is survived by his wife, Ethel, his children Judith, Naomi and David, his nephew John, his cousin Marcia and their families.

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CHRÉTIEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-05-17 published
Evelyn HORNE, Civil Servant and Volunteer: 1907-2005
Ottawa secretary worked for Mackenzie KING and was acquainted with a succession of prime ministers. From her vantage point at the centre of power, she saw everything and knew everyone
By Buzz BOURDON, Special to the Globe and Mail, Tuesday, May 17, 2005 Page S9
Ottawa -- Everyone came to see Evelyn HORNE to pick her brains on people and policy, including Jean CHRÉTIEN. She spent 30 years at the centre of political power. Starting with Mackenzie KING, Miss HORNE knew five prime ministers in a row, including Louis SSAINTURENT, John DIEFENBAKER, Lester PEARSON and Pierre TRUDEAU.
From 1941 to 1973, Miss HORNE perched just off centre stage as a perceptive spectator of some of the most tumultuous events in recent Canadian history -- from the anxious years of the Second World War to the new welfare state that came later. Surrounded by statesmen, politicians, governors-general and civil servants, Miss HORNE knew practically all of them, many on a first-name basis.
"She told me that she knew CHRÉTIEN when he was a young pup who came and sat on the corner of her desk and talked politics," said her nephew, Robert PIKE of Ottawa.
Other Ottawa mandarins who valued Miss HORNE for her administrative skills during the '40s and '50s included Prime Minister Paul MARTIN's father, Paul MARTIN Sr., Jack PICKERSGILL and C.D. HOWE.
For all that, Miss HORNE never forgot the years she spent working for Mackenzie KING. Getting that job was a "case of being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people though I would be selling myself short if I didn't admit that I had some native intelligence and was willing to go the second mile into overtime when it was necessary," she said in 1997.
Miss HORNE first attracted Mr. King's attention when, as a provincial civil servant, she was secretary of the committee organizing the Nova Scotia segment of the 1939 visit to Canada of King George Virgin Islands and Queen Elizabeth.
"When Mr. KING asked to meet me during his tour of East Coast defences in the fall of 1940, I knew I was to be interviewed for a job. And what an interview! Presumably, someone had told him that I could write a fairly good letter; he asked me nothing about my work capabilities," said Miss HORNE.
Instead, Mr. KING quizzed her about the architectural features of the room they were sitting in at Nova Scotia's Province House, Canada's oldest seat of government. "[It was] the most perfect example of Adam architecture in North America. He asked me to explain the symbolism of the bas-relief around the fireplace and recount the history behind the life-size portraits of kings and queens that adorned the walls," she said.
Fortunately, Miss HORNE knew all the answers and found herself in Ottawa in January of 1941. "My first reaction was disappointment. I found the city dull and boring -- after Halifax. There was no immediate awareness that there was a war on. And I was very disappointed in [my new] job. I was assigned to do the 'routine correspondence.' "
It was so simple and repetitive, she was "bored to tears. When I could stand it no longer, I complained to the boss -- not Mr. KING, of course, but [to his] principal secretary. I said I wanted to go back home. The work was too easy -- there was no challenge I didn't have enough to do. As a result, I was given the responsibility for the whole of the Prime Minister's correspondence."
That task was not without its lighter moments, Miss HORNE told her niece, Frances PIKE. " One day, she reached an envelope addressed 'To the Biggest Prick in Canada.' There was nothing inside except an unused condom. 'Mr. PICKERSGILL,' she said, 'what do I do with this'? He said, 'Miss HORNE, I'll take care of it. As far as the contents are concerned, you may do with it what you will.'"
Although Miss HORNE rarely saw Mr. KING during the war, the Prime Minister's Office "was an exciting place to be, right at the heart of government, during those increasingly intense years of war. There were so many pressing concerns, and all kinds of people wrote to the Prime Minister about all kinds of problems. I had to find the answers, or find the people who could.
"I learned so much, not only about government, but also about the people of this country, who showed so much courage, stoicism, and forbearance in the face of all the tragedy and the hardships that affected us all during those terrible years."
In 1946, Miss HORNE moved from the East Block to Laurier House, Mr. KING's home, where she handled his personal correspondence and did some speechwriting. "I became acquainted with [him] as a person, and I liked him."
In 1950, Miss HORNE struck an early blow for women's rights after she went to work for the assistant private secretary to Robert WINTERS, then minister of reconstruction and supply. Despite all her experience, Mr. WINTERS "wouldn't take her on trips because he thought that was unseemly. So he hired a man, whom she had to train. He was hopeless, but making more money than her," said Mr. PIKE, the nephew.
When Miss HORNE complained to her boss that she should be earning as much as the new man, he retorted that he saw no reason for a raise -- she was making excellent money "for a woman."
