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Memories of My DadBy JoanLightfoot
It is hard to express memories of someone who has been so close to you for almost fifty-nine years and know where to start. Dad was a dreamer, poet, athlete, music aficionado,historian, cook, devoted husband, and loving father.My first memories are of our mountainside home on Spring Road where we moved whenI was only one year old. It was a wonderful place for us kids to grow up. I remember thehouse before Dad built the addition; it was small but it must have seemed large enoughwhen Dad was digging out the basement with pick and shovel and hauling out the dirtwith a wheelbarrow. We had chemical toilet in a lean-to at the back door. Mom was thegardener, but Dad took credit for the lush row of raspberries beside the driveway wherehe buried the contents of the toilet. We had a large twin-trunked maple tree beside our house, which provided us with hours of play. When the tree had to be cut down in 1977,he made bookends for his three children from the maple’s wood with the following poemon the back:
ODE TO OUR TWIN MAPLES  From summer sun we sheltered you In spring and fall you climbed us too And now, alas, we are no more As rot appeared from branch to core And then we served to warm your hidesWith a little left for these besides.
I do not remember my Dad as a musician but he loved to listen to classical music and hada large collection of records, which he played on the hifi that he made from a kit. In later years Dad learned to play a small organ and he loved to play his harmonica by ear.
 
I knew Dad had been a cyclist as a young man and heard stories of marathon bike racesfrom Edmonton to Jasper. When I finally grew enough to have the 2 x 4 blocks removedfrom my pedals I had to take a driver’s test before I could ride the bike to school. Dad borrowed one of my brothers’ bikes and we rode to Quadra Street and Saanich Roadwhere there were some newborn lambs.Dad had a real sense of history and he wanted us to know when historic events weretaking place around us. He had heard that the C.P.R. were going to be replacing the trainand old-fashioned railway cars with a glorified bus called the dayliner. On our summer holiday that year, he put us kids on the train in Victoria and he and Mom met us at thestation in Duncan so we would get a chance to ride on the “real train”. It was fifty years before I finally rode the dayliner.Another event of historical significance was the Ripple Rock explosion. Once again, onour summer vacation, we took a hike down a long slippery trail to the ocean’s edge tolook at the rock in Seymour Narrows, which was of course not visible but we couldimagine where it was. Months later, when the historic even took place (largest non-nuclear explosion in the world at that time) we could appreciate how the channel wasopened up to navigation.Vacations were important to Dad. His work in the shoe repair shop did not allow for much time off, just Sundays and Wednesday afternoons so he always made sure wewould have a week or two in August to go camping. Soon after we kids left home, Dad bought a pickup and borrowed Gord’s camper until he built a camper of his own. Thatcamper traveled many thousands of miles including a trip to Expo 67 in Montreal and atrip across Canada the first summer they were retired.I did not know Dad had a love for the water until Gord started building a boat and Dad became so interested that he helped finance the motor with the condition that he coulduse the boat too. He loved to cruise the waters off Sidney and perhaps that is when theseed was sewn for his wish to own a sailboat. Dad didn’t just dream about owning asailboat, he built one! The Berru was a 20-foot plywood sloop, which became a realityabout 1969. Mom and Dad were totally hooked on sailing for a few years and we all hadto learn the vernacular they had learned at their seamanship and navigation courses. Dad,like all boaters, got one-footitis and traded the Berru in for the Berru II, a fiberglass sloopabout four feet longer. Dad’s enthusiasm for sailing was catching and he helped buildtwin Sabots for Tom and Dennis in the early eighties.I love the smell of rubber cement! To me it brings back the memories of the many shoerepair shops in the family. I remember my Grandpa’s shop on Fort Street with its black tile front and chrome chairs in the waiting area. Dad worked with Grandpa in my earliestmemories and we sometimes met him at the shop and had supper at Johnnies Café after work. I remember the shop he and Roy Blevins owned on Broad Street with its manyemployees including Auntie Ev. He moved Arcadia Shoe Repair to Yates Street and Ican remember spending hours there on Saturdays while I waited for my piano lesson to
 
start. Dad closed the shop on Yates Street after seven years in that location and hoped to become a postman. While waiting for his name to come to the top of the list, Dadrealized that his legs might not be able to stand the walking required of a postman as hewas in his fifties by this time. He reopened Arcadia Shoe Service on Johnson Streetwhere Georgie Tong had a small shop. The one-man shop proved to be less stressful andmore profitable than having to hire employees but a large increase in rent forced him tomove once again.Arcadia Shoe Service moved to Cook Street in Fairfield about 1976 and about this timeMom joined him in the business. Fairfield was an excellent location for a shoe repair shop because many of the residents used their feet instead of cars for getting around.While on Cook Street, Mom and Dad started practicing for retirement and closed theshop every day while they took their lunch and drove to Clover Point for the view. Dadalso closed the shop all day on Mondays so they always had a weekend to enjoy their  pastimes of sailing and camping.Dad loved good food, probably because his Mom was the best cook in the world. Whilein my teens, I had to cook the weekday dinners and I was always careful to have dinner ready for the table when the car was coming up the driveway; Dad had a clock in hisstomach. One of my fond memories of Dad is Sunday mornings when he would let Momget a well-deserved sleep-in and he would cook breakfast. Dad made the best waffles andI have never been able to duplicate the special syrup he would boil up to pour on top.Food was very important to Dad and was the one thing he was able to enjoy until his lastday.I think life really began for my parents when they retired in 1979. There was no large pension but Mom and Dad had been careful with their money and owned their own homeand toys. The boat was sold soon after retirement because Dad was starting to worry thathe couldn’t move quickly enough in a crisis. After their trip to Newfoundland withAuntie Ev and Vic in the summer and fall of 1979, the truck and camper were traded infor a used motor home. I was concerned when Dad said they were going to spend their winters in Arizona that they would just go down there and vegetate. Boy, was I wrong!They left Victoria right after New Years with their bikes on the back of the motor homeand the canoe on top and they returned in the middle of March looking tanned, fit, andhappy.Auntie Ev and her husband, Vic Smith, introduced Mom and Dad to their many friends atHurricane Ridge and they made many more of their own friends from across Canada andthe United States. They made a trip across Canada visiting friends and relatives, thencontinued down through the eastern and southern States with stops to visit people in Ohioand Oregon. We met many of their winter friends when they came to visit my parents inVictoria. It was like a large international family.Mom and Dad continued to travel south in their motor home until 1989, when the motor home got traded in for an old camper van. It would have been around this time that Dadtook up his old pastime of bicycle racing. He joined the Trans Canada Cycling Club in
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