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DUNNE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-07-10 published
KELLY, Mary (née McLAUGHLIN)
Peacefully on Sunday July 9, 2006 after a courageous battle with cancer, surrounded by her family and dearest friend Josie DUNNE and her daughter, Lori DUNNE. Loving mother of Caroline KELLY and husband Gerry LISMORE; Karen KELLY and husband Wes NEAL and Elaine KELLY and husband Simon ENG. Wonderful Grannie to Fionnuala and Declan LISMORE, Eilish NEAL and Rachel and Connor ENG. Predeceased by her husband Joseph KELLY. Friends will be received at the Rosar-Morrison Funeral Home, 467 Sherbourne Street, (416-924-1408) on Monday from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Mass of Christian Burial to be celebrated at Saint Michael's Cathedral, 200 Church Street, on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Private Cremation to follow. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations to Saint Michael's Hospital, Medical Day Care unit 2 Queen or Palliative Care would be greatly appreciated. The family wishes to express their gratitude to Doctor HAQ and all the wonderful nurses at 2 Queen and the Palliative Care Unit.

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DUNNE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-01-16 published
JEMMETT, Elsie (née STEDMAN)
After a valiant fight, Elsie passed away at Southlake Regional Health Centre on Friday, January 13, 2006 at the age of 95 years. Elsie JEMMETT (née STEDMAN) of Jackson's Point, beloved wife of the late Frank DUNNE and the late Harold JEMMETT. Dear mother of Corrine AITON and her husband Bill of Jackson's Point. Loving grandmother of John and Michael and great-grandmother of Derek. Predeceased by her sister Ethel RICKARDS. Resting at the Taylor Funeral Home, 20846 Dalton Road, Sutton from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Monday. Funeral Service in the Georgina Salvation Army Citadel, 1816 Metro Road, Jackson's Point, Tuesday at 2: 00 p.m. Cremation to follow. Memorial donations to the Salvation Army Citadel would be appreciated by the family.

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DUNNE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-03-27 published
WICKETT, Donald R. (March 3, 1943-March 22, 2006)
Passed away peacefully at home with his wife and children by his side. Don will be loved and remembered by many. Survived by Margaret, his loving and devoted wife of 40 years, daughters Brenda COWIE and Kelly DUNNE, his sons-in-law Brent COWIE and James DUNNE, grandchildren Jaida, Kaitlyn, Shaina, Jessica, and Nicholas, brothers Stephen (Georgia), Jeff (Jodi), his blended family Wayne GARRETT (Jackie,) Dean GARRETT (Karen,) MaryLou MOOREHEAD (Gord,) and Heather GARRETT. Arrangements entrusted to Rod Abrams Funeral Home (905-936-3477). Visitation is Saturday, April 8th from 12: 00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. at the Tottenham Community Centre, Memorial Service at 2: 15 p.m. Reception to follow at the Tottenham Legion. Details, prayers and expressions of sympathy online at www.rodabramsfuneralhome.com Family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to The Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada or the Canadian Cancer Society. "A Great Man is what he is because he was what he was."

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DUNNELL o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2006-01-06 published
SOER, Antonie " Toon"
At London Health Sciences Centre, University Hospital on Wednesday, January 4, 2006 Antonie (Toon) SOER of R.R.#1 Dashwood in his 85th year. Beloved husband of Janet (VAN LOON) SOER. Dear father of Hans SOER of Uden, The Netherlands, Corrie and Frans BISSCHOP of Aalst, The Netherlands, Ruby and Jim VAN NES of Stratford, Gerrit and Dianne (BOERSMA) SOER of Dashwood, Janny and Adrian DIMMERS of Ingersoll, Tony and Patti (DESJARDINE) SOER of Grand Bend and John and Patty (DUNNELL) SOER of Ilderton. Dear Opa to Joke and Pleun BISSCHOP; Ryan, Sarah, Sean, Amy, Jacob and Tony VAN NES; Janet, Garret, Julia and Jacqueline DIMMERS; Johanna and Lindsay SOER; and Nathan SOER. Predeceased by daughter Joke SOER (1978,) great-granddaughter Corrina (2005,) brother Jan HENDRIK (1992) and sister Antonia (1918.) Friends may call at the Hopper Hockey Funeral Home, 370 William Street, 1 west of Main, Exeter on Friday evening 7-9 p.m. and Saturday afternoon 2-4 p.m. where the funeral service will be held on Monday, January 9th at 1: 30 p.m. with Pastor John SPAANS officiating. Interment Exeter Cemetery. Donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation would be appreciated by the family. Condolences may be forwarded through www.hopperhockeyfh.com.

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DUNNET o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-03-10 published
SAGEL, Frederick▼ Dunnet▼
Suddenly on March 6, 2006. Beloved son of Tamarin DUNNET and Juergen Frederick SAGEL, he leaves behind his sisters Tiffany SAGEL and Kelly and Becky MOORE, his grandparents Melda DUNNET and Hermann SAGEL, his stepfather, Patrick MOORE, his stepmother, Barbara SCHANTZ, and her children, Howie, Robyn and Chris FARREL and Freddie's beloved dogs. Freddie was a 26 year old student at Oxford University, England. He excelled in everything he undertook in his young life. He was elected Student President at Mentor College and earned a scholarship to McGill University where he went on to great distinction. He was a political enthusiast and was elected Vice-President, Student Affairs and to the university Senate. He was a reporter for the student newspapers and was published in three academic journals. He earned McGill's prestigious Scarlet Key and graduated with first class honours in economics and history, earning a place at Oxford for his Masters of Science degree in economic history. Freddie traveled extensively, attended Harvard Summer School and earned a prominent internship at the Worlds Bank in Washington. His father will miss most their extended summer hikes which culminated at the ascent of Mt. Whitney, California. Above all, Freddie's greatest accomplishment was just being who he was: liked by everyone who met him, unfailingly courteous and kind - always kind. We will miss him dearly. A celebration of Freddie's life will take place at St. Andrew's Church on King Street at Simcoe Street in Toronto at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 11, 2006. In lieu of flowers, the family invites donations in memory of Frederick Dunnett SAGEL to McGill University, 1430 Peel St, Montreal, Quebec H3A 3T3; 514-398-5000

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DUNNET o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-03-10 published
SAGEL, Frederick▲ Dunnet▲
Suddenly on March 6, 2006. Beloved son of Tamarin DUNNET and Juergen Frederick SAGEL, he leaves behind his sisters Tiffany SAGEL and Kelly and Becky MOORE, his grandparents Melda DUNNET and Hermann SAGEL, his stepfather, Patrick MOORE, his stepmother, Barbara SCHANTZ, and her children, Howie, Robyn and Chris FARREL and Freddie's beloved dogs. Freddie was a 26 year old student at Oxford University, England. He excelled in everything he undertook in his young life. He was elected Student President at Mentor College and earned a scholarship to McGill University where he went on to great distinction. He was a political enthusiast and was elected Vice-President, Student Affairs and to the university Senate. He was a reporter for the student newspaper and was published in three academic journals. He earned McGill's prestigious Scarlet Key and graduated with first class honours in economics and history, earning a place at Oxford for his Masters of Science degree in economic history. Freddie travelled extensively, attended Harvard Summer School and earned a prominent internship at the World Bank in Washington. His father will miss most their extended summer hikes which culminated in the ascent of Mt. Whitney, California. Above all, Freddie's greatest accomplishment was just being who he was: liked by everyone who met him, unfailingly courteous and kind - always kind. We will miss him dearly. A celebration of Freddie's life will take place at St. Andrew's Church on King Street at Simcoe Street in Toronto at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 11, 2006. In lieu of flowers, the family invited donations in memory of Frederick Dunnet SAGEL to McGill University, 1430 Peel Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 3T3; 514-398-5000.

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DUNNIGAN o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2006-04-02 published
DEGRAW, Ana " Annie" (formerly SNELL)
Peacefully, at Four Counties Health Services, Newbury on Saturday morning, April 1st, 2006. Ana (Annie) Degraw (SNELL) of Rodney in her 88th year. Predeceased by her husbands Arthur SNELL (1987) and Morley DEGRAW (2004.) Lovingly remembered by her children Eileen BORDASH (Ed) of Peterborough, Nancy DUNNIGAN (John) of Richmond, British Columbia, Arthur (Sonny) SNELL (Eileen) of Peterborough, Gail NORTHGRAVE (Frank) of London and William HOLT (Fran) of Point Claire, Québec. Dear grandmother of Greg, Debbie, Linda, David, Richard, Larry, Craig, Glenda, Darlene, Mark, Jennifer, Danny, Scott and Melissa. Also survived by 18 great-grandchildren and step-children David DEGRAW, Doug, Danny (Lana), Darryl (Lisa), Dianne (John) Wilson, Debbie (Jamie) WARDLE, Dale (David) RITCHIE and Dawn (Doug) SCHWEITZER. Predeceased by her grand_sons Tony (1994) and Terry (1960), sisters Laurie and Daisy and brothers Fred and Ted. Friends may call at the Rodney Chapel on Monday, April 3rd, 2006 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. Funeral Mass will be celebrated from Saint Mary's church, West Lorne on Tuesday at 11 a.m. Father J. KONIECZNY, C.R. celebrant. Interment Saint Mary's cemetery. Parish prayers will be offered on Monday evening at 7 p.m. If desired, memorial contributions to the Heart and Stoke Foundation would be appreciated as your expression of sympathy. Arrangements entrusted to Padfield Funeral Homes (519 785-0810). Online condolence may be left at www.padfieldfuneralhome.com.

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DUNNING o@ca.on.simcoe_county.nottawasaga.stayner.stayner_sun 2006-01-04 published
LEMMON, John Archer " Jack"
Passed away on Wednesday, December 28, 2005 at the Collingwood General and Marine Hospital in his 90th year. Jack, loving husband of the late Joan LEMMON. Dear father of Valerie and her husband Norm NORDSTROM, John and his wife Darlene LEMMON, and Beth BERTEMSHAW. Cherished grandfather of Penny and Chris, Brian, Daniel and Heather, Matthew and Jennifer, David, Katie, Meghan, and great grandfather of Ashton, Maddie and Bailey. Jack will be fondly remembered by his sisters Grace LEMMON and Frances EVANS. Predeceased by sister Beatrice DUNNING and brother Doug LEMMON. Visitation was held on Friday, December 30, 2005 at Fawcett Funeral Homes -Creemore Chapel, 182 Mill Street, from 6-9 p.m. A funeral service will take place in the chapel on Saturday, December 31, 2005 at 1: 00 p.m. Spring Interment at Creemore Union Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciated donations in Jack's memory be made to the Creemore Legion Poppy Fund, or to the Creemore Library. Friends may leave condolences on-line by visiting www.fawcettfuneralhomes.com
Page 9

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DUNNING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-09-28 published
DUNNING, Marjorie▼ Grace▼ (BREWSTER)
On September 27, 2006 in her 87th year, loving wife of John (1979), loving mother of Ron (Helena), Allan, and Neil (Kathy); cherished grandmother of Alexander, Andrew, Jon, and Sophie. Remembered by nieces and nephews Jeryl, Jeanne, Terry, and Janet. Over 25 years active duty with Canadian Red Cross, faithful service as lay pastoral visitor at Princess Margaret Hospital, member of Logos and Chaplaincy Committees for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, volunteer at Casey House, member of St. Richard's of Chichester, and St. Philip's. Longtime resident of Lakeview and Etobicoke, past 2½ years living at Versa Care in Brantford. Arrangements and cremation entrusted to Ward's Funeral Home 2035 Weston Rd. Visitation Friday, September 29th from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Service Saturday at St. Philips Church (one block east of Royal York Rd. on Dixon) at 1 p.m. with reception to follow immediately after in the church hall. Memorial reception for Marj's Brantford Friends and family to be held Saturday, October 7th, at 10: 00 a.m. at Versa Care Lodge, 425 Park Road N., Brantford. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund or the Canadian Cancer Society will be appreciated. Condolences may be sent to the family at marjorie.dunning@wardfh.com

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DUNNING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-09-29 published
DUNNING, Marjorie▲ Grace▲ (BREWSTER)
On September 27, 2006 in her 87th year, loving wife of John (1979), loving mother of Ron (Helena), Allan, and Neil (Kathy); cherished grandmother of Alexander, Andrew, Jon, and Sophie. Remembered by nieces and nephews Jeryl, Jeanne, Terry, and Janet. Over 25 years active duty with Canadian Red Cross, faithful service as lay pastoral visitor at Princess Margaret Hospital, member of Logos and Chaplaincy Committees for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, volunteer at Casey House, member of St. Richard's of Chichester, and St. Philip's. Longtime resident of Lakeview and Etobicoke, past 2½ years living at Versa Care in Brantford. Arrangements and cremation entrusted to Ward's Funeral Home 2035 Weston Rd. Visitation Friday, September 29th from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Service Saturday at St. Philips Church (one block east of Royal York Rd. on Dixon) at 1 p.m. with reception to follow immediately after in the church hall. Memorial reception for Marj's Brantford Friends and family to be held Saturday, October 7th, at 10: 00 a.m. at Versa Care Lodge, 425 Park Road N., Brantford. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Primate's World Relief and Development Fund or the Canadian Cancer Society will be appreciated. Condolences may be sent to the family at marjorie.dunning@wardfh.com

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DUNNING o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-01-25 published
BATES, Lily (DEZORZI)
Passed away peacefully on January 23, 2006, three days after celebrating her 92nd birthday. Beloved wife of the late Fred BATES. Loving mother of Ron (Sally,) John (Elizabeth) and Tina (Phil DUNNING.) Cherished sister of Nellie MacCALLUM, Doris EASTO and the late Santy DEZORZI. Fondly remembered by grandchildren Stephen, Katherine, Maria, and Douglas. Beloved "Nona" to seven great-grandchildren and a great-great-granddaughter. Friends and family will dearly miss her charm, humour and loving kindness. Reception at the Allison Funeral Home, 103 Mill Street North, Port Hope, Friday, at 1 p.m. will be followed by the Memorial Service at 2 p.m. If desired, memorial contributions may be made by cheque to the Canadian Cancer Society or Heart and Stroke Foundation.www.allisonfuneralhome.com

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2006-12-23 published
JERRETT, Dave
Surrounded by his family and after a courageous battle, Dave JERRETT passed away peacefully on Thursday, December 21, 2006 at Victoria Hospital in his 67th year. Beloved husband and soul mate for 45 years to Betty. Also loved by his three children David JERRETT (Daniela), Donna YANCY, Laurie THORNTON (Mark). Proud Poppy to his 11 grandchildren, Julie, Brian, Brandon, Trevor, Alyssa, Brett, Kristin, Jonny, Daniel, Clayton and Hunter. Predeceased by his parents Donald and Olive JERRETT. Survived by his brother Dennis JERRETT (Nancy) and sister Judy DUNPHY (Tom.) For those who knew him, Dave will be terribly missed. Following Dave's wishes, cremation has taken place. Family and Friends are invited to attend a celebration of his life on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at the Salvation Army Church, 310 Vesta Road (at Huron), London at 3 p.m. Visitors to be received from 1 to 3 p.m. prior to the service. Reception to follow the service. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Canadian Cancer Society.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-01-11 published
John BARRY, 74: Wine, women and a hint of danger
Tavern owner was the life of the party
But he also kept a gun under his pillow
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▼ Writer▼
There are so many stories about John BARRY that you think they all can't be true. And maybe they aren't, but they could be -- and that, in the end, is the whole point of knowing somebody like him.