"So she packed up and went home," said Mr. PIKE. " Then she called Jack PICKERSGILL, who told her to sit tight for a few days and he'd see what he could do. Very soon after, she went to work for Ellen FAIRCLOUGH at the Department of Citizenship and Immigration."
Miss HORNE finished her career with the federal government in 1973 when she retired from the National Film Board. Awarded the Coronation Medal in 1953 and the Centennial Medal in 1967, she received a Governor-General's Caring Canadian Award in 2004 for her years spent as a volunteer.
Miss HORNE first started volunteering during the First World War, when she knitted scarves for the troops. "I distinctly remember the outbreak of the war in 1914, and I recall many occasions when I went to the train station in Truro with my mother to meet the troop trains to present gifts of food and cigarettes and warm knitted items."
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Miss HORNE's volunteering became a "way of life. I worked as a check-girl for the weekly dances at the famous North End Services Canteen, and playing the odd game of snooker with the boys who didn't feel like dancing. Many times, I would best serve by lending a sympathetic ear or looking at pictures of sweethearts or wives and children back home."
Life in Halifax during the war was grim, she recounted. "The most vulnerable spot in all of Canada, the city was actually at war and everyone pitched in to help. I can laughingly say that my war work was entertaining and being entertained by the officers of the great battleships that anchored in Halifax harbour. We had a lively social life.
"But the shadow of war was always close at hand; and more than once, men I had danced with one night were brought back two days later, burned beyond recognition when their ship was torpedoed by German U-boats just beyond the harbour headlands. Volunteer visits to Camp Hill, the [military] hospital, were a high priority for me at that time."
Evelyn Annie Ethel HORNE was born on February 23, 1907, in Truro, Nova Scotia She died of heart failure on March 21, 2005, in Ottawa. She was 98. She leaves her niece, Frances; nephews Robert, David, Peter and Donald; 16 great-nieces; and 11 great-great-nieces and nephews.

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CHRÉTIEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-07-15 published
Harold RENOUF, Ottawa Mandarin: 1917-2005
Plucked from a successful Halifax accounting firm by Pierre Trudeau, he tackled inflation with the Anti-Inflation Board and the oil industry through the National Energy Program, then made VIA's trains run on time
By F.F. LANGAN, Special to The Globe and Mail, Friday, July 15, 2005, Page S7
Harold RENOUF was an accountant and company director from Halifax who left corporate life at the peak of his career for a stint in public service and ended up running two of the most controversial agencies of the Trudeau era: the Anti-Inflation Board and the Petroleum Monitoring Agency.
Rising prices and wages were a hot topic of the 1970s. One of the critics of the government at the time was Mr. RENOUF, then president of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants.
In the federal election of 1974, Tory leader Robert Stanfield ran on a platform of bringing in wage-and-price controls to control inflation. The prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, mocked him with the throwaway line: "Zap, you're frozen."
It was one of the issues that won Mr. Trudeau a majority government. But, by the following year, inflation was far from frozen. It was running at an annual rate of 10.6 per cent. Mr. Trudeau changed his mind and introduced wage-and-price controls in the fall of At the time, the Anti-Inflation Board was headed by Jean Luc Pepin, a defeated Liberal candidate and former cabinet minister. Mr. Trudeau wanted to make a change, but there was a matter of regional representation to be considered. In the end, the man the prime minister wanted was from Atlantic Canada. He was Harold RENOUF, an accountant with Liberal Party connections who had criticized government policy on inflation.
"When Trudeau called him on Thanksgiving weekend of 1975, Dad said to us: 'I guess I've got to put my energy where my mouth is.' And he accepted," said Janet RENOUF, his daughter. He retired as chairman of H.R. Doane, the accounting firm where he had worked since 1938, and moved to Ottawa.
When Mr. Pepin left as head of the Anti-Inflation Board, Mr. RENOUF took over as its second chairman. There was much debate at the time whether the government's anti-inflation policies had any effect or whether the natural slowdown of the economy would have produced the same results.
The policy was not popular. Business did not like controls on its prices and profits, and unions didn't like caps on pay increases. Stewart Cooke, head of the United Steelworkers union, said all the controls did was bring in a recession.
Mr. RENOUF defended the Anti-Inflation Board's policies, pointing out that the average wage increase in 1975 was 21 per cent but, by early 1978, pay hikes were down to 7.5 per cent. And furthermore, the Anti-Inflation Board had rolled back $370-million in corporate dividends. The Liberal government gradually wound down the Anti-Inflation Board. In 1978, 27 months after they were brought in, the controls were lifted. Then, in March of 1979, the finance minister, Jean CHRÉTIEN, renamed the body the National Commission on Inflation. Mr. RENOUF was made chairman of the new organization, but, by then, its powers were sharply reduced.
