This week’s Father’s Day is a time to honour and remember the fathers, grandfathers and mentors in our personal history. Some families today are in single parent homes, for many varied reasons. When I was young, I knew of one girl in school whose father had passed away suddenly. I was gripped with sadness for her. I knew no one else who had no dad. How times have changed.
I recently watched a home reno show with a dad modelled after the more wholesome television programs of days gone by. A father of three, he taught his kids to assist in the renovation, to honour their mother and to take time to have fun. The entire family including several groups of cousins, spent time in the new lakeside property, throwing the football, tackling their fellow players and laughing uproariously.
What made the difference was the intentional decision to be a good parent. The family friendly shows that we used to enjoy merely showed the results of togetherness, not the planning, failures and opportunities to do over.
My father was a perfectionist. He taught us that hard work was a characteristic of good living. What we didn’t fathom till years later was that hard work was the only option for him, in order to keep his family out of poverty.
He didn’t instruct with words most of the time. He taught by his actions. We worked side by side, learned first by watching, then by doing and redoing. We learned how to handle the shovel, the rake and the hoe. Then we discovered the why of our work. Loosened soil helped the tender plants in our extensive garden to grow and flourish. Cleaning the chicken house and the barn became a discipline that was essential to the well-being of the animals in our care. Besides, it was good for us, wasn’t it?
Dad wasn’t just another farmer struggling to survive. He always worked outside the farm. We watched him leave most days to join Irven French or Sid Doyle on a construction site. He did years of hard, physical labour to produce practical and beautiful buildings. The crews he was a part of built countless homes, community centres, new schools, as well as large barns and sheds on farms east of Olds. Driving from Westward Ho area just to get to work and back definitely cut down on the time he had left to be a farmer.
We remember many occasions when we arrived off the school bus to be conscripted by mom to begin some of the heavy work. Sometimes dad had begun a job in the early morning that he had planned to complete after his paying job was done for the day. We grew acres of potatoes for many years. Dad had a potato digger fashioned to be pulled behind his Allis Chalmers tractor. It turned the Red Rock Pile variety that he favoured out to lie atop the ridges that appeared behind the machinery.
When the second crew arrived from school, we were sent to retrieve all the bounty and bag them. We had huge gunny sacks to fill. When dad eventually returned from work he and the bigger boys loaded the sacks onto the half-ton. The heavy sacks were stored in the cool cellar, later to be sold for a small profit. Of course we ate our fair share too. My older brother devoured mom’s cooking. We often heard dad say, “just pass your plate. There’s more on it then in the bowl.”
We remember other events, like moving cattle from one field to another, oftentimes down the road, sometimes encouraging a stray to return to the safety of the corral.
We still had time for fun. Because of the twice daily milking chores, we enjoyed many day trips instead of extended holidays. We had many picnic lunches in the Banff campsites, toured Calgary Zoo or just an afternoon into the beautiful country west of Sundre. An afternoon drive, good company, a little singing and the telling of tales: who could ask for anything else? Thanks dad, for the good life you provided.
- Hoey is a longtime Gazette columnist