His life was the stuff of movies -- the slick, finger-snapping movies of the past, where the drinks flowed and the smoke from the ever-present cigarettes rose, Bogey style, in smooth concentric circles from the corner of the mouth. The women were broads, showpieces in tight skirts and tighter angora sweaters; the men sat at their regular tables, doing deals, not all of them legal, as the sax player wailed.
But this was no celluloid romp with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and the rest of the rat-pack reprobates. This was all happening in Toronto, at John Duck's Tavern, an Etobicoke watering hole by the lake since 1866, when ex-British soldier John DUCK opened an inn for stagecoach traffic.
After BARRY bought the place in 1963, it became a clubhouse for men who, like BARRY, preferred to sit with their backs to the wall. Bikers came there; so did off-duty cops. There were days the parking lot was filled with cars bearing Michigan licence plates, belonging to the men in thousand-dollar suits up from Detroit for business meetings in BARRY's upstairs office.
Aulden GELDART was the John Duck bouncer and club manager for 16 years. At 6-foot-2 and 250 pounds, he had the bulk and chops to be able to evict a whole posse of Vagabond bikers from the place. But he said he hated that his boss often packed a gun. "John always carried a semi-automatic, always in the back of his belt, and when he went to bed at night it was under his pillow," he said.
For safety, BARRY had underground parking for his Caddy; he also had a pair of dogs -- variously described as Doberman, American bull terrier or Bouvier, but big dogs, at least 150 pounds each, GELDART said -- that cost him $1,200 each. Most remember one called Boomer.
There were always whispers BARRY might have been a made man, a wise guy, even a hit man. GELDART said there were plenty of Toronto cops "after" BARRY, but his ex-boss was too smart for them. Former police chief William McCORMACK was a homicide investigator in those days and he said he'd remember if BARRY were involved in anything illegal. He doesn't, so it's likely BARRY wasn't.
"I always thought that talk was a lot of bulls -- -," said Rory ROBERTSON, who tended bar between 1969 and 1972. "But John knew a lot of people and I used to think some of them were rounders."
The only thing that most of his Friends and customers cared about was that BARRY -- who died November 12 at the age of 74 -- was a charming guy, a fun guy, the ultimate party guy.
He was a regular at Bardi's Steak House downtown. After hours, he and his boys would take over a private room at Gatsby's on Church St. Every night, it was red wine, and rum and Coke. Every night, it was steak, rare, with a side order of mushrooms. Every night, no one else ever got to pick up the cheque. Maybe that's why someone dubbed him "the old guy," but he liked it and the moniker stuck, even though he was only seven years older than ROBERTSON.
With his wife May and three children safely stashed away in Brampton, BARRY lived upstairs at John Duck's, also the scene of many a party.
"It was a typical bachelor pad," said his daughter Shandra BARRY. "Black leather. Red carpet. Party Central. It was his private club. The joke was that if the apartment door was locked, you don't knock, you don't interrupt the party going on inside."
Women loved him -- not just because he was movie-star handsome and charming and had that glint in his eye, but also because he was a lover who listened as if they were the only person in the world.
The man was charismatic, a great host who transformed the Humber House -- the name of the tavern when BARRY bought it -- into a modern-day legend, the watering hole of celebrities, including CFRB's long-time morning man, Wally CROUTER, country musician Gordie Tapp and the star athletes of the day. The Argos were regulars; so was coach Leo Cahill and three Miami Dolphins players he lured north to a new football league he tried to start, a couple of boxing champs and some Leafs.
The place was known for its Saturday jazz. "If you weren't inside by noon, you couldn't get a seat," ROBERTSON said. The late and hard-living Toronto Sun columnist, Paul RIMSTEAD, often sat at the drums; Diamond Lil from the Skyline Hotel would belt out the songs.
One day ROBERTSON noticed three guys coming in the door who turned out to be members of The Drifters, of Under the Boardwalk fame, and they did a turn at the mike.
"I don't know how much John knew about music, but he liked the way we talked, acted and the atmosphere we created. He liked fun. He wanted to be around, laughing and scratching, baby," said Bruce JAMES, who used to play the sax on those Saturday afternoons.
BARRY was born into one of the leading families of Sudbury; his father was in real estate and politics, made and lost three fortunes and died a very wealthy man, according to Jonquil FURSE, BARRY's sister. When BARRY was about 10 years old, he decided he didn't like attending Scollard Hall, a private school in North Bay, so he hired a taxi to take him home to Sudbury. His father paid the bill.
"John was very electric," FURSE said. "He was a chameleon, into everything, then off."
He was also her favourite brother, who took her fiancé, George FURSE, aside the day they were to be married in a very haute Westmount ceremony and told the astonished groom that if he ever laid a hand on his favourite baby sister, he'd "bust me up bad."
"He was very Runyonesque," George FURSE said, recalling how BARRY then pulled out a massive roll of money -- "I'd never seen that before except in the movies" -- and counted out four $100 bills from the top. "This oughta help you on the honeymoon," he barked.
"He was playing the part," his sister insisted.
After short stints in Sudbury as a miner and owner-operator of a gas station, BARRY hit the States, where his family believes he worked as a boxing promoter and a front man booking gigs for black singers and groups.
Later he owned a Mimico film studio, a limousine company and the company that booked all of the big acts into the Canadian National Exhibition's Grandstand shows.
His daughter Shandra said she remembers being driven in one of her father's limos to meet The Monkees backstage; other acts he brought to Toronto included Sonny and Cher, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, The Jackson Five, The Osmonds and Johnny Cash.
BARRY never stopped making deals. For awhile he owned a gold mine in British Columbia and a company called Iomech Ltd., and held patents for various water purification systems. Every Sunday, when he would drive to Brampton to see his family, he'd take them out for a drive to look at the latest country estate or property he was going to move them to.
"My mother just laughed. Every week it was a new place, a new deal," Shandra said. "He was the wildest ride in the amusement park."
All three children came to work at John Duck's after their mother died in 1979, and Shandra and her brother Jon were there March 5, 1988, when the party ended and BARRY closed the doors for the last time.
"He had it for 25 years; it was a huge part of his life," she said. "It was like a death in the family."
BARRY subsequently lived in several lofts around town, cutting out smoking and cutting down his drinking in later years, but he was diagnosed with esophagal cancer about a year ago. He didn't want people to know he was sick, and when he was hospitalized he didn't want people to visit him. Many did anyway.
His family is erecting a gravestone with the words "The Old Guy" and his favourite saying: "When I was here, I was here."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-01-16 published
Henry KOCK, 53: Consummate tree hugger
Horticulturalist instrumental in saving the elm
His own garden a testament to his passion for nature
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
It's difficult to think of someone 6-foot-4 as a wood sprite, but that was Henry KOCK. Or perhaps he was better catalogued as our very own Johnny Appleseed -- only the seeds he was spreading belonged to the majestic elm, whose distinctive silhouette is reappearing throughout the province thanks to him.
He was the public face of the University of Guelph's Arboretum and what a face that was. Normally staid journalists would wax poetic after encounters with the KOCK charisma: "With eyes the colour of dark moss, a graying black beard that birds could nest in, and a tall angular body, he reminded me of the Green Man, the pagan god of woodlands," the Toronto Star's Cameron SMITH wrote in 1998.
KOCK could enchant. His seasonal pruning courses were always sold out. His slide-show presentations -- culled from the tens of thousands of slides he'd taken and which he gave to any group that asked for them -- were inspirational.
"He was such a talented communicator. People would leave the show in tears," said Dave MARTIN, KOCK's brother-in-law and energy co-ordinator of Greenpeace.
KOCK made it easy to believe -- as he did -- that nature is often better left alone, our native plants are glorious species, pesticides kill, suburban lawns are an aberration -- he used to call them "intensive care units" -- and most of all, that nothing exists in isolation.
It's why he demonstrated with his homemade signs against the war in Iraq and attended every International Women's Day march in Toronto for the past 15 years, traditionally toasting that day's end sharing a bottle of wine with his wife, Anne HANSEN, on the Toronto Islands.
In addition to creating the Elm Recovery Project, he founded Guelph's Hillside Folk Festival, he helped start its local food co-op, the Guelph Environmental Watchdog group and the local branch of the Peace Petition caravan campaign. He was on the board of the Ontario Public Research Group. It was his idea to have the university host an annual organic food conference that has become the most important in Canada, if not North America.
KOCK, along with HANSEN, was a vegetarian, car-free, bought second-hand and only when necessary, and washed and reused plastic bags. Their home in an older Guelph suburb was kept at a sweater temperature but was known throughout town for its traffic-stopping front garden of conifers and ferns and wild strawberry cover, the sunflowers that lined the road, the old bicycle tube that hung from the branch of a tree. There wasn't an inch of grass, but there were some 400 species of native plants and trees.
KOCK called it his "hotel of the trees" and used to say it was a "bed and breakfast" for the 75 species of birds that visited his yard. He created his own forest in the backyard with rain water collected in barrels, a pond he and MARTIN spent four days digging out, and an old submerged bathtub he and Hansen would loll in on hot summer days.
But KOCK was running out of time. He had been diagnosed in July 2004, with glioblastoma multiforme, a particularly virulent form of brain cancer, and although he left the Arboretum, for the next 16 months he saw Friends, hiked with HANSEN, took his annual birding trip and rode his bicycle to Guelph's Saturday farmers' market. He spent his last month in hospital tended to by family and Friends. On December 22, about 70 of them gathered in the cold outside his second-floor window to sing Christmas carols.
KOCK was 53 when he died Christmas morning. His family placed an elm wreath on his chest. HANSEN covered him with paper hearts and threaded cedar, rosemary sprigs and paperwhites throughout his great beard. They rented the biggest hall in town, but it couldn't accommodate all of the 600 people who showed up for his memorial service.
An article in the Guelph Mercury two days after his death noted that KOCK "managed to touch thousands of lives locally and across Canada through his efforts to protect the environment." The same paper had published an earlier editorial about KOCK, entitled "The city will not forget."
He was born in Canada's chemical valley -- in Bright's Grove, outside Sarnia -- into a family that had run nurseries in Holland for generations. His pacifist parents came to Canada in 1950 after surviving wartime occupation, eventually starting a nursery. "Henry would say it was in his blood," said Dave MARTIN, who married KOCK's sister Irene, who died four years ago in a car accident.
KOCK graduated from the University of Guelph in 1977, but he didn't want to work in the family business -- or in any nursery for that matter. He'd already started taking a machinist's course when then Arboretum curator John AMBROSE hired him in 1981 to be a technician.
"I had heard about him," AMBROSE recalled. "I knew he had a different outlook on everything, but it was more than that. He was a special person. Any time you started talking to Henry about something, it was always connected to a bigger Earth issue."
Said his sister, Helen RYKENS, " Trees were his passion and he could run courses that promoted gardening he felt was better for the planet."
KOCK's idea of recreation was hiking, camping and white-water rafting, and it was on an Algonquin camping trip that he met HANSEN.
"He was wearing mismatched shoes and so was I and we both noticed it," she recalled. "Within 24 hours, we knew we were partners."
HANSEN continued to live and work in Toronto, moving permanently to Guelph only after KOCK's diagnosis.
She is organizing a springtime bike ride for KOCK, during which she will bring home his ashes.
"I'm going to return some of them to the trees he nurtured and who nurtured him during his illness," she said. Others will be scattered in the wilderness.
Then there will be a party for him in their backyard. " I'm going to make as big a deal as I can out of this because I think Henry would approve of people eating and drinking and enjoying his backyard."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-01-30 published
Mary PELLATT, 94: Casa Loma builder's niece
Casa Loma builder's niece dies at 94
Mary PELLATT carried name with dignity
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
She was the little girl who had the run of the castle -- Toronto's Casa Loma, home of her doting uncle, Sir Henry PELLATT, the Donald Trump of his time and this town.
He had set Toronto society on its collective ear with his monumental and extravagant entertaining -- he and his beloved wife, Lady Mary, thought nothing of having all 1,000 members of the Queen's Own Rifles, of which he was commanding officer, over for the weekend.
Sir Henry used to brag about sailing to Britain to attend a lunchtime meeting of the English Society of the Knights Bachelor and then sailing home to Canada after the meal. PELLATT was inordinately proud of his knighthood and the company it allowed the British Lord to keep.
He was the lord of quite a manor -- a $3.5 million, 98-room extravaganza on a 10-acre undeveloped site then north of Toronto replete with three bowling alleys, 30 washrooms, 25 fireplaces, 5,000 electrical lights, shooting gallery, indoor pool, underground tunnels and the renowned stables with mahogany stalls and nameplates of 18 karat gold.
But he was always Uncle Harry to Mary PELLATT, the only child of his youngest brother Mills and Lucy BOWERMAN, a young woman who had nursed Henry PELLATT, senior, in his later years, whom the family deemed would make a suitable match for the last of the six PELLATT children.
"Whether [Mary] put herself in the position or found herself in the position, she seemed to have an affinity for Sir Henry and he to her," said Carlie Oreskovich, the author of Sir Henry PELLATT: King of Casa Loma. "He treated her like a daughter."
PELLATT adored the pretty child with the quick step and lovely, wide smile, but after Lady Mary died in 1924, he couldn't address her by her first name, which she shared with his late wife. He subsequently addressed his goddaughter as "girl" but still he paid for a very fine coming out party for her on her 18th birthday and for her subsequent trip to Europe in 1929, where all good debutantes go.
He sent her to Bishop Strachan School and financed her studies at Trinity College at University of Toronto, where she received a Bachelor of Arts, a degree in music and a diploma in social work.
When he lost everything and was reduced to living in Mimico in the small house of his former chauffeur, only she and her mother visited him, beset by cataracts, hemorrhoids and declining health, and listened to him tell and re-tell the same old stories, often reading to him for hours.