The inflation watchdog soon died altogether when the government switched its attentions to a new bugbear: high oil prices. Mr. RENOUF was at the forefront of that policy, too, and, in 1980, was named head of the Petroleum Monitoring Agency. Its job was to collect information on the oil and gas industry, including measuring what percentage of it was Canadian owned.
The agency was the operating arm of the government's national energy program, brought in by energy minister Marc Lalonde. That policy created an even more virulent reaction from the public than had wage-and-price controls. In Western Canada, it was detested. Later, the National Energy Program would be blamed for reducing Alberta's share of the overall Canadian economy from 14 per cent to a little more than 10 per cent, though the plummeting price of oil -- from $40 (U.S.) in 1980 to $11 in 1986 -- was also responsible.
A diminutive man, Mr. RENOUF was a capitalist at heart, and the criticism of his fellow business leaders upset him. But he was also a man who, once on a mission, did what he set out to do. In this case, it was to increase Canadian ownership in the oil and gas industry.
"He was shocked at the reaction [in Western Canada] and he felt badly about it," said Ms. RENOUF. " But he had a sense of doing what was right for the greater good."
Mr. RENOUF found out about the oil industry's reaction early on. In October of 1980, he went to Calgary to speak to certain business executives who looked on the government's policies as a form of nationalization. The accountant from Halifax tried to reassure them.
"I cannot state that we will always agree with industry on substantive matters, but I can promise co-operation, independence in our actions and attitudes," Mr. RENOUF told that skeptical Alberta audience. "Although I cannot be out front of my minister on the substance of Canadianization programs, it should be obvious that an accurate assessment of ownership levels will be essential."
His audience did not find that obvious at all, and never came round to Ottawa's way of thinking on energy.
After the energy posting, his last major government job was in Montreal as chairman of Via Rail. There, he used to say he was proudest of a small achievement, saving the murals by famous Canadian artists painted on the inner walls of some long-distance rail cars. When he and the president of Via heard they were going to be destroyed, they moved quickly to preserve them.
His family joked that he kept trying to retire, and did so five times before finally returning to Halifax and his beloved cottage at Pictou Landing.
Harold RENOUF was the son of a sea captain, a master mariner named John RENOUF, who gave him a lifelong love of boats and the ocean. He was born in Sandy Point, a tiny community on Newfoundland's southwest coast that no longer exists but whose dunes and salt marshes remain such a favourite location for migrating birds that there is now a movement to turn it into a nature preserve.
There was a lot of French in his background. His mother's maiden name was LEROUX, and RENOUF was originally a French name. The family traces its lineage to Jersey, the largest of Britain's Channel Islands off the French coast. Young Harold's line of the RENOUF family left Newfoundland around 1920 and moved to Halifax. He later studied commerce at Dalhousie University.
In 1938, he joined the accounting firm of H.R. Doane and became a partner in 1942. He was chairman of the firm from 1967 to 1975, when he left for the Anti-Inflation Board. Even before then, he had been involved with government commissions and studies, among them the royal commission on gasoline and diesel pricing in Nova Scotia and the royal commission on the milk industry. The latter was partly responsible for setting up a marketing-board system for dairy farmers in Canada.
Mr. RENOUF was on the board of a number of private companies, including two British insurance firms. An anglophile, Mr. RENOUF enjoyed travelling to directors' meetings in London. A devoted family man, he often extended his visits to private vacations (a scrupulous number cruncher, he always paid his own way) in which he brought along his wife or met some of his children already in London.
When they were growing up, he tried to introduce his children to as much theatre and music as possible. The family would travel to Boston, New York City and Stratford for museums, theatre and plays. At home, he funded a trust to endow part of the New Glasgow Music Festival, an annual event to encourage young musicians from northern Nova Scotia. The winner of the festival receives a silver bowl and a cash prize from the Rose Bowl Trust funded by Mr. RENOUF.
Mr. RENOUF liked to fish for trout on Lawlor's Lake in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, and read mysteries and adventures -- in particular, the swashbuckling sea stories of Patrick O'Brian.
In 1979, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada and, in 1981, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Dalhousie.
Harold Augustus RENOUF was born on June 15, 1917, in Sandy Point, Newfoundland. He died in Halifax on July 4, 2005, after suffering a heart attack. He is survived by his wife, Dorothy, and his four children, Janet, Ann, Robert and Susan. A memorial service is planned for Monday at St. Andrew's United Church in Halifax.

