50th WEDDING ANNIVERSARY PICS - MONTEBELLO PARK

August 12
1967-2017

A Legacy Memory to share with the people we love so much.




In Montebello Park, St. Catharines ON, where our wedding photos were taken 50 years earlier, and now the children, spouses and grandchildren that bless our lives.

 Left to Right
Jayden (12), Tim, Cari, Ryan (15), Kailyn (17), Christine, Ron, Kale (12), Jeff, Kady (10), Gina.

clowning, can’t help it ... life is a blast when we have good company, and when it’s not easy, we have people who carry us through.

boyhood sketch 20. BUM IN THE BOX

Behind the buildings that front along St. Paul Street, were messy looking lots for parking and garbage bins and storage. Further behind, the forested hillsides led down to the old canal. Vagrants, hobos we called them, street people as we know them today, lived back there, among the bushes, under the stilt building additions, and anywhere else that provided shelter. On one of our foraging, exploration days, we came behind a store where there was a large rectangular wooden box with a wooden cover. It measured approximately eight feet long by four feet high and three feet deep. Much like a casket but larger. More ominous. We heard sounds inside the box. That fascinated us. We were talking to each other as kids do, excited and scared. An animal might be inside, but what kind of animal. We wanted to find out. I approached, ready to open the lid. Suddenly the lid " went up and a man sat up inside the box. We could see that he was sitting on blankets and clothing. He had an open can of beans in one hand and a spoon in the other. He said, "Do you want some beans." We were startled and said, "no thanks." We asked, "Do you live in there?” Dressed in a heavy wool overcoat and toque, he said, "Yep. It's cozy.” We used to refer to these guys as bums, hobos, rubbydubs. Never after that. I had a new respect for these people. Survivors they were. 

RAVI ZACHARIAS HERE IN LANGLEY

Ravi Zacharias

(Feb 18, 2021 .. at the end of this post is an update about Ravi Zacharias and the news that rocked the Christian world)

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Last evening Christine and I attended a public meeting at which renowned internationally recognized Christian apologist and author Ravi Zacharias spoke on the theme, 'Notions of Truth and Tensions in Society.' I was so glad to hear him in person once again. His daily radio program Let My People think, enable listeners to process views within popular culture that are steadily influenced by the New Age obsession with human potentiality and spirituality and also to properly appreciate the definitive person, work and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Smiths Falls Logo

At the conclusion of yesterday's meeting, I was able to shake his hand, mention "Smiths Falls Ontario 1972" and immediately his face registered recognition and we briefly chatted before his attention had to be given to the scores of others who wanted to meet him. Now I can tell you what he remembered with me.

Tyndale University and College

Ravi and I graduated a couple of years apart from Ontario Bible College (OBC) in Toronto, now Tyndale University and Seminary.

I was already aware of Ravi's giftedness as a communicator and his spirituality when in 1972 I invited him to be a keynote speaker for an eight day crusade in the town of Smiths Falls, Ontario where I was pastoring Calvary Bible Church. He was 26 years of age and I was 30. Mine was a small church of eighty people but in preparation for the crusade I trained spiritual counsellors there and in three other churches in the area.

Calvary Bible Church, Smiths Falls, Ontario 

Typical of crusades at the time, I had arranged for guest musicians for each of the eight dates in October. An entire college choir from OBC under the direction of Warren Adams drove from Toronto for the event. Advertisements reached surrounding communities and each evening at the local civic arena an audience from 500-700 people listened to Ravi's challenging messages that invited people to place their trust in Jesus Christ. Seventy two individuals were recorded as having committed their lives to God that week. God knows the lasting outcome of that work.

It was evident in those days that Ravi Zacharias was empowered by God with unique perceptions and oratorical skills. Not surprisingly Ravi became a global evangelist with an ability to intelligently communicate the credibility of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He began to receive invitations to universities to engage the minds of young adults and thirty years ago he founded RZIM, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. Distinctive in its strong evangelistic and apologetic foundation, the ministry of RZIM is intended to touch both the heart and the intellect of the thinkers and influencers of society through the support of the visionary leadership of Ravi Zacharias.

He has authored 20 books in which Ravi has defended Christianity against atheism, Darwinism, Oscar Wilde, religious hypocrisy and world religions. In his book, Why Jesus? Rediscovering His Truth in an Age of Mass Marketed Spirituality (FaithWords, $21.99), he sets his sights on the New Spirituality/New Age movement and such prominent proponents as Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra.

I wrote a reflective blog piece in September 2009, called 'A Distant Greeting from a Former Resident,' the content of which I had sent to the town of Smiths Falls and an appreciation for the years I spent in the town gaining my footing as a young pastor, and referencing the special eight day crusade for which Ravi Zacharias was my invited speaker.

UPDATE: Ravi Zacharias died at his home in Atlanta on 19 May 2020, at the age of 74. He had been diagnosed in March 2020 with a malignant and rare cancer in his spine. For several years before his death, allegations surfaced that Ravi was involved in sexual misconduct both at home and during international ministry trips. Women began to come forward with their stories. Multiple sources accused Zacharias of serious sexual misconduct including rape. RZIM ministries and Ravi himself initially denied the allegations despite the mounting evidence. Following his death, on 9 February 2021, Miller & Martin, the law firm hired by RZIM to look into these allegations, concluded in their investigation report that Mr Zacharias had engaged in sexual misconduct. The RZIM Board issued an official public confession of their own failures as well as their acknowledgments of Ravi’s misconduct.   