Oreskovich met Mary PELLATT at the castle in 1979, 40 years after the death of Sir Henry. They had a bite to eat in the basement cafeteria. "She had absolutely no airs," he said.
He remembers a woman in a print dress with a friendly smile, joking about getting jowly and looking more like her uncle, but who barely looked around her at the major tourist attraction run by the Kiwanis Club that had been her second home.
Mary PELLATT was never close to her father, whom her uncle had propped up with a job as paymaster at the Toronto Electric Light Company. Mary's mother had distinguished nursing career for years after her marriage.
"My father was so much younger than Sir Henry and my mother had no use for anything to do with drink. We weren't exactly the poor relations but we stayed outside the social circle," Marry PELLATT told David Flint, author of another book about Sir Henry PELLATT.
Mary PELLATT's first job was in northern Ontario at an Indian residential school. It was not a success and she returned to Toronto long enough to gain a degree in social work. She then headed out west, working in Winnipeg for the Young Women's Christian Association and also in Saskatchewan.
"She didn't have a high opinion of herself," said Christine Chandler, a volunteer who became a friend in PELLATT's later years in Sechelt, British Columbia "I'm sure she was almost a Mensa candidate in terms of intellect, but she got very little acknowledgement from her parents. I don't know what she thought about her family name but she never felt valued, she never felt she was quite good enough."
A staunch, lifelong member of the Anglican Church, she often spoke of wanting to be a missionary. Instead in 1960 she drove across the country to Bella Coola to work in a parish.
She had been corresponding with Jim CARPENTER, the church pastor, who had urged her to come to live with him.
She struggled with her Christian conscience before agreeing to move in with the minister.
"She posed as his housekeeper," said her friend Betty Keeler.
No one knows why they never married. When CARPENTER was stricken with cancer, the couple moved to North Vancouver where she worked as a church secretary to the growing parish of St. Catherine's Anglican Church. CARPENTER died in 1969 and PELLATT stayed on with the church until she retired in 1974.
The congregation named a meeting room after her and topped up her pension plan so she could take a trip; then she moved to a tiny cottage she had built for herself on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast. She lived there for 30 years, content in her anonymity. Few of her new Friends and neighbours knew of the significance of the PELLATT name.
"In the beginning I had no idea of what PELLATT meant," Chandler said. "Mary never flaunted it."
Instead PELLATT was known to be a well-read, well-travelled retiree involved in the start-up of The Forge, a writer' network, one of the first volunteers of the Festival of Written Arts, and the force behind the launch of the Sechelt branch of Trefoil Guild, for retired Guiders, perhaps in a nod to her late aunt, Lady Mary, who was the first Girl Guide commissioner in Canada.
Keeler said PELLATT lived frugally by necessity, financing her first big trip (to Lapland) with insurance money from a car accident. She paid for subsequent travels (to Britain's barge country many times and once to Russia with 10 pounds of Bibles) by taking out mortgages on her cottage.
She lived simply in her humble, book-strewn cottage until she moved into a seniors' residence. A fall last July slowed her down considerably and she told her Friends she was ready to die. She owned little of value -- other than a clock given to her by Uncle Harry that she arranged to have returned to Casa Loma and some family shares, which she donated to the Sunshine Coast Community Foundation.
She was 94 when she died December 27. She is not the end of the PELLATT line, but she represents the end of an era.
"She had been part of Sir Henry's world," said John PELLATT, a Toronto freelance writer whose paternal grandfather was Sir Henry's brother Fred. "She seemed to carry some of this world with her wherever she went. She had been part of something that was unique and special."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-02-06 published
Force of nature in art world
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
He's the world-renowned geneticist, she was the starving artist, and yet he worshipped her.
"She was my hero," David SUZUKI said about his younger sister Aiko. "She was incredible, she lived the life of environmentalism. I don't think she ever passed beyond the poverty level of income, but she was wealthy in community."
Aiko SUZUKI was a fibre artist, who created that haunting pale hanging that floated throughout the main-floor hub of the Toronto Reference Library from 1981 until 2004, when it was removed for cleaning. She was also a sculptor, painter, printmaker, dance-set designer, curator, teacher.
Her Friends and artistic colleagues always thought of her as a force of nature -- and that was the phrase they used at her memorial service on January 14 at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre after SUZUKI died December 31, at age 68, in her Toronto home.
The day of the service was also the day of her final show in the centre's Gendai Gallery, which opened in 2000, six years after SUZUKI approached many within the Japanese-Canadian community with an idea of incorporating a gallery within the cultural centre.
Although weakened by her chemotherapy and worsening health, SUZUKI spent last summer in a makeshift studio in her garden, working on a series of pieces taken from the world of nature and from photographs by her daughter Chiyoko SZLAVNICS, who is a musician and composer living in Berlin.
They were smaller than her normal work and deceptively pretty. "I was shocked, the images were real -- fiddleheads, leaves -- not abstracts," SZLAVNICS said. But closer inspection revealed layering, complexity and depth.
SUZUKI called her show "From The Garden: Stage IV," a reference to her diagnosis of terminal cancer.
"I think it kept her alive," said her friend, composer Ann SOUTHAM. "She probably got grabbed by it."
SUZUKI was a strong, independent woman -- as a single mother raising a daughter and as an Asian woman in the testosterone-charged art scene, she had to be. She always organized her own shows. The reality was she usually didn't have a gallery to represent her works and for years had to do it herself.
Her last show was no different.
SUZUKI knew she wasn't going to be able to make her own opening. The day before she died, she told her daughter to call it off, believing it couldn't happen without her, but SZLAVNICS told her mother that this show would go on.
SZLAVNICS saw that her mother was relieved. After all, art is what she had always lived for.
SUZUKI spent her early childhood in a wartime internment camp in British Columbia, moving to Leamington and then London, Ontario, in 1945. Everyone in her family had an English and a Japanese name. She was Geraldine or Gerry, a high school cheerleader, beautiful.
David SUZUKI said their Canadian-born father had a "traditional, screwy attitude" about his daughters completing high school and then getting married, even as David was in the United States at university.
But Gerry SUZUKI discovered the world of art when she took a London Artists' Workshop featuring Greg Curnoe and Tony Urquhart. In 1958, she moved to Toronto, joined the Toronto Artists' Workshop, and a year later met Alex SZLAVNICS, a flamboyant Hungarian immigrant. Their 1965 marriage didn't last, but it was he who encouraged SUZUKI to recognize her heritage and use her Japanese name.
Her first solo show two years later at the Pollack Gallery was criticized for including a soundtrack. Local critic Kay KRITZWISER deemed the sound of a heart thumping a "distraction" from abstract art that was "strong enough to stand on its own," but SUZUKI's restless vision never recognized the boundaries separating one medium from another.
As she moved into fibre art, she also became a set designer, working with composer SOUTHAM and choreographer Trish BEATTY on many Toronto Dance Theatre productions. Her studio at Yonge and Bloor Sts. amounted to a fusion of poets, sound performers, musicians and artists.
"We were all flying by the seat of our pants," SOUTHAM said. "It was tremendous fun and it was impossible to say what it was all about."
SUZUKI's professional pinnacle may have occurred when architect Raymond Moriyama chose her to design the fibre sculpture for his new library building, but it came at a great cost.
She developed rheumatoid arthritis and lived on cortisone shots and in constant pain. She had "constant" surgery, her daughter said. Her hands, the tools with which she expressed herself, were gnarled and misshapen, yet art adviser and consultant Catherine MINARD remembers watching SUZUKI at work in her studio and marvelling at her fluidity and grace.
"Everything I saw was lyrical and had a lot of movement because of the influence of music on her work," MINARD said. "She always had jazz playing in her studio." In fact, someone who had seen SUZUKI's painting called Stan Get (z) Blue told the jazz musician about it. It became the cover of Voyage, Getz's 1986 album.
In 1988, after Japanese Canadians won redress -- money and an official apology from the federal government for its treatment of them during World War 2 -- writer Joy Kogawa approached SUZUKI about curating a joint exhibit of art by Indian, Inuit and Japanese-Canadian artists.
"For Aiko, it was the first time she realized the possibilities of being Japanese Canadian and how empowering that can be," said filmmaker Midi Onodera.
It was the beginning of SUZUKI's activism. She produced a directory of professional Japanese-Canadian artists, served on the board of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, founded the art gallery and curated several shows.
SUZUKI supported herself by teaching art at Upper Canada College and film animation at Harbourfront, and for years worked with the Inner City Angels organization.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2002 and told she had six months to live, but this was a woman who was already living with pain and she wasn't stopping. She organized Paper/Stone/Scissors for the Gendai Gallery, installations by five traditional and five contemporary artists, and in May 2005 she unveiled her own show, "Bombard/Invade/Radiate: Witness at the A Space Gallery." It explored SUZUKI's reflections about the late Susan Sontag's pronouncement of the military characteristics of fighting cancer.
Everyone assumed it would be her last show. For anyone else it might have been. But SUZUKI not only lived for her art, she lived by her art, and she began work on the garden show that would open at her memorial.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-02-13 published
Leslie WITT, 72: Chess 'superstar'
Received carved set from Fidel Castro
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
Leslie WITT never talked about the time he beat Bobby Fischer at his own game -- but others did for years afterwards.
It was 1964 and the chess world's greatest prodigy had not yet knocked out Russian great Boris Spassky from his world domination, but the 19-year-old was still a huge chess star and all of Montreal's and Toronto's chess players were thrilled when he showed up for some exhibition matches.
His first day in Montreal, Fischer was subjected to a vapid television interview. He hated being asked questions about dating; he actually hated talking about anything other than chess but the highlight of the show was the one-minute chess match he played against WITT, then the city's best player as well as a member of the Canadian Olympic chess team.
Fischer was -- naturally -- confident. He'd already played two exhibition games -- one in which he faced 56 people at once, beating them all, the other where he took on 10 players with clocks. They were better players but Fischer completed his 40 moves in under two hours, winning every game.
He could be forgiven for thinking he had another easy ride ahead. WITT, a Hungarian émigré, was unprepossessing -- an affable, smiling man who earned his living as a television repairman, not particularly tall, a little on the pudgy side.
"But Les was one of the speediest players I have ever seen," recalled Denis ALLAN, an assistant Crown attorney in Hamilton who was a young chess player at the time. "Not only could he think fast, but the speed with which he could move his hands was incredible. Bobby was not happy about losing. He made that clear."
Much later that night everybody got together at the Boulevard Club, where chess was played seven days a week, and Fischer and WITT faced off for about a dozen five-minute games.
"Bobby cleaned him out," ALLAN recalled. "Leslie won maybe one, but even one game is pretty good. Bobby Fischer was a genius."
But WITT was pretty darn good as well: a four-time Montreal chess champion, three-time winner of the Montreal Closed Championship, winner of the Quebec Provincial Championship, the Ontario Provincial Championship and, in 1962, the Canadian Open Chess Championship, held that year in Ottawa, with a perfect score of 9-0.
He was a member of the Canadian chess Olympic team at the 1964 Olympiad held in Tel Aviv, the 1966 Olympiad in Havana and the 1970 event in Germany.
"I remember the Tel Aviv Olympiad because it was the first time the Canadian team made the A group -- the top two teams," said Zvonko VRANESIC, a University of Toronto professor who often played WITT. In the '60s he and WITT were vying for the country's top spot.
"They were the two superstars," said Toronto Star chess columnist Lawrence DAY. "It was a great rivalry."
Both men were representing Canada when Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a big chess fan, pulled out all the stops for the Olympiad in Havana -- putting them up in the best hotel, even opening the event himself playing an exhibition match with the ubiquitous Fischer. Castro presented each player with a gorgeous wooden chess set, in a splendid carved box.
In 1969, WITT won a Brilliancy Prize in the Canadian Closed tournament. That same year he was named an International Master, which is one rank below Grand Master.
Laszlo WITT was born in Budapest, where chess is respected and popular, and the best chess players accorded the accolades reserved for hockey players in North America. He began playing the game at age 8 and tournaments when 15. By 17, he was the premier player for the Hungarian junior national team.
He was in Vienna for a tournament during the three weeks in October and November of 1956 of the Hungarian Revolution. His wife, Viola, and 4½-year-old daughter, Sylvia, had not been permitted to accompany him to the tournament. "We were collateral," said Sylvia SANKEY, now a stage manager who lives in Winnipeg.
Jews who had pretended to be Christians since the war when most of the family's male relatives -- including WITT's father -- were taken to Auschwitz concentration camp where they perished, they quickly decided to flee the country. Mother and daughter crossed the border to Austria to the sounds of Russians shooting on one side and Germans on the other. For three weeks they had hid out in farmhouses and fields.
They were taken to refugee camp outside Vienna where they were eventually reunited with WITT. They left for Italy and the ocean voyage to Halifax, where one of WITT's six sisters lived, moving to Montreal in 1957.
They lived in a walk-up on the Main in the heart of the émigré chess-playing community.
SANKEY remembers them always sitting at her parents' kitchen table playing chess with her father, all men, all in their 20s and 30s, slapping the button on the top of the clocks.
She and her mother never did really learn to play the game, but SANKEY grasped quickly that she had to be "quiet, quiet, quiet" so her father and his Friends could play. "I would read or go and watch television in the other room. It was just a part of life, coming home to see who ever happened to be in the kitchen playing chess with daddy. It was the norm," she said.
And yet by the time the family all moved to Toronto in the late '70s, WITT had all but retreated from the chess scene. In Toronto and Montreal it was no longer dominated by the émigré master a new generation of home-grown talent had emerged under their tutelage.
Current top-rated Canadian Kevin SPRAGGETT was moving up fast. "He beat WITT in 1979 for the Montreal championship and that was the changing of the guard," said DAY.
WITT was a very private man who simply slipped out of the world of chess. Few questioned it -- chess had become an increasingly young person's game.
"When you've played the game at such a high level, climbing down is difficult," VRANESIC said. "People just quit instead. I think that's what probably happened in this case."
WITT took up painting and backgammon in the '80s and in the last few years frequently went to Casino Rama for poker games.
Before he died at 72 on December 27, his daughter found his easel and paints in the Scarborough townhouse he had shared with a young couple -- as well as the chess set from Havana.
"You know it was kind of sad," said ALLAN, the lawyer. " WITT's death was mentioned on an international chess chat room and it got no comments. I guess people just don't know him anymore."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-03-13 published
Hilary KILBOURN, 53: Creative to the end
Adored daughter of rebel alderman Bill KILBOURN
Sensitive painter 'could capture people' in her art
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
She was born into Toronto royalty, certainly its establishment, a statement that would not have made her wince because it honours her father.
And Hilary KILBOURN worshipped her father.