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CHRÉTIEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-08-19 published
Carmen PROVENZANO, Lawyer And Politician 1942-2005
The former member of Parliament from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and son of a steelmaker fought to save Algoma Steel when others thought it a lost cause
By Allison LAWLOR, Special to The Globe and Mail, Friday, August 19, 2005, Page S7
He was a hard-working Liberal member of Parliament from Northern Ontario who listened to his electorate. He openly opposed gay marriage long before it became a hot-button issue and, as the son of a steelmaker, struggled mightily to save Algoma Steel from financial oblivion. "I'm going to reflect the wishes of my community," Carmen PROVENZANO once told a reporter. "I'm obligated to handle it that way."
The native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, was one of the minority Liberal members of Parliament who voted against his party's same-sex-marriage bill. In 1999, he presented a petition to the House of Commons signed by 250 constituents who opposed the initiative.
"I have people expressing their opinions to me in quite forceful ways," he said. "They're telling me they're never going to vote for me again because of what my government is doing."
At the time, a neighbour and long-time party member had told the member of Parliament that "your government is ruining society" and warned that he wouldn't put up a Liberal lawn sign in the next election.
Despite taking a minority stance within his party, Mr. PROVENZANO always believed he had done the right thing. "He often said he would vote the same way again," said Liberal member of Parliament Joe COMUZZI.
Mr. PROVENZANO served as Sault Ste. Marie's member of Parliament from 1997 to 2004, when he lost his seat in a close race to New Democrat Tony MARTIN. It would have been a third term for the popular parliamentarian, whose loss may have been explained by his opponent's name. In fact, during last year's campaign, he chose not to hammer Team Martin signs into the front lawns of his supporters. It's not that he wanted to distance himself from Prime Minister Paul Martin, but rather from Tony MARTIN, a former member of provincial parliament who had lost his seat in the 2003 Ontario election.
"You know I would be papering the city with my opponent's name," Mr. PROVENZANO said, if he were to put up Team Martin signs. "I want to get my own name out there."
In the end, Sault Ste. Marie remained true to character as a swing riding, and Mr. PROVENZANO was defeated. But he didn't allow himself to wallow in misery; he set his sights on running for the Liberal Party again in the next federal election.
"He had a great respect for Sault Ste. Marie and its people," said Mr. COMUZZI, who represents the Northern Ontario riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North.
Described as modest and unassuming, Mr. PROVENZANO was also known for his tenacity.
"We argued a lot," said Mr. COMUZZI, who, as minister of state responsible for the federal economic development initiative for Northern Ontario, received daily calls from his colleague. "He was incessant with his requests."
Mr. COMUZZI recalled Mr. PROVENZANO saying: 'Look, if you get this done for me, I won't ask you for anything else.' " Despite the promise, he'd come knocking again a couple of weeks later. "He was so persistent. If he didn't get a good ear, he would eventually end up in the Prime Minister's office."
Paul MARTIN called Mr. PROVENZANO a man who upheld the best in parliamentary tradition.
"His aim was to serve the best he could the needs of his community and constituents," he said in a statement. "Mr. PROVENZANO was proud to be a member of Parliament, serving on a number of parliamentary committees and as parliamentary secretary to the minister of veterans affairs. He was proud, too, to be the son of a steelworker and a native of Sault Ste. Marie, and immensely proud of his family."
Carmen PROVENZANO was the son of Frank and Norma PROVENZANO. A second-generation Italian Canadian, his grandparents had settled in Sault Ste. Marie, which was once seen as a haven for Italian immigrants. Proud of his cultural heritage, he was also proud to say he was the son of a steelmaker. His father worked for Algoma Steel and, as a student, Mr. PROVENZANO would join him during the summers to work at the plant.
Having grown up in Sault Ste. Marie, he appreciated the company's economic importance. When Algoma teetered on collapse in April of 2001 and sought protection from its creditors, he understood the devastation that would ensue in the city and worked hard to get Algoma back on its feet. He is credited with playing a major role in the steel plant's restructuring and in securing $50-million in loan guarantees from the federal government to ensure its viability. He badgered Jean CHRÉTIEN until he got the loan secured, said Ron IRWIN, former Indian affairs minister. "At that time, no one had any hopes for Algoma."
Algoma weathered the storms, emerged from creditor protection in early 2002 and today employs 3,000 people.
As it happens, it was Mr. IRWIN, former member of Parliament for Sault Ste. Marie, who encouraged Mr. PROVENZANO to run for office. In 1997, he decided to retire from federal politics and saw in Mr. PROVENZANO a "solid family man" who would represent the city well. While politics had been a lifelong dream, Mr. PROVENZANO delayed his entry because he didn't want to be far away from his family and four young children.
"His family came first," said Mr. IRWIN. "And his Friends were a close second."
At the heart and soul of Mr. PROVENZANO's family was his wife, Ada. Chance had brought them together. It was at a community parade in Sault Ste. Marie that Mr. PROVENZANO had first spotted her and later said he knew immediately that she would be his wife. "It was love at first sight," said son Lucas PROVENZANO.
