Well Father’s Day has come and gone for another year. I always can’t wait to see it done and over with. Perhaps it is because of my own shortcomings as a father. Perhaps because there is always a sadness of having lost my own father when I was the young age of 15. Maybe it is a bit of both. It has been 52 years since my father died suddenly of a heart attack. It seems such a long time ago. My father was a farmer, extremely well respected within the community of Edgar/Clowes. His sudden death shook the close knit community to the core. To me he was my father. He wasn’t perfect. But no father is perfect.

One of the things I’m trying to do lately is write memories down. This article is actually part of a sermon I preached at the three churches on Father’s Day June 15, 2025. Hence the reason why I am posting it on my Church/Christian blog. My father had only a grade 7 education. He lived in the town of Collingwood and had no background in farming. During his teenage years he went and worked on his uncle’s farm just outside of Edgar. He saved and saved and was able to buy a 50 acre farm on the next concession over. The farmhouse had been abandoned from a previous owner after a tuberculosis outbreak had spread through it. The farmhouse had been repurposed as a granary by the time my father purchased the farm.

My mother and father first met at a community dance at Edgar Hall. My mother really took a liking to my father. They courted and in time got married. One of the requirements of my mother if she were to move into that abandoned farmhouse after the wedding was to not only have the house cleaned out of grain. But also to have it fumigated. My mother and father had 3 children. My sister Linda was born in 1954. My brother Allan was born in 1956. I was born in 1958. My father was quite strict with us three children. Growing up I was a bit scared of my father. Not the violent scared, but the scared of not living up to his expectations. Scared that I wasn’t good enough for him. But you have to remember, this was the 1960’s and early 1970’s until my dad passed away in 1973. Like many fathers of his generation, my father wasn’t real big on emotional expression when I was a kid. It wasn’t a language that many men learned then.

Despite never played having played hockey and in fact not even knowing how to skate, my father coached my brother’s rep team in Oro Minor Hockey. His style had a decidedly ’70’s era Soviet flavour to it. These were mostly farm kids and a smattering of non-farm kids my father was coaching. My father believed the best way to win games was to toughen them up for competition. Some of those players never knew what hit them, My father would focus on where they needed you to improve rather than praise them for what they did well. My father’s coaching aspirations was a carbon copy of life on the farm. My father really tried to build a strong work ethic with us kids. We needed toughness to survive in the world. Emphasizing the only way to get ahead in life is to work hard. We sure did work hard.

Looking back in hindsight is healthy. I am so grateful I grew up on a farm. Living on a farm, we never really took holidays. Even though there was a lot of work, we were rewarded with some family times. Usually once each year we’d go to the drive-in-theater, stock car races at Barrie Speedway (always on demolition derby night), Wasaga Beach and A&W drive-in restaurant where the waitresses hang your order on a tray on your car window. Except the A&W drive through, I kept the traditions with my own children as they grew up. Plus camping, which I never got to experience as a child.

Despite any shortcomings of my father, throughout life I’ve tried to focus on what my father had done right. In some areas, he was actually ahead of his time. Such as giving opportunities to special needs people on the farm. Remember, this was back in the 1960’s/early 1970’s. For years my father would hire temporary workers of what they used to call “trainees” from the Edgar Adult Occupational Centre. Situated just a mile up the road on a former Canadian Air Force radar station, my father was far more patient with the trainees than any of us children. Which sometimes frustrated me, but I was reminded I have a lot more opportunity than the trainees will ever have. In a time period when the word “retarded” was used frequently in normal conversation, my father refused to use the word. There was one man named Pierre Laparde, who eventually moved to near Collingwood, 50 kilometers away. Each year in June when there was lots of daylight hours he would ride his heavy steel frame Raleigh three speed bike from Collingwood to the farm to visit my father. My father would drop what he was doing and have an hour or two visit with Pierre before he had the long bike ride back to Collingwood. My father died in November. Not knowing, the next June Pierre arrived on his bike. When Pierre learned of my father’s death, he cried and cried and cried. Pierre was so broken. A concerned neighbor drove Pierre and his bicycle back to Collingwood in his pickup. Sadly a few years later as talked about in more detail in this article, Pierre was killed while riding his bike after being hit by the driver of a tractor trailer.

The second thing I’ve tried to focus on with what my father did was try to live within his means. Which means not spending more than you make. If you want something, work until you have the money and then buy it. Nowadays when it comes to houses and farms this is pretty much impossible. No one is going to save three or four million dollars to buy a farm. As much as my father wanted a tractor with a cab, he never bought one because the cab was a luxury he couldn’t afford. That has stuck with me, because I have always wanted to buy a brand new car, but could never wanted to put that kind of money out on credit.

The third thing is that my farmer really took good care of the land. Unlike the big industrial style agriculture these days where the same monoculture crop is continuously grown which depletes the soil, my father rotated his crops. Every few years he would revert it back into grass to use as hay or pasture. Not only did it give the land a rest, but having clover and alfalfa in his planting improves the soil. My father also spread manure on his land, which is a natural fertilizer. No doubt this all impacted me. Although I have never gotten into farming, I do have a deep love for gardening and nature. As I get older am becoming more and more an advocate of protecting nature.

In the Bible the word “Father” appears 1082 times. The context could be a biological father, or an ancestor or leader. It is also used metaphorically to describe God’s relationship with his people. God’s fatherhood is characterized by unconditional love. We read in 1 John 3:1, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called the children of God”. In Psalm 103 David wrote, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger,abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour His anger forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed out transgressions from us”.