When Bill KILBOURN died in 1995, "it was as if the history of our lives was passing in front of us," Rosedale member of Parliament Bill GRAHAM said at the time. It meant that and more to KILBOURN's second child, who was so grief-stricken she was hospitalized for two days.
Passionate about Toronto, Bill KILBOURN was a rebel alderman on city council in the '70s, David Crombie's time, when Toronto had an exciting future and its politicians the courage to fight developers to preserve its past.
Founding chair of York University's humanities department, author of 14 books, with Friends and admirers in the usually disparate worlds of the arts, politics, academia and media, he was often dishevelled as he rode his bike through Toronto winter traffic without an overcoat. But at the same time, he helped stop the Spadina Expressway and the planned Pickering Airport.
He lived with his wife, Elizabeth, an Anglican minister, and five children in a rambling three-storey house in south Rosedale with a dining room painted a shocking black for a while, modern art on all the walls, wolf skins on the living room floor, singsongs round the piano, political discussions around the table and hockey on the rink in the backyard.
"It was magical," said Francesca Mallin PARKER, whose family lived in the next block and who became fast Friends with the KILBOURN sisters, Hilary and Philippa. "We were a gang of three."
Though she was the youngest, Hilary was their leader because she had the verve, the artistic passion and talent. There was always a painting on an easel set up in the bedroom and playroom on the third floor that she shared with her sister.
"Often her zeal for artistic expression was unable to be contained and spilled over onto the walls and ceilings of her house," recalled George HATHAWAY, who moved in across the street in 1976.
It was always understood within her family, and by her Friends, that Hilary was -- and was going to be -- an artist. "Right from the beginning she was always drawing -- princesses and witches. Dad kept a lot of them," said Philippa or Pippa, her sister. (There were also three sons: Nicholas, Timothy and Michael.)
Their father adored Hilary, taking her along to official functions if his wife was unavailable. An intellectual descended from prominent Toronto industrialists, he was thrilled to have an artist in his family. "They were very much soulmates," said Pippa.
Tall, lively and lovely -- with dimples, fair hair and an entourage Hilary was a sophisticated presence in the halls of Jarvis C.I., her poetry and art winning awards and filling the school magazine and yearbooks.
"I felt lucky that she accepted my Friendship. I was in awe of her," said writer Ann SILVERSIDES. "It was all rather exotic to me, a kind of J.D. Salinger-ish household full of brilliant individuals."
Activists, politicians, artists, people were often in their living room -- even Pierre Trudeau swung by on his first campaign to be prime minister.
Hilary thrived on the excitement on the home front as well as from her own social whirl of poetry readings and formal dances. There was every reason to believe a fine future lay ahead of her studying art and drama at York University's brand new fine arts program.
But Hilary's "incredibly fertile existence," as her sister described it, began to crumble when she was 22 and spending time in Findhorn Community, a religious retreat in Scotland. She came home and was hospitalized after experiencing her first episode of mania, now known as bipolar disorder.
It had been building for a while. Her friend Mallin PARKER remembers seeing "an episode of misery like I've never seen" when Hilary, in university, sank to the floor, weeping. "She was crying and hysterical and in such emotional pain that literally she couldn't stand."
Her illness dogged her the rest of her life as she fought it and fought to retain her creativity. She gained a lot of weight as a result of her medications. She was in and out of many hospitals and almost as many apartments until 1983, when her father got her a house on the Toronto Islands.
There she found her place. Her home was one of the original island houses, a blue cottage with purple trim and a bathtub out back on Wyandot Ave. Typically, there were usually two or three other people living there with her. She was subsisting on a government disability pension, but she felt blessed to have her island home and therefore obligated to share it.
In a community of characters, everybody knew her -- outgoing, friendly, bumming a cigarette, riding her bike, pointing her video camera anywhere she could record another moment of life in her community. In turn, they kept an eye out for her, knowing when she wasn't taking her medication, helping her during her ensuing mania and at times psychotic episodes.
In 1994, she produced a half-hour film with original music about life on the island, past and present. "She would come here, hands shaking, and video-film The old still photographs I had," said self-styled island archivist Albert FULTON. "And I was amazed at what a professional production it was."
Her father died January 4, 1995, three days before her film was aired on a local cable channel.
She was always sketching, but she was extraordinarily modest about her art, often giving it away because she valued it so little. Her portraits were vivid, passionate. Pippa KILBOURN says Hilary's best work was a larger-than-life portrait of their father looking like rebel leader William Lyon Mackenzie. "She could capture people. She had such sensitivity she could penetrate the personality," she said.
On Thursday, February 2, she died in her sleep. She was 53.
Her funeral wasn't held at the island's church, St. Andrew-by-the-Lake. Instead her mother, Pippa and brothers, and several hundred of her Friends gathered at St. James Cathedral. Hilary KILBOURN loved the island and that church, but it was too small and there was no doubt that the cathedral was really the appropriate place to say goodbye to her. For it was there that several hundred people had also gathered, back in 1995, to mourn the passing of her father.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-04-03 published
Tom HODGSON, 81: Passion for art, life
Abstract painter helped revitalize Canadian art
Kid from islands paddled a canoe like few others
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
People always talk about the parties. That's what they remember about Tom HODGSON's life. They happened wherever he lived or in whatever studio he worked -- be it the Pit, as it was called, at King and Church Sts., the house on Shaw Street, where he built a swimming pool in the kitchen, or the storefront on Queen St. W. opposite the mental hospital.
Cold cuts infamously served on the reclining body of a nude woman adorning the buffet table, body-painting women's bare breasts, art student orgies, rich and powerful art patrons swinging on the rope from his studio ceiling.
HODGSON's sons used to drop by to meet girls because there were always women around their dad -- if not the models he hired to pose nude for life drawing classes, then the dewy-eyed students he taught at the Ontario College of Art during the '70s, when mores were exploding in the name of creativity, the muse and the worship of the artist.
You can get away with it when you're also one of Canada's greatest painters, a founder of the audacious Painters Eleven -- the gang of abstract artists who broke the stranglehold of the Group of Seven and revolutionized the Canadian art world, at the same time as you're an Olympic athlete, marathoner, dirt-bike champ and master paddler winning dozens of national championships.
"Tom was a gifted person. Some people are just touched a certain way, but he was very easy about it, not full of himself," said Christopher CUTTS, HODGSON's art dealer.
In 1987, when CUTTS was an upstart on the art scene, a friend arranged a meeting with the artist known as a superb colourist, as well as for his style of action painting -- arm's-length hurling, scraping, pouring oil paints on horizontal canvases on a table surface held in place by an elaborate system of blocks and tackle.
"He had a natural way of dancing on the canvas. He could make it work," CUTTS said.
HODGSON's last solo show was at Cutts's gallery in 1992, the year the artist was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This year, five days after HODGSON died from the disease -- at 81 on February 27 CUTTS opened a major group show of abstract painters. HODGSON's piece in the show was priced at $30,000.
HODGSON and his kid sister grew up in a 35-room house on Centre Island that their family rented out to tenants. Their father was an insurance broker, a convivial alcoholic who threw parties at their home, known throughout the island as the Hodgson House of Nonsense, according to Jane HODGSON.
"The kids all hung out at the clubhouse on the lagoon," she recalled. "All of us paddled."
But HODGSON was just that much more intense about the sport and much more skilled. When he was 12, it also was clear he was also a talented artist. He began the balancing act between art and athletics that he would maintain for decades.
He trained hard, dodging the ice in Toronto's harbour, winning more than 20 Canadian solo championships. With another islander, Art JOHNSON, and later Bill STEPHENSON, he finished eighth in the tandem at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 and in ninth place four years later in Melbourne, Australia.
HODGSON married Wilma STEIN, an island girl, and they moved into a house on Centre Island on a lot that extended to the lagoon, where he built a north-facing studio on stilts.
When the property of Centre Island's residents was expropriated in the late '50s, HODGSON moved to the city, becoming very successful in advertising at the same time as he was making a name for himself in the art world with Painters Eleven.
But he walked away from advertising after assessing that he had enough money either to buy a sports car or support himself as an artist for two years. When his marriage ended in 1968, his wife had to get a job to support their four kids. "His life was more important than anybody else and that was hard," said daughter Lise SNAJDR. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good person in many ways."
"He was not the kind of dad who hugged or kissed you or told you he loved you," said Tim BROADWAY, HODGSON's fifth child, born to Jeannie BROADWAY, an artist. They never married.
Painters Eleven officially disbanded in 1959. By the 1960s and early '70s, HODGSON was a famous artist, as well as a popular teacher at the Ontario College of Art. A nudist, he hosted many parties around the indoor pool at his Shaw St. home. He never had more than three beers, but others did.
"They were orgies," said Neil COCHRANE, an assistant art director at the Toronto Star who was studying at the college then. "That's what happens when you get naked art students, water and drink."
HODGSON met his second wife, Cathy GOOD, when she was his student. She was 19, he 46. He and GOOD moved to a horse farm near Hastings, Ontario, where he built a pond and paddled until 1996, when he went over a dam on the Trent River. By then, Alzheimer's had robbed him of the ability to talk in full sentences or complete a painting.
HODGSON then moved into a care facility and Good to an apartment in Warkworth. He could neither walk nor talk. GOOD, who was devoted to him, visited him three times a day, until her unexpected death last year of an embolism.
HODGSON was saluted by Friends and family at the Balmy Beach Club last month. At one point, one of his Friends shouted, "Here's to Tom," then took off all his clothes (except for his socks) and ran around the whole assembly, past HODGSON's trophies and his art, before sitting down and putting on his clothes.
"Dad would have loved it," SNAJDR said. "But I think he would have preferred it have been a beautiful young woman."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-04-17 published
Elinor MELVILLE, 65: Friends were family
'She really gathered us in,' buddy says
Elinor MELVILLE, 65, brilliant scholar
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
She died as she lived, surrounded by Friends. Elinor MELVILLE never married ("Just lucky, I guess" she'd say if questioned), and when she died at 65 of cancer -- in the early hours of March 10 in the palliative care unit at Toronto Grace Hospital -- she had no known relatives.
Instead, she had Friends from two hemispheres, both of her careers and both of the countries where she chose to live during the past two decades.
Fierce Friends, loyal Friends, who wouldn't let her die alone, and who now feel doubly bereft because they lost someone who had become family.
"Elinor has had an incredible ability to create family; always a family of her own choosing," said Joan Harkness, a friend who uses MELVILLE and her circle of Friends as an example of one type of family when she teaches sociology at the University of Victoria.
"She had this talent; she really gathered us in," said Morris Thompson, an American journalist who rented and is now buying MELVILLE's beloved adobe home in Mexico. "Unlike the rest of us, she did not have to consider whether she liked Aunt Sally or cousin Mary when choosing the people in her life. She gave me the greatest compliment when she once told me I was like a really irritating younger brother."
An associate history professor at York University, MELVILLE was a brilliant scholar who wrote A Plague of Sheep, a pioneering work of environmental history in which she said that it was the introduction of European plants and animals in the 16th century that turned the Valley of Mezquital, an important valley north of Mexico City, into a desert in less than a century.
"She had a way in her academic life and in her personal life that she could make us look at things differently," said Thompson.
Elinor Gordon Ker MELVILLE was born in Papua New Guinea. Her father was a supervisor of British mines there; she and her mother caught the last flight out of the country before the Japanese invaded in World War 2 and went to stay with her father's only relatives, two spinster sisters living in Australia. When her father died four years later, her mother, tired of living under the matriarchal rule, moved them to New Zealand, where they lived on a sheep ranch. Mother worked as the district nurse and daughter learned how to ride horses and shoot.
Solitary and sickly -- MELVILLE told Friends she should have died about six times as a child -- she grew into a tall, mouthy adolescent who was tossed from three schools. Encouraged to be independent by her mother, who used to take her obstreperous daughter on her own dates as a romantic deterrent as much as a chaperone, she sailed for Newfoundland soon after getting a degree in physiotherapy in Sydney, Australia.
She later went back to school, receiving her B.A. from U of T's Scarborough campus in 1972, her M.A. and then her Ph. D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan. Her research had led her to Mexico 25 years ago, a country that charmed her. She told Friends she felt as if she had come home, that here was a country that fit her.
Using her small inheritance from her mother, she bought a lot in Tlayacapan, Morelos, in the hills about 95 kilometres south of Mexico City. She designed her adobe home and the subsequent guesthouse, where she always stayed whenever she had visitors. She took under her wing the family of her gardener, Augustine, paying for his children's education, and had a longstanding affair with a local man she called "the love of her life" -- but never stayed there longer than 10 or 12 weeks.
She always returned to Toronto, where she had her work and usually another house to renovate and decorate in rich, warm colours. She bought and sold five houses in 15 years. Her Friends remember rooms painted in bright blue and one in the colours of red, yellow and orange that looked as if it was on fire -- and recall one dinner party at which her guests had to crawl out a window to access the table set up on the deck.
MELVILLE was 6 feet, a dramatic, dashing woman with a penchant for hats and Eileen Fisher designs, who would moan with pleasure when eating a good steak and who never walked but strode.
"The world didn't move fast enough for her," said Ruth McGUINNESS, who admitted she found MELVILLE "daunting" the first time they met.
It was 2000 and the two were in Buffalo, undergoing treatment for breast cancer. Four of them became Friends (only two survived). They'd meet at 4 p.m. so MELVILLE could watch Tom Selleck reruns they made a pact that none would join a support group. "We decided we would have none of those people crying in their soup," said McGuinness.
But in 2002, MELVILLE was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. "She raged against the cancer; she didn't just fight it," said McGuinness.
She continued to teach three classes at York until the fall of 2004. Her Friends remember her lecturing a grad student as she was being wheeled down a hospital hallway on a stretcher. Last July she officially went on sabbatical.
Often she stayed with McGUINNESS and her husband, Rory, after a hospital stint, until she was strong enough to return to her own home. But after last Christmas, she was noticeably weaker and stayed with her friend Agueda SHUBERT, the wife of a York colleague.
SHUBERT was one of the dozen Friends who met in February to form MELVILLE's care team. They didn't all know one another, although they knew of each other. "She talked about her Friends to us all," said Mireya Cunningham. "She was always saying wonderful things about us to others."
There was no set schedule in place -- MELVILLE was still too independent to want that -- but there was a new intimacy with her. She let friend Mireya Cunningham, who describes herself as a "touchy" person, hold her hand. "There is a great degree of intimacy involved in being with someone who is ill. It's a world of little losses," said Ruth McGUINNESS.
As well as gains. "She taught me to cherish my Friends," said Jean LEVY, the department assistant at York.
