Katherine and Aldo Candiano (Friends of Robert and Jody)

Entered June 12, 2016 from Toronto

Our condolences.

Cory Shubert (Friend of Roberts)

Entered June 12, 2016 from Edina, Minnesota

Susie and I send our condolences to you and your family. Hug each other a little longer and tighter...

Kathleen Walsh and Philip Kienholz (Neighbours and friends of Priya Harding and Mark Strong)

Entered June 13, 2016 from Peterborough

Our deepest condolences to you and your family on this loss of someone related so closely to you.

Cynthia Findlay, Kirk Patterson and George Patterson (Employer to Jody)

Entered June 15, 2016 from Toronto, Ontario

Jody and Family,

We wanted to express our deepest condolences for your loss. Please know that George, Kirk and myself are sending all of our love and support for you, Rob and your mother-in-law during this difficult time.

Cynthia, George and Kirk

Staff at Cynthia Findlay's (Friends and Colleagues of Jody)

Entered June 15, 2016 from Toronto, ON

Dear Jody and Family,

Please accept our deepest condolences and sympathies for your loss.
We are all thinking of you and sending both love and strength to support you in your loss.

Your Friends and Colleagues

Robert wrote this very early the Saturday morning after Ken died, and it expresses so much, so well about Dad's life and how we, his children, feel about it:

I think I can say my dad was lucky. He was raised in depression times in large family by a strong woman. He learned to thrive, be fierce and protective. He survived the second world war dodging nightly death from above. He voluteered for a not enviable position in a bomber as a belly gunner. After that war he took a chance and came to Canada to lay bricks. When that failed because hey, canada and northern usa were too cold in winter to build, he got a job where a class system would never pin him down ... and he excelled. He met a strong beautiful young woman and he fen love and she loves him so very much. He helped bring four pretty interesting kids into the world. He provided, he taught, he shared. I have learnt a lot from him... almost an entire life of things. Almost all things that I try to pass on.
Two days ago, he regained enough capacity to recognize my mom and make the call that it won't be much longer. And so, he died last night.
It has been a good run dad, not too shabby. I can see him blowing his nails and buffing them, jauntily saying it was nothing... but it was everything.

Dad loved to dance. I have early memories of Dad quickstepping and showing his Charleston moves, of house parties with music blaring and the living room rug rolled up, of record albums - yes, real records! - of the Firehouse Five, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Ballroom Dancing ... I haven't been to the gym in ages with all of our recent events, but today in ShBam, I danced my heart out for Dad.

This is a story about bicycles, and about cars …
London in the war years: Feeling he needed to contribute more to his family’s limited income, Dad turned down a scholarship for secondary school and got work as an “office boy” in London at the age of 14. Bombing meant frequent interruptions to the commuter trains; Dad’s solution was to ride his bike fourteen miles each day from Sidcup into London and back. This also gave him the opportunity, he told us, to ride his bike around and around the long office table, whenever he could get away with it. It also meant he could later take an extra job as a night warden, checking that all windows were completely closed, that no escaping glimmer of light could help guide a bomb to its target. Having a bike was a necessity for work, and a path to growing independence. Dad’s mom also biked - it was a regular form of transportation, just as it is becoming here. In fact Dad’s mom biked well into her seventies. I hope I can, too.
But this is also a story about cars …
Canada, the late forties: Dad takes the streetcar to work (the same streetcar as a sweet 16 year-old!); as soon as he begins investigating claims, “on the road,” he has access to a car and loves it. He drives all over northern Ontario, in all seasons. Later, he commutes to his downtown Toronto office with regular passengers. He makes long family trips to visit friends, like Paul Paddon and his family in Detroit. Dad greets new highways with enthusiasm, the QEW, 401, and DVP; “cloverleaf” with over and underpass thrills him. And though he was never one to buy new just for new’s sake, he loved what he called “that new car smell.” I see him still, standing in the Chevrolet car sales lot on the Golden Mile, beaming.

A long time ago Priya, five months pregnant with our first son Lief, dragged me down to her parent’s house in Thornhill so I could meet her father for the first time. I’d already met her mother, Marjorie, who had been warm and kind, but this didn’t allay the trepidation I felt about meeting her father. Ken greeted us at the door, extended his hand to me and looked up: “You are tall,” he said. Later that evening, when he and I sat together in the living room, he asked the inevitable questions about my future plans, and I muttered something about my minimum wage job at the time, made a vague reference to being a writer, and mentioned how I was thinking about going back to school.
I can still see Ken’s arched eyebrow, and the gears turning in his eyes about what kind of ‘project’ this young man was going to present to him. He could have been cynical and rejecting. Instead, not long after that first visit, he insisted on taking me to a shoe store to get shoes to better fit my big feet, and on yet another visit, when I was in pain, he used his connections so I could have a root canal done that same day - the list of his kind gestures goes on.
Over the years he’d tell me stories about his childhood, or about his exploits at the Worker’s Compensation Board, and as he grew older the stories became more repetitive. I think Priya and Marjorie thought I was being stoical, listening to the same old stories for so long, but I for the most part enjoyed the interaction and am aware that he became a father figure to me, a man who had his foibles and biases just like all of us, but a man who, nevertheless, was always concerned about our welfare and who acted honourably and generously.
Life continues on in both an emotional and physical sense. Ken and Marjorie created Priya, who has been the most important gift in my life, and in turn it’s enabled me to help create (with a certain amount of enjoyment, I must admit) two sons who I love very much, and who truly make me very proud, and now Priya and I have a wonderful daughter-in-law, Susan Cooper, and a two year old grandson, Oscar, who is utterly beautiful and who, perhaps one day, will patiently sit listening to his grandfather’s repetitive stories.
Thank you Ken for all the good you’ve brought to this world. Every once in a while, I promise to continue sitting with you and enjoying the pleasure of your company.

Dad loved painting and drawing from an early age. I still have his well-used International Library of Technology textbook for the study of drawing and water colour, printed in 1905. He loved portraits and landscapes, and admired the classic masters, but also delighted in colour - Chagall was a favourite - and in the whimsy and strangeness of the Surrealists - Dali and Magritte especially. For Dad, great art was to be admired, appreciated. But the making of it couldn’t be expected to provide sufficient income to support your family. So Dad drew cartoons as a sideline (in the early days, he had another part-time job as well, washing vegetables at the local supermarket on weekend mornings, on top of his full-time job with the Workers’ Compensation Board). He cleaned, repaired, and even repainted other folks’ art works. He created vibrant abstracts to put on the walls, designed to give pleasure to the eye, and go with the furniture. I have many memories of Dad and our uncle, OCAD teacher and artist Fred Hagan, arguing about art, never to see eye-to-eye. I think Dad did his best to give us all a sense of the beauty of what we can make with our hands, and also of the hard work involved. He taught me basic water colour techniques (no wonder I love to add brushwork designs to my pots); started Steven off in his love of wood carving (despite a terrifying demo of how NOT to use a carving tool that ended up with a visit to the hospital - I’ve never liked knives after that!); encouraged Jonathan in model making, which no doubt led to his fascination with creating fanciful dioramas filled with dragons and weird creatures; and taught Robert every handyman skill and art technique he knew. Now that’s an accomplishment.