After a courtship of two years, the couple married in 1966 and, over the years, filled their home with children, extended family and Friends. It wasn't uncommon to find Mr. PROVENZANO sitting down at 11 p.m. to a meal with a dozen people. "His family was an extended family. It was the community," said son Frank PROVENZANO.
One of the ways he helped others in the community was by often opting out of flying home from Ottawa on weekends and making the 10-hour drive, instead. There always seemed to be someone who needed a ride; his driving companions were often university students on their way home.
Mr. PROVENZANO attended the University of Windsor, followed by law school at Queen's University in Kingston. He spent the early years of his career, from 1972 to 1980, as an assistant solicitor for the city of Sault Ste. Marie. Later, he had a private practice with his brother Frank and was an owner of Maplewood Golf Course. Over the years, he also served on a number of local charities and boards and as a school board trustee. Attend any sporting event in the city and you were likely to see him there, too. "My father was involved in every aspect of this community," said Lucas PROVENZANO.
His pride in his ancestry was never more evident than when he took part in a federal trade mission to Italy in the late 1990s. Having the opportunity to travel as an member of Parliament to the country his grandparents had left as poor immigrants and to meet the Pope and Italian parliamentarians struck a deep cord within him. "He was very proud of how far his family had come in three generations," Mr. IRWIN said.
Carmen PROVENZANO was born on February 3, 1942, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario He died at home in Sault Ste. Marie on July 27, 2005, after suffering a heart attack. He is survived by his siblings Frank, Marlene and Nancy and by his wife, Ada, and children Frank, Lucas, Jana and Mark. Tomorrow, in Hockley Valley, Ontario, Mark is to marry Paula AMAEIO, of Tottingham, Ontario, just as his father would have wanted.

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CHRÉTIEN o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-06-27 published
George BANCROFT, 82: Mentor and role model
George BANCROFT, 82, opened doors for black students
Former University of Toronto prof fought for diversity in the workforce
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary Writer
A commissioner with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, executive director and senior policy adviser to the minister of multiculturalism and citizenship in charge of 125 staff and a $16 million budget, one of the seven-person team who wrote the groundbreaking Hall-Dennis report on Ontario's education, professor emeritus for scholarship at the University of Toronto, author, editor and contributor to a dozen papers and books, chair of umpteen educational community groups and professional organizations.
That's not all.
Hundreds of students credit George BANCROFT for their post-graduate degrees in education.
Claire ALLEYNE, registrar at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, said he was a "stalwart" in the black community, a dignified, old-school role model for the many he mentored.
"He was a fighter, but he did it by putting forth an educated, well-reasoned argument," she said.
Poet and University of Toronto professor George Elliott CLARKE hailed BANCROFT as one of a generation of black intellectuals whose work set high standards and opened doors for generations of black academics.
"These were the forebearers, the torch bearers, the door openers," he said. "We owe people like George BANCROFT a great debt."
BANCROFT was also the founder of the Harry Gairey scholarship awards (which has now been folded into the Harry Jerome Awards for outstanding black youth), one of the founders and a board member of Caribana as well as the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews. He was also a popular keynote speaker known for telling it like it is, not as people, even those listening, wanted it to be.
The latter trait is why his family believes he never received some of the appointments they think he should have. Plaques and honours from Indo-Canadian organizations, First Nations and Chinese-Canadian groups line the walls of his North York home, yet when he died May 16, at 82, BANCROFT had not received an Order of Canada nor a Senate seat, each of which his admirers had lobbied for on his behalf.
"He would have liked that," said his wife, Carole. "George was always passionate about seeing more blacks in stronger positions."
At university convocations, he would scan the crowd of graduates for black faces. He believed, fervently, that education would empower and promote young blacks within Canadian society.
"Where are they?" he would say to Carole. "They should stop dancing and start studying."
Friends have told her that while her husband was not afraid "to speak the truth to the powerful," he could also be quite acerbic about what he called the "race-relations industry."
In a 1984 edition of Graduate, University of Toronto's alumni magazine, he wrote of his decision to leave his tenured professorship and campus for "a rather palatial office with Her Majesty's Government of Ontario."
"I am a member of what is euphemistically called the visible minorities -- a wretched term," BANCROFT wrote. "As a result of increasing demand for significant rather than token recognition of minorities and to refute, 'you people do not apply,' Friends prevailed upon me to do so. I do not pretend reluctance. I wanted to enter what seemed to me to be the world of practical affairs."
But he missed his academic freedom and after three years he returned to U of T.
Even in the 1970s and 1980s, when multiculturalism policies were sweeping the country, BANCROFT often challenged what he saw as examples of stereotypical thinking. At one dinner attended by influential policy- makers and politicians, he ruffled feathers when he wanted to know why an Italian-Canadian couldn't be considered for the High Commission in Britain, as an example, instead of Italy.