On Thursday, March 9, McGUINESS sent out an email -- in English and Spanish -- and her Friends came flooding to the hospital. Her York colleague Jeannette NEESON read her a poem from a 1940s anthology; Thompson read Shakespearean sonnets. Tea was served and the conversation flowed all around MELVILLE, as she lay dying.
Her Friends held a memorial service for her in Toronto the following Tuesday at 7 p.m. It was 4 p.m. in Victoria, British Columbia where Joan Harkness was teaching her Sociology 100 class about Elinor MELVILLE.
"I put her death notice up on the overhead projector and talked about her," she said. "I wanted to be part of a community of people thinking of Elinor at the same time."
She told her students that this is the kind of impact one life can have, that this is what they can do. They can create a family they can create their own life; their life can be an act of creation just like hers.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-07-03 published
Smiling Al HARRIS, the guitar man
Well known to Canadians on radio, early television
Played for troops, Tommy Hunter, Gordie Tapp
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
When Al HARRIS was 14, the school principal at Weston C.I. called his parents in for a meeting. He was concerned: Their son was interested only in music, nothing else. He showed them his notebooks no matter the subject, the content was music.
That wasn't a surprise for them. The oldest of their four children had made, out of an old Havana cigar box, a crystal radio set he'd always have on late at night, picking up dance bands playing in a room high atop a hotel in some midwest American city. He had invented a contraption involving pedals for his steel guitar and he was already earning pocket money teaching music to neighbourhood kids.
Okay, they told their son when they returned from that meeting, if you're not studying then you might as well take lessons from the best. Then they sent him to the Royal Conservatory of Music.
Two years later, he was playing professionally with Jimmy Fry and his Orchestra at Port Carling's 21 Club, in a career that ended only with his death, at 84, on March 4.
He was everybody's sideman.
"He was a perfect sideman," said Tommy Hunter. "He knew instinctively what to do. He had a dry sense of humour and he'd play you along but when the (studio) red light came on, he played it straight."
HARRIS played with Hunter on the singer's eponymous Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio and television shows in the '60s.
He played with Bert Niosi, Joe DeCourcy, Moxie Whitney, Trump Davidson and their orchestras. Rob McConnell's Spitfire Band. Peter Appleyard. Our Pet Juliette. At Barbara Ann Scott's wedding. And Bobby Gimby's iconic Ca-na-da recording? He was the guitar on that Confederation year hit. He played at the Canadian National Exhibition Bandshell, the Palais Royale, the Old Mill, Casa Loma, the O'Keefe, Maple Leaf Gardens, Massey Hall and yes, on the 54th floor, high atop the Toronto-Dominion Centre.
HARRIS wrote the jingle for People's Credit Jewellers. He gave Lenny Breau lessons on reading music. He worked with, to name just a few, Marlene Dietrich, the Ink Spots, Kay Starr, Eartha Kitt, Gene Autry and Danny Kaye, when they came to town.
When he was 18, he was voted the #1 guitarist in Canada by DownBeat magazine. He was entertaining troops across Canada with Mart Kenney's orchestra before he was 21.
Throughout the '40s and early '50s, when Canadians gathered around the radio set for their entertainment, HARRIS was usually the man playing the guitar, be it acoustic, electric or steel.
In September 1952, Cliff McKay's Holiday Ranch hit the black-and-white television airwaves, the first country show to go coast-to-coast. McKay was the genial bespectacled man in the plaid shirt and cowboy hat on clarinet and vocals, King Ganam was the scene-stealing fiddler, and the Buddy Holly lookalike, bent and intent over his guitar, was always introduced as Smiling Al HARRIS.
"Cliff called him that because he never smiled," said HARRIS' youngest brother, Ken. The show was on every Saturday night at 7: 30 p.m. Their mother insisted everything stop while the family watched it. "Sometimes at the end of a piece, there would be just a small smile, in one corner of his mouth, but only if he liked the way the song had turned out."
Al HARRIS was never a showman, shunning the spotlight and the microphone patter.
But he was a brilliant musician.
"We couldn't do a show without him," said Gordie Tapp. HARRIS played for three years on Country Hoedown and on about 10 overseas tours, including three to the Middle East.
HARRIS was the kind of guy who refused to let anyone carry his guitar, then fell into a trench with it. In the Gaza Strip, he ignored all the warning signs and crossed a fence to take a short cut to the beach. He later found out he had walked through a minefield.
During one of their return trips from the Middle East, Algeria declared war on France. Their plane was re-routed and when they landed in a West German airbase where Vickers bombers were parked, they were ordered to take no pictures and go straight to the waiting bus. HARRIS set up his tripod, mounting his camera, and was checking the light on his meter -- "he wanted to get a picture of the planes he had heard so much about," Hunter explained -- when he was beset by guards who ripped the film from his camera. "And that was Al. That was really Al, " said Tapp. "He'd do the darndest dumb things."
When it came to his music, he was the consummate professional "on time and on cue," his brother said.
He never turned down a gig -- from weddings to bar mitzvahs and political conventions -- and took on students in his spare time.
HARRIS was married in 1960 to Ina WEBDON, one of his students, and they performed as Al and Ina HARRIS in many venues. Ina died in 1990, but Al continued performing.
"Retire? Does a postman stop walking?" he once said to his son, Wayne, one of two children, including a daughter, Pam, from a previous marriage.
He dyed his hair, took on more students and gigs at seniors residences. His health wasn't good, but he'd say he'd feel better once he got on the bandstand. Six months ago, he played at Woodbine Lounge.
But late in February he collapsed while having dinner at a restaurant and was rushed to hospital. He never went back to his Thornhill condo; he moved straight from the hospital into a seniors residence where he could be looked after. He wasn't happy there, but he was more concerned about the fact that his guitar -- an Ovation he used to call his Stradivarius because of its rich sound -- was still in the condo.
"He was also worried that his fingers would get soft or stiff if he wasn't practicing," said his brother, who brought Al his guitar.
Al died the next day.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-07-14 published
Sid COMMANDANT, 79: 'Rough and tumble' leader
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
Sid COMMANDANT was chief of the Wahta Mohawks when he got the idea of collectively cultivating the cranberries from the nearby marsh.
And so began the Iroquois Cranberry Growers, a thriving community-owned Muskoka business whose products can be found in some of Toronto's finest food stores, at the Royal Winter Fair, the Canadian Aboriginal Festival as well as in their own store overlooking the cranberry fields between the Moon and the Musquash Rivers. They're also exported to the U.S. and Europe.
Where they are not found is at the annual Bala Cranberry Festival, although their 27.5 hectares -- the largest in the area, twice the size of any others -- yield up to 7,700 kilograms of berries per harvest.
"We're the real farm," says Matthew COMMANDANT, manager of Iroquois Cranberry Growers.
He raises an eyebrow at the thought of their neighbour's festivities that include duck races, entertainment, craft shows and pancake breakfasts. Iroquois Cranberry Growers offer twice-daily bus tours to the fields at harvest time, and that's it.
Matthew COMMANDANT is the middle son of the man who saw the potential of the berries, sought the help needed to kick start a business that would help turn around the economic fortunes of his people and then left before the first harvest.
It was pure brinkmanship when Sid COMMANDANT walked away after nine years on the job as chief.
"Sid was a real rough-and-tumble kind of guy," according to his nephew, Blaine COMMANDANT, the current chief of the Wahta Mohawk Territories. "And there's always ups and downs over local politics. It's a small pond."
But in 1971, Sid COMMANDANT just hadn't been getting along with the band administrator. It's either him or me, he told council. A vote was taken. The other guy won.
COMMANDANT always said he had no regrets. His sand and gravel haulage business grew and he got plenty of work cutting roads for cottagers through mud and granite. "That was Sid," said his wife, Lyla. "He'd just get up and go on to the next thing."
He was always wary, keeping any emotions in check, playing his cards close to his vest. His years in residential school taught him never to trust.
"He had this drive that was beyond the work ethic," said Matthew. "It was if he was trying to prove something to himself, as if he was trying not to remember."
But, as it turns out, COMMANDANT did care and did stay connected to the cranberry fields.
The Mohawks, the people of the flint, first came to Wahta (the name means sugar maple in Mohawk), in October, 1881. They were Protestants from Oka, Quebec where they were no longer welcome. They settled in and around Gibson Lake, a beautiful but inhospitable part of the country where it was almost impossible to earn a living.
COMMANDANT's father, Eli, managed to support his seven children with trapping, hauling wood and by working as an Indian fire ranger, but that didn't prevent his children from being taken from him away to residential schools. COMMANDANT was sent to Mount Elgin residential school camp near Saint Thomas. Founded in 1849 by the United Church it operated until 1946 as a school and working farm. COMMANDANT was sexually abused by a farmhand he was fed unprocessed grain from the barn and strapped till he bled for any transgression. The third time he ran away, he hid in the swamp when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came to his parents' home looking for him.
Told by the police to call him, his parents shouted in Mohawk: "Don't come, the police are here." He hid in his uncle's barn, under a bridge and spent the night in the swamp. The next day his father walked the 70 or so kilometres to Huntsville to ask the Indian agent there for permission to have his son back. He got it.
"Sid never could trust people after the school, nor the church either," said his wife. "He could never be affectionate, even with me."
They met in Toronto and decided to start a life together back home. In 1962, when COMMANDANT looked around his community and saw some homes still without electricity or running water, he decided to run for chief. The first thing he did after his election was hold a community "bee" to fix up the cemetery. "It was in terrible shape," said Lyla. "Now it's beautiful."
He instigated regular bean supper and auction nights that netted the community $100 -- huge to their eyes for the times -- for more projects; he started the volunteer parties who still clean up the roadsides. He'd often take the family for walks on the marsh. "He was figuring things out," Lyla said. He asked Orville JOHNSON, a cranberry grower from Bala, to show his community how it's done.
In the mid-'60s the band secured some government funding. They were on their way to becoming the third commercial cranberry grower in Ontario when the money ran out.
They were turned down the first time they asked for more funding, so COMMANDANT went to Queen's Park himself. The bureaucrat was a man who had led a battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles ashore at Juno Beach and had made it a mission to visit the families of all the men he'd lost there. The one he'd been unable to locate was one of the three Mohawks from Gibson Lake killed in the war.
The bond that was created between the two men enabled the Mohawks to get their funding and the government the assurance that the community was fully committed to the project.
"The money was about $200,000 to $300,000," said Matthew COMMANDANT. "It was the biggest thing we'd ever done at that point."
Lyla COMMANDANT helped plant the first acre by hand; she was also one of the women who sorted the first crop of berries five years later in an unheated building that was so cold she had to wear her snowmobile suit. "Sid was around but he was not involved," she said, and that went on even during her own term as chief between 1993 and 1996.
He started to slow down and sell off some of his equipment about 15 years ago after a heart attack necessitated bypass surgery. He took flying lessons and he and Lyla travelled a lot, crisscrossing the country, attending lots of powwows.
He'd always gone fishing and hunting with his sons; now he was going further afield, to northern Quebec, for the caribou. He was hit by Alzheimer's about 18 months ago.
Before he died -- on March 30 at 79 -- he used to go by the marsh nearly every morning. The shack from his sand and gravel business was there; he would tell his wife he was going to talk to the guys there. There was a little trail connecting his sand and gravel operation to the marsh.
"Sid was always peripherally out there keeping an eye on things," said Blaine COMMANDANT, his nephew. "He watched over the cranberry marsh constantly."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-07-17 published
Derek SAWYER, 63: Exalted bell-ringer
Derek SAWYER brought glorious sounds to Toronto church
Engineer at Ontario Hydro engaged in a heavenly hobby
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
He was Toronto's lord of the rings, the man who brought North America's first -- and so far only -- set of 12 glorious change bells to the tower of Saint_James' Cathedral.
You can hear them every Sunday morning, heralding the start of the two services at the King St. E. church. If you are lucky, you can hear them at other random times as they commemorate a wedding, a bicentennial, perhaps, or a synod.
These are not stationary chiming bells; these are not bells wired to a computer tolling the quarter-hour. These are something different bronze bells hung in frames allowing a full 360-degree swing and weighing between 110 kilograms and two tonnes.
Ringing Saint_James's great bronze bells in a precise orderly relationship, one after another, creates change ringing. There are a possible 479 million changes, and completing just one of them requires skill and a mastery of an ancient English art that goes back to the Middle Ages. It also necessitates a band of change ringers at least as enthralled, if not as obsessed, as was Derek SAWYER.
"Bells are the loud voice of the church and they reach out to the people outside of the church," he once told a reporter for this newspaper.
But they were his voice, too, his joy, his passion, his ode to life.
SAWYER was a 10-year-old choirboy in Leicestershire, England, when he noticed the parish bell ringers only had to come to church a few minutes before the service, not the half-hour earlier required of him. That was all it took for him to try it -- standing on a wooden box -- and once he had tried it, he was hooked.
"I won't say change ringing is addictive," his wife Susan said, "but it is obsessive." She likens their sound to the bagpipes, in that the listener "either loves them or hates them." She capitulated and learned the art of change ringing seven years ago.
Derek SAWYER became master of the change-ringing society at Bristol University, where he studied electrical engineering. Had he not signed on for what he thought would be just a short three-year work adventure in Canada, he would have no doubt gone on to become master at the Leicester Cathedral.
Instead he stayed in Canada, in Toronto, where he worked for Ontario Hydro for 27 years. He took vacations to American cities, where there were change bells he could ring, and spent many weekends in Quebec City cleaning, tuning and hanging new bell-changing ropes in the tower of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity.
"Change ringing there had been off and on until Derek did that," said cathedral tower captain Douglas Kitson. "Now it's solid."
Back on home ground, SAWYER had to resort to a hand bell-ringing group he started with three others pining for change-bell ringing.
"It was second best," Susan SAWYER admitted.
After his group disbanded in the mid-1970s, SAWYER was left with a set of 12 hand-ringing bells and no ringers. He wasted no time in creating a new group with teens from his church, Saint Peter's Anglican, which started with rehearsals around his Mississauga dining room and grew to become a group of adults who rang bells in nursing homes and hospitals, as well as in other churches.
Gregarious and personable, SAWYER was a communicator and his enthusiasm for his hobby was not only palpable, it was contagious.
And so when an Australian magnate and change-bell aficionado phoned him on his way through Toronto to say he thought there should be a set of change bells in this city and that he would find them, SAWYER saw the opportunity to make his dream come true.
It took him seven years -- and fundraising amounting to $500,000 but by the end of March 1997, the ship carrying 10 bells cast in 1828 from bronze taken from French cannons captured during the Battle of Waterloo arrived in Toronto's harbour. Eight survived the trip; four new bells were recast from the leftover gun metal.
