This past summer we lost my father. Chris was a quiet, funny yet unassuming man who stubbornly clung onto the things he loved in life. Aside from family, the thing he loved most was moving through wild places.
Over the years, that passion took different forms: from rock climbing and cycling in his native Wales as a young man, to climbing in the Alps and Canadian Rockies, canoe tripping here in Ontario, and later in life, walking in the hills of Gatineau Park or the Adirondacks. Walking. Always walking. Every chance he got. Even as his health began to fail him.
I was lucky to be raised by two parents who loved the wilderness and who had some regrets about the careers they chose. Because of that, they never pushed my sister or me toward a particular path. They understood why I wanted to do things differently and they supported it. They weren’t scared of my adventures, even the risky ones. They were excited for them.
When I was young, my dad taught me how to feel at home in the woods, on a bike, or on a cliff. As I got older, I started to notice other things. One night I found him at the kitchen table, writing cheques. He told me they were for charities, because we were lucky enough to help others. At the time, we were living paycheque to paycheque. I didn’t fully get it then, but I never forgot it. That moment is part of what led me to start the Wild Rock ComPassion Project.
Unsurprisingly, Chris was one of the first to donate to the ComPassion Project. And after he died, we donated all of his good gear to Wild Again, where it could keep doing something useful. He would have loved that.
Like a lot of people, his last adventure was one of decline. Through illness and recovery, the thing that kept him going was the drive to get back out for a walk. A year before he died, I convinced him to let me drive him to the summit of Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks. He used to tease people for driving up that mountain. This time, we let that go and were just happy to be above the tree line together.
A week before he went into hospital for the last time, he came to Peterborough for a visit with my sister. We walked to the lookout at Windy Ridge Conservation Area, the closest thing to a mountain he could manage. That was his last walk here, and I’ll carry that day with me for the rest of my life.
Even in the hospital, after surgery, the rehab team didn’t find a reluctant patient. They found someone eager to move. The only trouble was getting him to use a walker. He refused, until we brought him his trekking poles. That’s how I’ll remember him — poles in hand, disappearing down the hallway, doing whatever it took to get moving again.
