Friday, May 16, 2025
I’ve known Gord for the last twenty plus years. He was a friend and a putative step-father in law. Marylin McKay - one of his two step daughters - and I have been partners, best friends, confidants and fellow life travelers for the same period. I had nothing but good times when I was with Gord, and before she died, his wife Thelma, Marylin’s Mom. Gord was a gentleman, a handyman, a sportsman and simply, a good man. Conversation was always easy and wide ranging; politics, investment, gardening, business, and of course, sports. He loved his Blue Jays and he enjoyed the game itself, even on TV, intent and observant; a beer (or two) with the game was a staple and always on offer. I don’t know that he did, but I could see him “scoring a game” the old way in his earlier days. It was fun to talk baseball with him. But he certainly didn't love only baseball. Like many of us, he had a love-hate relationship with some team named The Toronto Maple Leafs.
Gord loved pplaying that other winter sport...curling!.I was taken to the rink in my mind by his stories, including those of skipping rinks to various wins at the local club and traveling bonspiels. I recall too, his transition to the stick at that certain age. And I sense he was as good - maybe even better - with the instrument than he’d been with the traditional delivery. Making a rock curl anywhere near correctly by pushing it with a stick is not an easy thing.
Although we never played a game of golf together, golf was also on the agenda. We went to the driving range close to his house a couple of times. What I remember is serious discussion about grip and turn nuance, us hitting incredibly good shots time after time and, that there was a large barn on the property. I think.
Two other words leap to mind about Mr. Gord are Geraniums and Boats. They are not connected except to say they were both meaningful to him. He enjoyed each with his quiet, competent passion. Like Sinatra said: “ Gord and geraniums...you can’t have one without the other”. He obviously liked geraniums because they are practical and lovely flowers but I think it was the process of caring for them, improving them and guiding them through their annual cycle that he really got satisfaction from.
Pontoon boats! I didn’t know him in the halcyon days of boating at their cottages in the Kawathas, but was regaled by stories of them. I do remember his last boat being stored in the shed below his Lakefield house. The one ride we did take together was when he and Thelma visited Marylin and me at my cottage in the St Lawrence. We took a few pontoon boat river tours. Gord was so at ease and happy out there on the water. They were both were.
I visited Gord in his in-out-in stays at hospital the last year or so, usually with Marylin but a couple of times alone. He amazed me, at 96, how mindful and lucid he was about “everything” and how he dealt with all the tests and procedures and inpacts on his daily interface with life. He seemed to do so with matter of factness and optimism...or just acceptance that he had to take all the pain and tests and scans and probing and just keep on keeping on. I love of that notion, of just “Keepin’ On”. He lived it. He demonstrated it. I will always marvel at his composition.
PS I sat in the front row of the recent funeral in Lakefield. I was right in front of the Urn and a picture of Gord looking like the strong, happy man I knew. His face looking right at me...smiling...like the Jays had won or that we’d finally figured out his anti-virus software contract. I'll remeber that look!