They were uncrated and set out on platforms in a warehouse along Queens Quay for a welcoming party -- "I think everybody (from the church) could actually believe they were going in at that point," Susan recalled -- then transported on a flatbed to the church.
SAWYER took the day off work, determined to see the fruition of what he'd worked so long for.
"It was always a burning idea in Derek's mind that we have bells in Toronto and his engineering background had them install it properly," said Derek DODD, a cathedral parishioner but not a change-bell ringer at the time.
But he was among a small group whom SAWYER taught to ring in time for their dedication ceremony that June 27, a date that also marked the cathedral's 200th anniversary. Ringers flew in from England for the event, but the local ringers -- the ones SAWYER had been training three or four times a week for several months -- also rang during the dedication service.
"Derek was in charge and he gave each person, each local member, a chance to ring the bell at a certain point in time. We felt it was important we did it ourselves," DODD said. "It was a thrill. We were all congratulating each other, high-fiving, reaching out and touching each other in the tower. We did it. We did it."
Queen Elizabeth attended the service that Sunday and SAWYER was presented to her. He later reported to his wife that the Queen knew her bells and could talk the talk -- the monarch had told him she thought the 12s so much richer than 10s or 8s.
After SAWYER retired in 2002, he and Susan went change ringing in Australia, in the cathedral in Leicester and even in Westminster Abbey, an honour marking SAWYER's skill. This past May, they were in Quebec City for an annual get-together of the North American Guild of Change Ringers.
SAWYER spent most of his time in the bell tower.
On the way home, the SAWYERs stopped off in Kingston to see their younger son Andrew, just home from serving in Afghanistan. The following Friday, June 2, SAWYER died unexpectedly, in his sleep. The Saint_James' Cathedral bell ringers gathered in the tower the following Thursday to ring for SAWYER's funeral.
"That was when the full emotion of the ringers came out," DODD said. "It was very private, between ourselves. We supported each other."
SAWYER's oldest son Christopher, a geologist, joined them for the half-muffled ring; Susan SAWYER heard it from the church. On the evening of June 27, the anniversary of the day change bells finally rang out in Toronto and the day he would have turned 64, ringers gathered in towers throughout North America to honour SAWYER, the man for whom the bells always tolled.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-09-28 published
Winning the great race of life
Mensa member had zest for life
'An intellectual who liked to party"
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
A legend among his Friends and family, Bruce HUGHES was the bachelor always up for a beer or a party. For years at the Boston Marathon, and here in Toronto, he was the runner in the white bowler hat, the one who crossed the finish line usually under three hours despite -- or he might say because of -- the fact he'd been drinking till all hours the night before.
He was a darn good marathoner and he was also an enthusiastic member of the Hogtown Hash Hound Harriers, the Toronto chapter of a worldwide group that cheerfully bills itself as "an international drinking club with a running problem."
As Wild Bill, he was an often cranky, always trenchant regular on the Lonely Planet's forum -- more than 6,000 posts in four years -- and was never shy about telling what he knew and thought about Cuba, a country he loved but by which he was never fooled. His Havana pub crawl had become as famous as its opening sentence: "This pub crawl has been used several times and is totally reliable in obtaining the desired result -- a moderate state of inebriation."
And then there were the stories. Everybody, it seems, has a Bruce HUGHES story.
They may be set in Saigon, Pamplona or Gerona, but somehow they all involve HUGHES miraculously avoiding being gored by a bull, beaten up by an irate cyclo driver or a drunk Italian tourist, and they all end with HUGHES having a beer and a good laugh which is what some 60 or so of his Friends did at his wake last month at Dora Keogh's pub.
"Bruce was an intellectual who liked to party. Three hundred years go he would have been the smartest buccaneer in the Caribbean," said Alan KAY, HUGHES' friend for almost 40 years.
Indeed, HUGHES, 59, was a member of Mensa, a Winnipeg native who was a grad of York University's M.B.A. program, and a successful marketing strategist who at 50 had been financially able to retire and play the stock market.
And smart enough to take charge and go into project manager mode when told his diagnosis of cancer.
"He was an amazing human being before and after he was sick, said KAY.
Originally diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff in January 2004, HUGHES had been in such pain he considered cancelling his trip to Cuba, but didn't.
He told Friends later he discovered that a Cuban cigar was the best antidote for pain.
Back in Toronto, he learned it was cancer and that the primary source was his right kidney. He later joked that although his type of cancer often affects the liver, his didn't. "Guess mine was pickled," he'd say.
But he was in tears when he phoned his friend Ron MEREDITH- JONES and told him his diagnosis.
MEREDITH- JONES, a consultant to the Ministry of Health, Ontario Medical Association and Physicians' Services Committee, and HUGHES teamed up to gather information and discuss appointments.
He had been given four months to live -- "But he never wrote that date on the wall for a countdown," said his sister, Janice and one, then two, years later he was living full out. He had his regular beer and books meetings with Friends like Kay at Allen's, he organized a reunion of old Friends from his working days in Montreal, Toronto and Atlanta at Grossman's Tavern, he made new ones at a couple of pubs near his condo in The Beach.
He returned to a childhood interest in stamp collecting and got involved with his condo committee. He sent out regular email updates. His last one, dated mid-July 2006, is a typically businesslike and mischievous -- missive.
"What I'll comment on is an overview of the body, the treatments, side effects and finally what else is going on in my life," he wrote in his introduction.
Under the heading "The rest of my life" he wrote: "What's the point of going through all this, if there is nothing else happening in your life? Sometimes I admit it now feels like the point of my existence is this damn disease. Got to stay focused that the point is to minimize its impact... It's The Rest Of The Stuff That's Important... Even The Little Stuff."
And so last February, although considerably weakened and wracked by pain, he and Rennie SMITH (who is married to HUGHES' sister Janice) went to Cuba, where everybody knew him and where his girlfriend Danay, a medical student, and her son -- a 3-year-old named Yeison he had once thought, hoped, was his -- were living.
"Your girl ain't different," HUGHES the curmudgeon often wrote on the Cuba chatline to lovesick men. "I've paid for every piece of knowledge I have about Cuba and the Cubans."
And he had paid for the blood test that determined he wasn't Yeison's father, but still they dined with him every night during his last time in Cuba and he adored the boy. He'd been determined to visit Cuba because he had a significant amount of money he wanted to give Danay to build herself a home.
Back in Toronto, he was still making plans. He was going to his sister's cottage in Gimli at the end of August and see his three adult nephews there.
On Friday July 21, MEREDITH- JONES took him for a chemotherapy session and then back to his home, where HUGHES sat on the kitchen stool and swapped recipes with MEREDITH- JONES' wife. He bragged of drinking half a bottle of wine, although MEREDITH- JONES said it was only a few sips, and the two Friends talked about philosophy, Friendship and their Friends on the way home. MEREDITH- JONES watched him walk into his condo building.
The next morning HUGHES called him. "Jones-y, I'm in trouble," he said. MEREDITH- JONES raced over, but HUGHES wanted to wait it out, an hour, before calling for help. After 45 minutes, he allowed MEREDITH- JONES to call 911. "Don't make it a big deal," he ordered.
When more than a half dozen firefighters, paramedics and ambulance people responded to his call, HUGHES turned to his friend and said, "You idiot."
His sister and husband flew in from Winnipeg, KAY and MEREDITH- JONES, their wives and other Friends hovered by HUGHES' bedside, massaging his legs. HUGHES ran marathons in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and in 2000, five decades, and he used to say he was aiming for six.
"He was treating it like a marathon. He didn't want to go," said MEREDITH- JONES. "He kept saying 'Okay.' Every few seconds. 'Okay.' The way marathoners do to get themselves to the end."
It came Sunday, July 23, at about 5 p.m., after MEREDITH- JONES told HUGHES: " You can go now."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-10-12 published
Chef who saved lives
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
When Fernand BOULANGER achieved his dream and opened his own restaurant, he also opened a lot of Torontonians' minds -- and their food palates.
They may have had to drive up the 400 and turn off at the Canada Wonderland exit to get there, but for 11 years starting in 1977, the Auberge Maple Inn, a traditional French restaurant in an old whitewashed house next door to an airport, was the sine qua non in continental dining.
Customers came from nearby Magna Corp. -- and from Belgium and Germany -- because the $29.95 weekend prix fixe dining here was a gastronomic and theatrical experience. It could start with the "sabred champagne" -- BOULANGER had taught his staff to uncork the champagne bottle in the same manner as Napoleon by hitting the neck of the bottle with the back of the sabre, cleanly removing the cork and its surrounding glass with one fine blow before pouring the bubbly with flair.
It could consist of his favourite entrée -- a Russian dish of salmon and shrimp and rice in pastry shaped as a fish and served with lobster sauce -- accompanied by a wine he had found on visits back to his homeland of France, followed by sorbet to cleanse the palate, then unlimited servings from a profusion of cheeses and a bountiful pastry tray.
Then the final flourish -- two ounces of a 50-year-old Grand Marnier bottled especially for then-Lady Diana (never let it be said that BOULANGER didn't have connections) poured into a snifter laid on its side. "You poured right to the lip of the glass," said his daughter, Liliane DE VRIES. "And it was always two ounces. We were good at it."
And the chef, BOULANGER himself, seemed to spend as much time in his 45-seat dining room as his kitchen, teasing his regulars, welcoming those new to his home -- for that is how he thought of Auberge Maple Inn -- charming everyone when he wasn't berating them about smoking or sternly telling them to taste the food before salting it.
But few of his customers knew that their genial, twinkly host had been a hero, a member of the French Resistance who spent his 20th birthday in prison and who was responsible for saving more than 200 lives in World War 2.
BOULANGER grew up in a Roman Catholic family in Annemasse, near the Swiss border, the son of a railway worker and a mother who taught him he must always share his table with others. When the war started, he joined the Red Cross working at an infirmary as a stretcher-bearer.
In a 1998 interview for the Survivors of the Shoah visual history project, he said that when he began to understand people were losing everything in the war, he realized he had to do something to help even though he was living in German- and Italian-occupied France.
He joined the Resistance to help smuggle people across the border. Often he would meet them at the train station, then walk them through town to the cemetery. He would give them flowers so they would look as if they were grieving relatives visiting a gravesite, then slip them false identification papers as they crossed the border through a hole in the barbed-wire fence.
Other times he would escort people to the river, where he would have boards ready for them to cross the shallow water. Later, there were safe homes where families could rest before fleeing into the night, and a monastery run by a sympathetic priest -- 10 places in all, from where people could be smuggled to safety.
In the ensuing years, grateful survivors wrote him notes of thanks. In 1993, eight trees were planted in Israel in his honour on his 70th birthday, in recognition of the help he gave Jews.
But in that 1998 Shoah interview, BOULANGER was adamant that he helped anybody who was a victim of the Germans, not only Jews. "I was helping people. I never made a distinction."
He was arrested in 1943, handcuffed, beaten for three days, given no food or drink and kept in solitary confinement. He turned 20 on August 15 while in jail, but a month later escaped by bribing a guard with a watch. He hopped a train and rode it for as long as he could without getting caught, then walked 48 kilometres by night, leaping into ditches with every passing vehicle to get back to his hometown.
After the war, he worked for two more years in espionage before attending a cooking school in Geneva. He had met Marie-Thérèse in France, the woman he would later marry, but nevertheless moved to Morocco, where he worked for 12 years. In 1957, the couple reunited and emigrated to Montreal, where she taught French and he worked as a salesman.
"He was always cooking," recalled DE VRIES, who -- like her mother doesn't cook. BOULANGER always had lunch ready for DE VRIES and her brother, Dominique, now a teacher and farmer in Western Canada. The family moved to Toronto in 1973, where BOULANGER opened Mont Blanc Patisserie Franco-Suisse in a small mall near Yonge St. and York Mills Rd. "We were quite hidden," said DE VRIES. " I'm surprised people found us."
He soon expanded, opening the successful and busy Chez Boulanger Pastry Shop in the Yonge and Summerhill area before finding the rural property outside Toronto where he located Auberge Maple Inn. "I think he had always been in search of a restaurant," his daughter said.
He was in hospital recuperating from a bout of food poisoning on New Year's Eve 1988, the last day dinner was served at the restaurant. "For a man who was really healthy, all of a sudden he started to get really sick after the restaurant closed," DE VRIES said.
He spent his retirement doing some catering, helping out at the food bank, teaching schoolchildren to cook. He was 82 when he died June 17, having requested no funeral or ceremony because, as he told his wife and daughter, he had "no regrets."
But on what would have been his 83rd birthday on August 15, his family and Friends gathered at The Manor, an attractive old house much like the one where he had been so happy cooking for so many years, to honour him -- and to pass along to everyone there his beloved collection of cookbooks.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-11-02 published
Lindalee TRACEY, 49: Documentarian
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
The first film Lindalee TRACEY made was very personal, extremely powerful and damned good. Her quest to find her father, Abby, who left his family when she was an infant for a life as a rubbie on the mean streets of Ottawa, was nominated for a Genie, in no small part because of the brave filmmaking of its final scene.
"I came close so many times to following you into the abyss," she narrated in Abby, I Hardly Knew Ya (1995) as she kneeled by the grave of a man reduced to spiking his morning orange juice with shaving lotion by the time he died at 36 -- her age then, in '93.
"I have a son, " she said, tears slipping down the curves of her open, suddenly vulnerable face as she tenderly offered up a photo of a beautiful, hopeful young boy as if there were someone there that day to receive it. Then -- rage and a howl, from the heart, from the gut. "You don't deserve pity," she snarled at the headstone. "You make me very mad, Al -- bert."
"Nobody can watch that scene and not leave a changed person," said her friend Bernie Farber, head of the Canadian Jewish Congress. They met when the writer/producer/director was filming Hearts of Hate, a documentary about the Canadian white supremacist movement.
"I have worked with many documentarians, and many operated literally behind the camera," Farber said. "Lindalee operated in front of the camera. She got into the subject, she explored, she pushed, she pulled, and she was so natural it was as if you were speaking to your favourite person. You wanted to talk to Lindalee TRACEY. She absorbed everything and she had those eyes that just consumed you."
Being interviewed by her was like running a marathon, Farber said. "You let everything out."
But then again, so did she.
"There was never anything guarded about Lindalee," said Peter RAYMONT, her husband and partner in White Pine Pictures. Together they made scores of award-winning documentaries, videos and television series, all with a social justice bent, including the 26-part documentary television series A Scattering of Seeds, for which TRACEY also wrote the book and a website, and Shake Hands with The Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire. The Border, a television pilot that sprang from their 2002 film The Undefended Border, wrapped a few days after TRACEY died October 19, at 49, of breast cancer.