"His main focus was how multiculturalism worked," said his son, George Jr., a 23-year-old student at the University of Toronto. "People shouldn't stay in their own groups all the time."
Upon learning of the appointment of Adrienne CLARKSON as Governor General, he personally wrote Jean CHRÉTIEN, prime minister at the time, expressing disappointment the post had not gone to a native Canadian.
In 1989, he was one of two commissioners of the Ontario Human Rights Commission calling for an investigation into the organization about its hiring practices after it became known that the head, Raj ANAND, had failed to hire any visible minorities for seven senior posts.
"I question why not a single non-white person was hired for the seven positions, especially considering the quality of some of the non-white candidates who applied," he told the Star in an article that noted that BANCROFT had "broken ranks" by speaking out.
BANCROFT called for an investigation of the matter. "The survival of the commission is at risk... (and) no taint can be attached," he said at the time.
BANCROFT came to Canada from his native Guyana in 1948.
"He was a young gentleman in white shoes, white suit, white panama hat and flamboyant ties who used purple ink," according to his older brother, Clarence, who said BANCROFT would have become president of the University of Guyana had he not followed so many of his countrymen to Montreal to study at McGill University.
He worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railways to finance that education, shining shoes, hauling luggage and learning how to hold his hand, palm up, close to his body, to receive the discreet tip.
"He talked to me about the emotions of that time. He was angry but never bitter," his son said.
Father also told son that many of the men with whom he worked became significant in their own right. Legendary head porter Harry GAIREY encouraged him to stay in school and BANCROFT never forgot. They were Friends until GAIREY died in 1993 when he was BANCROFT graduated from McGill with degrees in French and English, and moved to Toronto where he received his Master's degree and his PhD in educational theory. He taught at Forest Hill Junior High and Forest Hill Collegiate Institute for a decade -- although he had an unhappy work relationship with a principal there who never acknowledged his doctorate.
In 1967, he got a job in the U.S. at the faculty of education at New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson University but returned to Canada in 1969 to teach at U of T's faculty of education.
"He wanted to come back to Canada because it was less discriminatory although I hate that word -- than the U.S. and had an atmosphere in which he could make a better contribution," said Clarence, who is a retired school superintendent and church minister. George BANCROFT met his wife in 1976 at a Chopin black tie affair at Casa Loma.
She was a music teacher and graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Music, and he was a music lover who was studying the saxophone and piano, and less successfully, the violin. He was 60 when their son was born. He was ecstatic. "He thanked me for months for giving him an heir," she said.
After he retired he had more time for his hobbies: he was an enthusiastic collector of antiques and roadside treasures. "We have antique doors, pots, vases, tables chairs -- he liked finding things," said George, Jr.
The students continued to seek him out. They would come to him, to sit with him in his magnificent and cluttered study under the gaze of his collection of busts of Voltaire, Paul Robson, W.E.B. Du Bois and other great men to get help on their theses and work up their oral presentations with him. Even now, they telephone just wanting to come to the house.
"They still want to be connected with him," said Carole.

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CHRIS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-08-01 published
Jerry MEYER, Horse Trainer 1927-2005
Hall of fame trainer had a photographic memory for horses and a soft spot for people down on their luck. He longed to be a jockey and instead ended up with a stable full of champions
By Beverly SMITH, Monday, August 1, 2005, Page S9
They don't make them like Jerry MEYER any more. The Hall of Fame thoroughbred horse trainer was indisputably an original. J.C., as they called him, was one of the old-school horse trainers, consumed by the sport more than by the business, with plenty of room in his heart for a fellow hardboot.
J.C. MEYER had a memory for horses that astonished his peers. He'd see a yearling once at a sale and years later would recognize it, like a familiar face. He knew all the pedigrees and racing records not only of his own horses, but those of every other trainer. "He had a photographic memory," said one of his closest Friends, Lou CAVALARIS, also a member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame. "It would take me five or six days to recognize a [new] horse I had."
Almost everything Mr. MEYER needed to know was inside his head. His mind was like an efficient computer, with some lively quirks, that was occasionally supplemented by a plastic shopping bag he toted everywhere. The bag was full of everything that wasn't contained in his brain yet still mattered: racing forms and programs, a notebook or two, this and that.
Jerry MEYER grew up in southwestern Ontario and, although most of his Friends and relatives don't know it, he was a ski champion at the Chicopee Ski Club near Kitchener, Ontario. "He must have done that before he was 14," Mr. CAVALARIS said. "I don't know how he would have fit it in." When he was in his teens, young Jerry used to hang around a stable on the outskirts of Kitchener and the racing-crazy Chris family "took him in like he was a little orphan guy," although he came from a fine, honest family of his own, said Helen CHRIS, mother of Woodbine racetrack veterinarian John CHRIS. "He was a handyman around the barn," she recalled. "He lived there practically. He was a wonderful exercise boy and he wanted to be a rider, but he got too big."
