Bruce Childs (1937 - 2026)
After a period of illness, my father passed away last week. His funeral will be on Wednesday, October 28 at Mountainview Cemetery.
More details are available here.
My father was a center of calmness in a sometimes chaotic family life. He had a way of keeping calm, even in the most stressful situations.
He grew up in rural Manitoba in a small town called Gilbert Plains, just outside of Dauphin. We visited there so many times in my childhood. I still have a vivid memory of taking the bus to Winnipeg and waiting at the bus terminal for the next bus up to Dauphin, with a stop at Salisbury House for dinner.
While I didn't realize it at the time, (mostly because managing travel boredom was very hard for me as a kid) these trips were his effort to stay connected with his parents and other family back in Manitoba. This is something I struggle with sometimes, so I understand it very keenly.
Those early trips back to see family evolved into a family tradition of long summer road trips. We camped of course, since staying in hotels gets really pricey, really quickly.
In pre-GPS days we navigated either by a folded up provincial road map, acquired for free at the provincial information center that we always stopped at, or a highlighted "TripTik" (a flipbook of little maps) that we got from the CAA.
I remember being the navigator for my Dad, watching for the next interchange we are supposed to turn at. Those trips were so much fun and really set the expectations for how a vacation is meant to be done. Lots of driving. Going to museums. You rest when you sleep at night.
My Dad instilled in me a love of the outdoors. In our family, we always were hiking or taking trips.
When I was a kid, my Dad took me to the local Scout group. They quickly recruited him to be a leader. So, I spent many years trying (and failing) to learn how to tie knots. But I did successfully learn how to go backcountry camping.
I was a kid who always wanted to be inside using the computer, reading books, or playing tabletop games (though frequently on the floor because we didn't have that many good tables). But I grew up in a place with extraordinary natural beauty, and it was because of my Dad that I got to see it.
We picked wild blueberries. We had a canoe that we attached to the roof of our station wagon with the predecessor of bungee cords. Folks, it was a very intricate system. We went out to this old bridge to pick cranberries, so my Mom could make cranberry ketchup (the only kind of ketchup I would eat when I was a kid).
When I came back to Thunder Bay to finish my university degree, I discovered that my Dad was systematically listening to every single audio tape in the house. This included all the tapes I created for listening on the go in the era after CDs came out, but when I still had a Walkman. He didn't give me too much critique of my musical taste, but he did tell me he didn't re-listen to the tape that was mostly Nine Inch Nails.
As far as I know, he was still working through that project. Looking on the shelves at home, I found a bunch of collected radio dramas that he probably got from the free library at the community center.
My Dad was very into physical media - stacks of books, tapes and even records. He was also not really on the Internet. I remember asking him if he wanted to use the computer at home, and he replied that he had enough of those things at work. I think he stuck to that throughout his life.
I didn't get to see him as much as I would have liked the last few years. Travel is hard and things get in the way. I did get to have some good conversations with him in the last days. I value all the time I did get to spend with him.
Dad, I miss you. I always will.
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