Typical was her last interview, given to POV (Point of View) magazine. It appeared in late September, just as she was entering hospital. "She was so candid in it, talking about being upset by wrongs in the past," said RAYMONT. " But that's who she was. F -- - it, she'd say. Tell the truth. Don't be careful."
Her truth was, she had once been a stripper -- and had loved it. Her single mother had supported TRACEY and her brother on a government clerk's pay.
"She was poor so her children wouldn't have to be," TRACEY wrote in the introduction to her book about Canada's poor, On The Edge. "Four small rooms above a diner on Clyde Avenue, a gash of gravel on a hump of clanking industry. People were supposed to work here, not live or raise families."
By 16, she had left home and was stripping as Fonda Peters in Montreal. "I pull my bra off quickly, almost imperceptibly, sneaking into my nakedness. It is almost beside the point. The audience begins to blur now as I go furiously into myself, feeling every tendon stretch, every searing breath, and the air on my wet skin," she wrote in her 1997 memoir Growing Up Naked. "Her routines were almost slapstick," said her friend Lynn CUNNINGHAM. " She would go out with a pair of scissors and cut off a guy's tie." She was runner-up for Miss Nude Canada and the impetus behind Tits for Tots, reportedly a wildly successful stripping fundraiser for the Montreal Children's Hospital.
She was featured in Bonnie Sherr Klein's National Film Board documentary Not A Love Story: A Film About Pornography and remained furious about what she perceived to be the film's exploitation of her colleagues and their profession. "I saw (stripping) change from this wonderful carnival to a source of awfulness and exploitation," she told POV.
Nevertheless, she went to work in media, as a host on a Montreal television show, later moving to host and co-produce a Montreal radio program. She came to Toronto to work on As It Happens. A habitual multitasker, she began trolling Toronto magazine editors seeking assignments. That's how she met CUNNINGHAM, then with Toronto Life. "We hit it off almost immediately. She was really engaging, with a wicked sense of humour, and never shied away from being a trifle outrageous." CUNNINGHAM edited TRACEY's first story for Toronto Life about migrant workers. Uncounted Canadians won just about every major journalism award in 1991.
"Lindalee was hanging out under bridges in Buffalo and getting to know the illegal community in Toronto," said RAYMONT. It was the beginning of their shared preoccupation with what he calls "the real people." She was always stopping and chatting with homeless people -- sitting right down on the curb and asking them about their lives. Every Christmas Eve she made up care packages -- cookies, cash, a card saying she cared -- wrapped them in a kerchief, tied them with string and took son Liam in the car to dole them out. "We'd do it every Christmas and Liam would be embarrassed, but in the end he was extremely proud of her," RAYMONT said.
TRACEY was treated for breast cancer in 2001. She made three more films -- Burlesque (through Magnolia Movies, a company she established for herself), Bhopal: The Search for Justice and a film about Women's College Hospital -- before the cancer came back in the fall of 2003.
She tried many alternative therapies, including one at a Tijuana clinic, before she was prescribed Herceptin, a new cancer fighter. "She had this amazing comeback," said CUNNINGHAM. Her pain was gone and, triumphant, she and member of Parliament Carolyn Bennett lobbied Health Minister George Smitherman to make the drug available under Ontario Health Insurance Plan. (He did.) "She felt wonderful she thought: 'I'm clear. I'm going to live as long as anybody else,'" RAYMONT said. "Then the headaches started."
By September she was in Princess Margaret's palliative care unit. Her room became a place of music and hope as RAYMONT and Friends brought their guitars to her bedside. "Delta Dawn." "City of New Orleans."
The night before she died, after everyone had gone, RAYMONT told her he'd seen that day's rushes of The Border, their pilot. RAYMONT told her they looked great, that the show was going to be a success. And she smiled. That was her last communication. "She's such a powerful life force, and part of me thought she will survive somehow."
"I think many of us will be talking of her in the present tense for a long time," Farber said.
RAYMONT will be in South America next month, starting a new documentary about Chilean writer/activist Ariel Dorfman. "To honour her," he said.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-11-16 published
Raziel GERSHATER, 67: Radiologist
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
When the doctor was dancing the tango, his eyes were closed, his concentration intense and complete and joyous, his smile contemplative.
"The hyper attention, that look on his face, it was really extraordinary to watch, like a moving meditation," said long-time friend Bernie SCHIFF, a former professor and until recently, publisher of The Walrus magazine.
And so very much like the way radiologist Raziel GERSHATER, 67, conducted his entire life.
His partner was his wife, Jeanne. "She was the dancer," SCHIFF noted, "but Raziel was the passionate tango scholar."
Two years ago, after GERSHATER had been operated on for the first reoccurrence of his bladder cancer, the couple signed up for a tango tour in Buenos Aires, dancing every day for 10 days. He had always loved music, buying his first classical recording at age 13, never missing a tango performance in Toronto, but this was a reaffirmation for him. Life had not been easy since the unexplained death in 1999 of his only son, David, in Addis Ababa.
"It was his greatest tragedy. He never transcended it but he was a big enough man to encompass it," said his friend, oncologist Mark GREENBERG. " For a year or more he was raging against it, but eventually in time allowing love and life back into a David-less world."
"He wore that tragedy in his body, I think," said SCHIFF. " Inside he may have felt he wanted to give up but he had a family and he had Friends and he persisted in style. Going out dancing in Buenos Aires is hardly a defeated person."
The GERSHATERs had taken up the tango only a few years ago. They preferred the Argentinian version, classical, formal, elegant, complex. And they were good, very good, at it. "They were learners but there were moments they were magical to watch," SCHIFF said.
But then GERSHATER was very good at everything he did.
"Not just competency," said GREENBERG. " Mastery. There was nothing he did that he didn't know everything there was to know."
Squash? " The racquet grew out of his hand," GREENBERG said. Tennis? He was a regular at Mayfair West, three times a week, for two-hour sessions starting at 6 a.m. -- and his backhand was gorgeous. He owned a collection of videos of every major tennis match. Skiing? South African-born and raised, GERSHATER took it up after watching Jean-Claude Killy storm the 1968 Olympics. He took lessons, bought and studied videos and was soon conquering double Black Diamond hills.
"He took great pleasure in doing things well," said his wife.
Passionate about his profession, he was chief radiologist at North York General Hospital for 20 of his 35 years there and the man responsible for first introducing three-dimensional imaging and a computerized patient archiving and communicating system technology previously found in only a few teaching hospitals into community hospitals.
"He was a visionary, so aggressive in acquiring new technology, sometimes even before the teaching hospitals," said Hassan DEIF, a radiologist who worked with him at the hospital and in their private practice for 25 years.
"He was a broader thinker who was trying to prove a point that Magnetic Resonance Imaging was a mainstream technology that should be in a community hospital," said Ontario Association of Radiologists executive director Ray FOLEY. " Today that's ho-hum, but 12 years ago this was almost revolutionary."
GERSHATER took his scholarly journals to bed with him at night and would sit on the deck at his cottage reading three medical books at a time.
"In radiology you have to know everything about the whole body and what procedures have been done and what should be done. It's very inclusive. His career suited him," said Jeanne.
His daughters were married and also successful in their careers Tal GERSHATER is a high school math teacher and Elize GERSHATER a doctor who decided to follow in his footsteps, much to his delight, and enrol in a radiology residency.
His children were always his priority.
"He always told us we were the most important and that we could call him any time at work. So we did," Tal recalled.
He was, she added, a confidante to many.
GERSHATER had everything, it seems -- except an explanation for his son David's death.
The 10 officials who met them at the airport back in '99 in Ethiopia told them their son had jumped from his hotel room and deflected all their questions. But nothing felt right about their conclusion that their son had been suicidal and unstable. It turned out it hadn't happened at the hotel where their son had been staying, but instead at a rooftop bar, where, they learned, some journalists were said to have been pushed to their deaths, although the official version was they, too, had jumped. In fact, it was known in Ethiopia as an "execution post," Jeanne said.
David GERSHATER was 31, a freelance writer and social activist, a young man with a probing intellect but scattered interests who had never really found a place or profession to stick to. He was researching, seeking the truth about aspects of the war in Eritrea and the floppy disk containing his writings had been stolen from his backpack a few days before his death. His father had always wanted to know what had really gone on.
A year after his son died, GERSHATER was diagnosed with the bladder cancer that eventually killed him.
He worked until the beginning of this year. By the summer he was very weak, but he was determined to live to meet Tal's first child and his second grandchild.
"He kept my due date as a mantra and made it to meet my son David, and even managed to come out to the hospital the day the baby was born," she recalled.
"Even though my Dad could barely get out of bed, he somehow found the strength that day to get down the stairs and into a cab to come and see us. His smile that day lit up our hearts."
Three weeks later, on Sept.2, he died at home, listening to a new recording of a piano concerto by Mozart.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-11-23 published
Tough and cheerful on a medical marathon
Hiked in Peru with brain tumour Never stopped to ask, 'Why me?'
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
Because it was her favourite colour, Kate BARNES' family put on orange toques to walk five kilometres last month, on the day of the Toronto Marathon. They were walking to support the Gerry and Nancy Pencer Brain Tumor Centre at Princess Margaret Hospital, as were many others. But, yes, they stood out in that crowd that day -- "just like Kate, who always got noticed," said her sister, Jen NOLAN.
And they felt wonderful.
Policemen gave them the thumbs up, pedestrians waved. There were cheers whenever anyone crossed the finish line at Queen's Park.
"There were 5,000 people walking and they all knew someone with cancer," said Brian LINDSAY, her stepfather.
"It was very joyful," said her mother, Jane LINDSAY.
"You felt a lot less alone," said her brother, John BARNES, who vows to jog the course next year.
The walk took them one hour and nine minutes -- a short journey compared to the one taken by BARNES in the 10 years between her diagnosis and death on January 25 from a brain tumour.
Their Katy had kept them comforted with her toughness, her honesty and her wisecracks. She would introduce herself to people quite cheerfully as the BT girl, as in brain tumour, lest anyone not know how to acknowledge or refer to her reality. When told she had only a short while to live, she replied: "Sh -- happens." She'd joke about opening a Tim Hortons -- her source for hot chocolate -- on the other side, especially with the doctor who was hooked on Starbucks.
But it was only after October 15 this year, when they had walked her walk, that her family was ready to tell her story.
Born in Montreal, brought up in Lorne Park, BARNES was off to see the world as soon as she could. After finishing school, she left for nine months and came home three years later. She visited Australia, New Zealand, London, Indonesia, Ethiopia, breaking up her travels only once, in typical dramatic fashion, to appear on her mother's doorstep in a surprise visit on Christmas Day.
And everywhere, she made good Friends. Outgoing and chatty, genuine and friendly, it was her gift.
Almost 11 years ago, when she did come home to Canada, she got a job as traffic controller for the television station run by Torstar Media Group and started taking flying lessons at Toronto Island Airport. Six months later, in May 1996, BARNES was taking the ferry back from the airport after one of her first solo flights when she had a seizure and was rushed to hospital. Medical experts are still mystified about what causes brain tumours. Hers came out of the proverbial blue.
"Everything crashed with that," said her mother. "She lost her dream."
But not her spunk.
Doctors operated right away; after six weeks of radiation, her gorgeous, wild, untamed curls fell out and she had to move home to be looked after by her mother and stepfather. There would be many more challenges to come, but not once did her family see her cry. They never even heard her say, "Why me?"
"But she did say, 'Goddammit, I'm a Leo and it's not going to beat me,'" Brian LINDSAY said.
She flew to Australia to be at a friend's wedding, dyed her cropped hair bleach-blond, and was back at work by February 1997. She was being monitored, going for an Magnetic Resonance Image every six months. "She would get very anxious before every Magnetic Resonance Image," recalled her sister, but for four wonderful years she was in remission.
Then the Magnetic Resonance Image picked up something -- the tumour was growing again. Once again, she was rushed into surgery, then put on a pharmaceutical clinical trial and monitored monthly. When she was able, she went back to work, moved back downtown, and decided to hike the Inca trail in Peru. Her doctor made her promise she would tell her group leader about her tumour and her medication. On the last morning of the four-day hike, she burst into tears.
"It made me realize I can do what I need to do. I can do what I want to do. Yes, I have a brain tumour and yes, I take Dilantin on a daily basis. But I took care to prepare myself to be as strong as possible," she wrote in an article published by the Pencer Brain Tumor Centre. "It was the pride I felt when I walked through the Inca trail and through the Sun Gate that has given me the strength to move on with my life."
She and her sister got in a trip to Ecuador, the Amazon and the Galapagos -- where BARNES became very vocal when she discovered the litter left by the party of the Ecuadoran president also visiting the island, NOLAN recalled -- and BARNES was bridesmaid at NOLAN's wedding in the summer of 2004.
Then, that September, BARNES had to undergo more emergency surgery. A month later, after she demanded the truth, her doctor told her she had months, possibly a year, left to live.
"It was a wonderful year for all of us," said her mother.
There were movie nights, afternoons in the garden, a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls, walks with her mother and long talks with LINDSAY, whom her mother married two years after BARNES' father died when she was 16. "We were buddies," LINDSAY said.
In May 2005, she visited family in England and Ireland -- a hard trip because everyone knew they were saying goodbye to her. By October she was ready to go into palliative care -- in fact, after she and Brian LINDSAY visited it, she chose Ian Anderson House in Oakville.
She was 35 and she had accepted her death. "She made it so easy for us," said her admiring mother. BARNES started a webpage to keep in touch with her Friends around the world. She was still irrepressible. "We are almost at the end of October… time is flying by when having fun?" she wrote October 19. "I am still having trouble speaking, tired or not. Can I blame it on the colder weather? I smirk!"
She planned her party -- as she called her funeral wake -- right down to the quesadillas she wanted served, and told Maureen DANIELS, co-ordinator at the Pencer Brain Tumor Centre, that she wanted to live until Christmas. She wanted her recipe for pancakes and real maple syrup served up Christmas morning, and that is what her family made happen for her at Anderson House.
But she also told DANIELS she would be ready to die after that.
"'My Dad's waiting for me and we've got plenty to talk about,' she told me," DANIELS said. "We see upwards of 300 people with newly diagnosed brain tumours a year here, but she was pretty amazing. It is hard to be positive and realistic at the same time, but she was."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-11-30 published
Scarborough's first policewoman'feisty'
A widow at 38, she worked to support her children as part of Toronto's so-called 'Powder Puff Patrol'
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
Some smart aleck once thought Evelyn Morden JOHNSTON was driving too slowly. He was right on her tail as she proceeded sedately at precisely the speed limit along a Scarborough side street, before he floored it, crossed the centre line and cut in front of her. Then he slowed right down. He no doubt thought he was giving the little old lady a well-deserved taste of her own medicine and he couldn't have been more wrong.