He won only one race as a jockey, with a horse called Hay Tip at Dufferin Park in Toronto, then became a trainer at age 20 in 1949. His accomplishments were legion. He was leading trainer in Canada in 1964, 1966, and 1969. The 152 winners that he saddled in 1969 placed him fourth among trainers in North America.
Over a span of five decades, Mr. MEYER won more than 2,500 races, more than 100 stakes races, and his horses won more than $19-million in purses. He was one of the first trainers to have a stable as large as 50 or 60 horses, all farmed out at two or three track locations all over North America, much like D. Wayne Lukas or Bobby Frankel today. It was not uncommon for Mr. MEYER to train a stable at Aqueduct in New York, jump in his jalopy, train a few more at The Meadowlands in New Jersey, and then head off to Philadelphia Park to saddle a few for the races. At times, he'd have horses running at different tracks on the same afternoon. "I used to call him the Iron Man," said John CARDELLA, a long-time trainer at Toronto's Woodbine track. Now he calls him an icon.
Mr. MEYER trained Classic Go Go to finish fourth in the 1981 Kentucky Derby, but he failed to win the Queen's Plate, although he had lively candidates like Good Old Mort, the 1977 champion filly Northernette, Pine Point, Gentleman Conn and Brilliant Sandy. He also trained top U.S. colt Verbatim.
He was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 1999. Statistics are one thing. But they don't tell the complete story of the man. J.C. MEYER had an unusual sense of humour. He'd stir the pot at every opportunity. He'd latch onto a word or a phrase, and use it in every sentence for a week or a month. His New York trainer Mike Miceli said whenever anybody would ask him how to use a medication, Mr. MEYER would reply: "Use it as indicated." The phrase became such a Mr. MEYER trademark that one of his Friends named a horse after him: As Indicated.
With outfits spread out all around the eastern states and provinces, Mr. MEYER tried to cut his mounting phone bills by making person-to-person calls to his employees, telling the operator that it was "J.C. MEYER calling for Atadandy (the name of one of his racehorses)" or for the weather bureau.
"Atadandy won by four," the employee would say, then decline the call. The puzzled operator might also hear that the weather was rainy and the race taken off the turf before the line went dead.
Mr. MEYER was like a father to his employees and the relationships were never mundane. He'd conduct lessons with his rookies every day after training. He'd pull every horse out of the stall and point out their foibles and problems to them.
"I'd always have my fingers crossed that he would ask me to take the lead shank," said Michael ROGERS, who Mr. MEYER hired at 14 as a hotwalker, shortly after the boy's father died.
One day he did ask Mr. ROGERS to grab a lead shank, and told him about an ailment the horse had. He then told him to show it to assistant trainer Chuck Penny. As soon as he did, Mr. MEYER leaned out of his office door, and with tongue in cheek, scolded Mr. Penny: "You need Rogers to show you these problems?" Mr. ROGERS now works as a financial officer for Frank Stronach.
Just as Mr. MEYER's stable was rising to power in the late 1950s, he hired on Joe BAKOS, a Hungarian jockey who escaped the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Mr. BAKOS arrived in Canada with no money and no idea how to speak English. Nobody would hire him until Mr. MEYER took him on. Mr. BAKOS became his right-hand man for many years and called him Daddy Jerry.
"He was a tough man to work for," Mr. BAKOS said. "He was straight, but you had to do it right."
Mr. MEYER bought Mr. BAKOS a 1961 Ford Falcon, but he hadn't driven it more than 20 miles when he was in an accident and the car was totalled. He spent the next several years paying Mr. MEYER back. Finally, Mr. BAKOS decided to get another car. Mr. MEYER warned him: "You're going to kill yourself." He bought him a 1964 Falcon anyway and hadn't been driving it for long when "some drunk ran into me." He paid Mr. MEYER off for that car, too, but gave it away and stopped driving for years.
"Jerry was a very kind-hearted person," Mr. BAKOS said.
"I used to get mad at him," said Mr. BAKOS' wife, Vera. "But I couldn't stay mad at him." Jokingly, Mr. MEYER had told Mr. BAKOS he'd pay him $1,000 if he'd ever get around to marrying Vera. "[Joe] was going to swim back to Hungary before he'd marry me," Vera said. When they finally did marry, the money arrived in the form of a cheque.
Ray SABOURIN, now one of the stalwarts of the Woodbine riding colony, showed up at Mr. MEYER's door when he was only 17 years old, looking for a job.
