Rest in peace, Grandad. I spent time with him here and there — at family dinners on King Street enjoying Betty Ann’s hashbrowns, at the Canada Day road race in Hantsport, for birthday suppers at the Crossroads, and at street parades driving Thomas the Tank Engine in a Shriners cap.

When I was little, Grandad took us flying in his Piper Cherokee plane, making sure to circle above Windsor until we spotted Albert Street and the funeral home — little square houses, roads, and waterways laid out like the model train-scapes in his basement. I remember being nervous, not sitting in the cockpit of an airplane thousands of feet in the air, but in the drivers seat of a 1979 Panther Lima on the dirt roads at the Hants County Exhibition grounds. Grandad had taken me out to teach me how to drive a stick shift — not easy to do in a retro-styled roadster where my toes barely reached the pedals. After an hour of practice he insisted my next test was to drive us home on the busy roads of Windsor, right then and there. When I protested, feeling anxious and unready, he replied with a growly and resolute, “You’re doing it.” I drove us all the way home and didn’t stall it once.

When I think of Grandad, I’ll think of these memories and of him sitting behind the big desk at the funeral home, amidst the brass pen holders, paperweights and plastic carpet protectors, the hum of the fish tank in the background — doing his work with quiet dignity.

Love you, Grandad. Thanks for the memories.