Deftly and swiftly she overtook him and blocked his way with her car, forcing him to stop. Then she coolly got out and arrested him.
He had just met his match -- and Scarborough's first policewoman.
JOHNSTON had worked stakeouts, undercover, in the youth and women's bureaus. She'd taken the sharpshooting medal at police college. A trim five-foot-one, she was unarmed when she single-handledly arrested a young man for flashing in a public park.
Her granddaughter, Karen BOUCHER, grew up admiring her unconventional Nana. "She was very much a trailblazer, feisty, almost unstoppable."
She'd been a traditional wife and mother until 1950, when her husband, Howard MORDEN, was killed in a car crash on Sammon Ave. in Toronto's east end. A young man with a car full of girls had run a stop sign and smashed into their car. MORDEN put his arm out to hold back his wife and was thrown out of the car, which rolled on him.
At 38, she was left with two children -- Shirley, 21, and Fraser, 19. Friends urged her to find work. She applied for the job of secretary to Scarborough's police chief, got it and was soon conscripted to frisk and escort women prisoners.
Finally her chief told her she was doing the work of a policewoman so why not become one.
"I'm too old," she told her daughter.
"I'll help you study," Shirley replied. "We'd sit at the kitchen table and I would ask her questions from her books." In 1960 MORDEN graduated at the top of her class. She was 50 years old and went back to work at Scarborough's 41 Division in what was then the Metro Toronto Police force.
"I was always worried about her," said her daughter. "Once she phoned and was whispering. She said she was at a stakeout down by the waterfront. I think it was a drug bust. I was scared to death." Usually though, her workday was more routine, even deskbound.
Women officers were still a rarity. The first two had joined Toronto's force in 1913, and their numbers had yet to top 50 when MORDEN joined. When she retired in 1974, there were 63 policewomen and 3,504 male constables. It wasn't until 1975 that women joined the rank and file. Their rank was changed to police constable and they were allowed to carry a gun, where before they'd carried a leather baton in their purse and wore a navy serge jacket, skirt, lisle stockings, white gloves and perky hat.
"In those days women were in very few beats," said Gina BELLAMY, who joined about a decade after MORDEN. " They directed traffic between Eaton's and Simpsons and patrolled Union Station ticketing illegally parked cars."
The policewomen's bureau was located in the old 13 Division station at Markham and London Sts., the only division that housed women overnight. The division had one car, known as WB1, and the policewomen were responsible for handling wayward members of their sex.
But on March 5, 1962, an American documentary was televised across North America. It was called the Powder Puff Patrol and it was all about Toronto's policewomen. The logo was a gun, lipstick and compact. There were shots of policewomen powdering their noses and hovering over typewriters.
MORDEN was featured going undercover as a bag lady, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her ill-fitting coat, with stockings furled at her ankles, shopping bags and a kerchief over a wig. Bureau chief Sgt. Fern ALEXANDER told the cameras MORDEN was "always efficient and always proper" but "just ham enough to be loving" going undercover.
The show's enthusiastic announcer hailed every policewoman's patience and pronounced them "here to stay," while the police chief of the time, James MacKEY, declared they were "excellent public relations officers for our city."
For years the Toronto force used the film for recruiting. "[The film] is an absolute howl," said BELLAMY, who hails the women as true pioneers. Her former husband worked with MORDEN. " Bernie always said that if Ev did a (police) check then it would be done perfectly."
MORDEN worked in the complaints bureau in her final years on the force. She retired in 1974 at 64, having married Insp. Walter JOHNSTON. They met while both worked at 41 Division; JOHNSTON moved to Oshawa to become police chief, later returning to Toronto when he was nominated for the Police Commission. They moved to Mississauga. Eight years later when JOHNSTON died of cancer, she moved to Beaverton near her daughter and her family.
At 90, she was still out shovelling snow. "You could never tell Nana not to do something," said BOUCHER with a laugh.
She died August 15 at age 95.
She had requested a police chaplain at her funeral, and there were also two uniformed police officers as honour guard and a Toronto Police piper. Later, when Shirley was going through her mother's personal effects, she discovered that Toronto Policewoman #5518 was still an active member of the police revolver club.

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-12-14 published
Used bookseller was a friend to customers
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲▼ Writer▲▼
One of the bonuses of living in a big city is the small bookstore.
The very small used bookstore.
The kind where the aisles are narrow, book-lined shelves reach from floor to ceiling, and handwritten notes denote whether they are history, romance, mystery or for children.
The kind of place where there are always boxes of more books, spine up, on every available surface waiting for sorting.
The kind Olive NAVIS ran for 32 years.
First on Yonge St. (near Lawrence Ave.), then on Avenue Rd., the Handy Book Exchange attracted customers from near and far, and that is more than a cliché. NAVIS had regulars from the United States, North Bay and the Beach. Most became her Friends. Long before there were coffee bars on every corner, her coffee pot was always on.
She had treats for all the dogs. One customer once tried to avoid the bookstore -- she was in a hurry that particular day -- and crossed the street. But her dog balked and refused to move. The woman had to cross back over Avenue Rd. and stop at the store to appease her pet.
There are at least 10,000 books in the store -- although NAVIS's son, Gord, believes there are probably more like 20,000 to 30,000 books when you count those in the basement.
Nothing was or is computerized -- NAVIS used to keep track of her books in her head or in a series of small pads of paper in which she would record the author's name, every book he or she'd written and the number of copies she had.
Her good friend Carole NELLES, who has run the store during the past couple of years when NAVIS has been too ill to come in, used to call her at home three times a day, on the pretext of locating a book.
"I did it to keep her part of it," NELLES said. "Say someone wanted Leon Uris's Trinity, she'd say 'Go downstairs, walk straight to the bathroom, turn left at the boxes. Lift the top box and it's there.' She was always right."
NAVIS, the mother of two sons, always referred to NELLES as the daughter she never had. There was real love between the two, which started when they bonded over books and cigarettes smoked by the back door and grew when NELLES, a nurse working in London, Ontario, began spending more and more time in the bookstore when she was back in Toronto on her days off.
Together they cleaned up the books -- NAVIS called it their "spit and polish" day -- fixing broken spines with coloured magic markers, coating the covers with Mylar so they shone once more. "It was a lot of fun," NELLES recalled. "It's amazing what you can do."
NAVIS was fun, too. She kept a favourite cartoon near the cash "Going into a bookstore and buying one book is like going to McDonald's and buying one French fry." She collected jokes, filling 10 scrapbooks with them. She would foist copies of jokes on her customers.
She also handed out small notebooks, telling her customers to write down every book they read to avoid duplications.
"I was the bane of Olive's existence," said Enid RICHARDSON. "She would explain to me -- over and over -- that when books came out in their second printing, often their covers were different colours. 'Enid, this is one you have already read,' she would say. She gave me two notebooks to write my books down. I never used them."
For the last few years she was in the store, she refused to let RICHARDSON pay for books. RICHARDSON and her late husband, Jack, often drove her home from her shop -- NAVIS loathed using taxis and could never understand why a short trip from the store to Wanless Crescent could cost $7.
And until ill health stopped her, NAVIS was always at her store. It was officially closed Mondays, but she would be there anyway working on inventory. She absolutely loved being there. After her husband Borden died in 2001, her home was just a place to sleep. The store was always her real home.
Olive CHABAN was born and raised in Winnipeg. She married Borden NAVIS, a hometown Ukrainian boy and talented graphic artist in Winnipeg in 1938 and the two moved to Toronto. Sons Gord and Al were born 11 years apart; the family always lived with Borden's parents. Father and son owned the house jointly, but it was NAVIS's mother-in-law, whom neighbourhood kids called Queen Mary, who ruled it.
"My mother came from an abusive home -- so she never fought and maybe had one or two confrontations with my Dad during all those years," Gord NAVIS recalled. And so she was always polite to her mother-in-law, even going home to make lunch for her every day she worked at the bookstore.
NAVIS worked for a Yonge St. bookstore, then for Simpson's department store variously as a model, white-gloved elevator attendant, and in their book section. No one in the family is too sure about when she went to work for Tom MERCHANT, who owned the Handy Book Exchange on Yonge St. near their home.
She took over the store in 1974 after MERCHANT died. NELLES said she had been in the process of buying the business with weekly payments culled from the sale of handicrafts -- crocheted toilet paper covers and the like -- she made and sold in the store.
"It was a cute little store, a half-width store," recalled Gord NAVIS, and it thrived under the combination of NAVIS's personality, her knowledge of books and her coffee pot.
The family opened up the second location on Avenue Rd. in 1982 for son Al to operate. Ten years later, she moved into that store, when Al started a rare book and first edition business in Thornhill.
She was always happy in her store. She had a knack for finding just the right book -- especially for younger readers, whom she doted on. That doesn't mean she made money -- far from it, possibly because she was so generous about the credit she gave people for the used books they brought her.
"With Ollie, some customers brought 10 cartons of books. She'd give a credit of $1 per paperback. One man had a credit for $250," NELLES said.
Her eyesight began failing -- she developed cataracts -- but NAVIS kept going to the store until 2003, when she suffered an accidental fall at home. She died early on November 9 at age 89. NELLES opened the store that day in her honour. Her picture is still in the window and by the cash is a book for customers to sign. Many have.
"You gave me a googly-eyed pencil," wrote one young reader. "You were the first friend I made when I moved here," wrote another. And one person spoke for hundreds of customers when he wrote: "You were a touchstone in my reading life."

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DUNPHY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-12-21 published
Marion WEYER, 87: A secret life
Marion WEYER joined the Royal Air Force and served in Kingston for three years during World War 2.
By Catherine DUNPHY, Obituary▲ Writer▲
Marion WEYER had a secret. Only a few people knew it; no one else suspected it.
The 25-year Imperial Oil employee -- an accounting clerk, the kind of employee considered the bedrock of a company -- retired in 1982 with a pension based on an annual salary of $22,000.
Hers seemed an ordinary life: WEYER was single, always well turned out, and happy and independent in her Thorncliffe Park apartment. She was something of a hotshot in Esso's bowling league for retirees, a crossword puzzle aficionado, an avid reader and for years drove about town in a Volkswagen Beetle. She was a handsome woman, poised and tall with a proud carriage.
Her secret was born September 29, 1956, when WEYER was 37. It was a common enough story of that straitlaced time -- a hushed, hidden pregnancy, because the father of Mary Ann Constance was WEYER's boss, a man 10 years her junior on his way up who was single but had no intention of marrying her.
Social history records kept by the Catholic children's aid only hint at WEYER's anguish: "Birth mother was very concerned about the baby and took several months to make up her mind to place an adoption. She visited the baby regularly and really wanted to keep her but eventually said it was not possible. She kept in touch with the birth father and possibly hoped for marriage. He was not interested and told her she should place her for adoption."
In those days -- just 50 years ago -- the birth mother had to appear in court and physically hand the baby over to the adoptive parents. It was the saddest day in WEYER's life -- and she went through it alone.
"As far as I know, my dad and Uncle Jack would have done nothing but give her hell, but I think she thought she was letting the family down. Fifty years ago, this was something terrible," said Joan WEYER, a mother of eight who kept her aunt's secret for close to 40 years.
They had been sitting together in the dining room of the Peterborough home of Jack WEYER, Marion's eldest brother, the family patriarch after the death of their Irish Catholic parents, when Joan's two little girls came running in from the backyard and climbed up onto both women's laps. "[Marion] said to me, 'You know, Joanie, I had a little girl' and I didn't know what she meant. I thought she meant she had passed away, but then she said she had given her up for adoption."
Marion WEYER was the baby in a family with three protective older brothers, growing up in a town where the girls coming home from convent school had to walk on the opposite side of the street from the boys. She left Peterborough when she joined the Royal Air Force, and served in Kingston for three years before taking a job in a finance company after the war.
It was there she met her child's father, and it was then that her family went three years without seeing her. The family assumed she was busy with her life in Toronto. Her goddaughter and niece, Jeanne D'ERAMO, who is Joan WEYER's sister, often spent a week in the summer with her glamorous aunt. "We were very close," D'ERAMO said.
But she was shocked the day in 1990 when she dropped by her aunt's home. "As soon as I opened the door, she could hardly wait to tell me the news," D'ERAMO recalled. "Connie had sent her a note. She showed me her photo. I was amazed." It was the only time WEYER opened up about her daughter.
Connie REEVE had registered with the adoption agency to locate her birth mother in 1982 while still an articling law student. At that time, both parties had to register before the agency would turn over information, and WEYER hadn't registered. In 1990, after the disclosure rules were loosened, REEVE was told her birth mother's name.
They exchanged notes and photos. Then, on April 18, REEVE phoned WEYER. They met for lunch at the Inn on the Park -- it was awkward and fascinating, REEVE recalled. She didn't look like her birth mother -- different height, build and eye colour. "It is strangers getting to know one another," she said.
REEVE had been raised as one of three adopted children in a loving family in Thornhill. "There are adoptees who are resentful," she said. "I never felt that. I felt welcomed and special. I never had to get over feelings of abandonment. Marion visited me (as a baby). It's not like I didn't have someone to care for me."
They forged a Friendship, phoning, going out to dinner, spending every Christmas Eve together. WEYER refused to come to the Christmas celebrations of REEVE's adoptive family, but the two mothers once met over lunch. REEVE's adoptive mother had made a photo book for WEYER, who had only one 1958 photo of her daughter.
But WEYER was as private with REEVE as with her own family. She ducked the issue when REEVE asked if she would tell her family about her. As for REEVE's birth father, WEYER said she cut any contact -- and cut his likeness out of her photos -- when he refused to see his baby. Only after knowing REEVE for five years did she tell her his name.
"Marion never expressed her emotions in plain language," REEVE said, "but she wanted to keep contact with me."
It was REEVE who found WEYER collapsed in her apartment this fall after being unable to reach her by phone. And it was REEVE who was with her the night before she died in hospital of a bleeding gastric ulcer November 2, at age 87. The nurses said WEYER's heartbeat always improved when REEVE visited.
REEVE had to go through WEYER's phone book to locate the family to tell them about the death. Two weeks after WEYER died, many of them met REEVE for the first time at a Peterborough cemetery.
"I would have introduced her to every relative I have," said Joan WEYER. " She is certainly someone to be proud of."
"Her family were welcoming and seemed really nice. I don't know why she wouldn't have told them all," said REEVE.
In clearing out WEYER's effects, she discovered Marion had kept every card from the bouquets REEVE had sent for the past 15 Mother's Days.
"That's the whole thing about secrets. They get bigger and bigger over time."

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