When he said he had ridden horses on a farm up north in Sudbury, he unwittingly hit a nerve. J.C. MEYER loved National Hockey League hockey and quickly rhymed off the names of four hockey players who had come from Sudbury. "You're not going to be a hockey player, are you, son?" he asked.
"He was like a second father to me," Mr. SABOURIN said. "He took me under his wing. He was hard on me, but he was fair. He taught me everything I needed to know from a work standpoint and of how to ride horses."
And he could put things into perspective for the youngster, too. Once, when Mr. SABOURIN and Mr. MEYER were both dining on tuna sandwiches and Cokes at Garden State Park in New Jersey, the trainer spotted the track's wealthy owner and president, Robert Brennan, at a nearby table. He was eating the same dishes they had ordered. "See, Ray?" Mr. MEYER said. "We're doing just as good as Mr. Brennan."
As it happened, fortune ended up shining less brightly on Mr. Brennan, who is now serving nine years in a New Jersey prison for bankruptcy fraud and money laundering.
Mr. MEYER also plucked another employee from Europe when he hired Dessy LUOKANOV, a World Cup show-jumping rider from Bulgaria in 2000. He'd been riding racehorses in Greece before being summoned to Canada. "I never found out how he found me, really," he said.
Although Mr. LUOKANOV had never been to Canada before, Mr. MEYER helped him in finding work, and with his finances. The Tuesday before J.C. MEYER died, Mr. LUOKANOV went to visit him in the hospital. They talked for an hour, with Mr. MEYER close to tears and holding his hand. "Don't forget I brought you to this country," he told him. "I know you're doing okay."
To the end, J.C. MEYER was enthralled by the racing game. Three weeks before he died, he called Mike Miceli and asked him to send him a horse. "I'm equipped to handle a few more," he told him.
Twice in his final 10 days, J.C. MEYER checked himself out of hospital and headed straight for the backstretch to muck out a few stalls.
"He always wanted to die with his boots on," Mr. CAVALARIS said. "He damned near did."
Jerry "J.C." MEYER was born in Kitchener, Ontario, on July 2, 1927. He died of cancer at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto on July 15, 2005. He was 78. He was buried four days later with his binoculars and the notebook he carried everywhere. The last notebook entry was the phone number of Hugh CHATMAN, one of many kids he had taken under his wing decades ago and who is now assistant trainer for the mighty Sam-Son Farm.

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CHRIS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-04-09 published
MASON, William
It is with deepest sadness that we announce the passing of Bill, in his 43rd year, on Thursday, April 7, 2005, with his family by his side. Bill faced his cancer with grace and dignity and never complained. He made it easy for all his family and Friends to share in his struggle. His smile always lit up a room. Peacefully taken from us; he fought his cancer with hope, faith, strength and courage. Beloved husband of Diane, who will love and cherish the life they shared always. Loving and proud father of Colin who will treasure him deep in his heart forever. Cherished brother to Joyce (Lon) FITTANTE, Bob MASON and Nancy HEWSON. Special uncle to Shawn, Ryan, Jonathon, Elyse, Tyler, Gordy, Corey, Sean, Lindsay and Kayla. Loved son-in-law to "Ma and Pa." Bill will be sadly missed by his many family members and Friends. Friends may call at the Dodsworth and Brown Funeral Home, Burlington Chapel, 2241 New St. (at Drury Lane), Burlington (905-637-5233), on Sunday, April 10, 2005 from 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Monday, April 11, 2005 at 11: 00 a.m. from St. Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, 44 Flamboro Street, Waterdown. Cremation to follow. The family would like to express its appreciation to Dr. NAIDOO, Dr. KNIGHT, Dr. CHRIS, Lee GEISBERGER and all the staff at Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital for their care, understanding and warmth provided to Bill during his illness, and most importantly to all his Friends and co-workers at Zenon Environmental for making his "Magical Journey" come true. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Saint Thomas the Apostle Building Fund and would be appreciated by the family. "Bill will never be forgotten, we will all carry a piece of his love forever..."

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CHRIS o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-08-09 published
SPALDING, Joseph Ernest
(August 5, 2005) In his 85th year we are sad to announce the loss of a dear husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He will be greatly missed by his wife of 63 years, Marguerite, who tenderly and lovingly cared for him, and by his sons, Paul and Stephen. Predeceased by his son Brian. Survived by his sister Winnifred URCH of St. George and predeceased by his brother William and sister Margaret. As a man of great spiritual values and principles he bore his lengthy illness with dignity and a sense of humour. He was well known and respected in the Printing industry in Toronto for over 65 years. The family wishes to express sincere thanks and gratitude to the nursing staff of 4 east at Joseph Brant Hospital and the care of Dr. KNIGHT and Dr. CHRIS. A memorial service will be held at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses: / 4025 Mainway Road, Burlington, Ontario on Saturday, August 13th at 2: 00 p.m.

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