The Wikipedia account of Ravi Zachias

A LASTING WASAGA BEACH LIFE LESSON

This is a public letter for my brother Murray. Other readers may chuckle but only he can truly appreciate the shades of this brief biographical episode. It was a hot Ontario summer Saturday. We were kids. Dad worked in a factory all week. Wasaga Beach was and is a popular attraction, both for the great stretches of white sand and the foody nightspots. It was a 2.5 hour trip from St. Catharines. My dad and mom decided to take Murray and I and my uncle Bill and aunt Ruth for the day. Uncle and Aunt were newly weds. Change rooms were a distance from the car that was parked as they all were on the sand. Murray and I were out of our street clothes and into trunks within seconds. After some adult discussion, a decision was made, and I watched as Uncle Bill and Aunt Ruth entered the rear car doors and pinched towels at the top of each window, and changed together. My juvenile mind tried to grasp the notion of them squirming to undress and redress in the back seat of dad’s car. That was a modest lesson in my primer for life. Riding in the back seat of dad’s car was never without that flashback, made more amusing today as I think of my dignified uncle and aunt now in their early eighties.

- REUNION TOUR - STAGE THREE - part 1 - DORCHESTER ONTARIO & VISITING NEALE

Dorchester Mill Pond, watercolour by Hilda Markson
Gray

My youngest brother is Neale, eleven years my junior. What were my parents doing spacing their children apart so far, five years between my brother Murray and I and then this substantial gap to the youngest? Neale was twelve years of age when Christine and I were married in 1967 – Canada’s Centennial Year. On Sunday afternoon I drove from Port Stanley to Dorchester where Neale and Kathy have lived for over thirty years. They live in a home located nod a across from farm fields which after all these years now contain a Shoppers Drug store on a far corner and will soon have a senior’s assisted care facility directly in front of them. The immediate country view will be gone but the drive to and from work will still wind through fields of corn and other grains.

Dorchester is rural and agricultural yet it serves London as a bedroom community for people who prefer to live away from the urban urgency and willing to make the 20 minute commute. Nonetheless, Dorchester has its own distinctive identity. I walked many of its streets this morning in the warm Ontario AM sunshine at 6:45 and I loved it. Brick is the exterior building material for most homes and I love the look and the durability as compared to the wooden exteriors of most of the BC homes with which I am now most familiar. Husky’s gas station sold me a Globe and Mail as I walked and Tim Horton’s sold me a coffee and a sausage and biscuit which I did not share or reveal to Christine or Neale and Kathy when I returned to their home. But they got me again with prying questions I could not deny. The three slept in until 8:30 AM and we are about to go out for breakfast. Neale’s and Kathy’s daughter Amy and husband Chris Hollywood will join us.

Last night at Neale’s we hung out for a while, enjoyed a great dinner of ribs and potatoes a la crock pot and then went for a walk to the Mill Pond to look for turtles and frogs. How invigorating to walk past bulrushes, to see families of wood ducks, a soaring crane coming in for a fluid splashdown. And then sleep in the darkest of nights, without city lights.

REUNION TOUR - PORT STANLEY - Stage Two

Port Stanley is a wonderful port town on Lake Erie and is in fact the largest north shore inland federal harbor.

It has an historic King George VI lift bridge which opens to allow leisure craft to come into Kettle Creek.

King George VI Lift Bridge

Christine’s brother Rob and our sister in law Glo are hosting us in their cottage, a quaint home on Hetty St.

We arrived yesterday and promptly walked the town, went to the beaches, looked into stores, and at ice cream at Brodericks, one of those best ever ice cream parlours.

Brodericks Ice Cream Parlour

We enjoyed a supper of blue cheese layer lamb chops prepared by Glo, which was an astounding flavour savoured outside in the garden.

We ate ice cream at Brodericks, one of those best ever ice cream parlours.

A fishing industry operates from here and today after swimming, we stopped at the Fishery to purchase some Perch for a meal of butter fried perch and home made fries.

Port Stanley Harbour with fishing boats

We walked for breakfast at the Buccaneer down at the beach this morning. Everything is in walking distance. Glo finished a career as a Presbyterian pastor and Rob is a professor of Manufacturing Sciences at Fanshaw College.

Port Stanley was occupied by the Neutral Indians until 1653, when they were expelled by the Iroquois. In the 1700s many explorers and travelers would portage across Long Point and voyage along the shore of Lake Erie to the Kettle Creek. This route gave access to a short portage to the Thames River and further inland exploring. A ferry service between Port Stanley and Buffalo was established in 1832, and by 1833 Port Stanley had become well known as one of the finest harbours on Lake Erie. In the early 1900s, Port Stanley was the main tourist attraction on the lake.

The cottage in which we stay is Rob's and Glo's home now, the one in which they intend to remain. And why not, since during the years that they have owned the place, Rob has come to know by name just about everyone in town and they return an hello using his name. The cottage sits on a small sliver of land fashioned after a old English garden with an eclectic assortment of plants that create solitude and privacy. Birds and butterflies frequent the foliage and colours. It's only a few hundred yards to the water of Kettle Creek where yachts are moored. Christine's mom and dad lived in Rob's and Glo's cottage during the closing years of their lives and enjoyed the amenities and friendships of this town. So we have visited here many times throughout the years and it is good for us to have come back again.

From the Prairies to Ontario

It was 1947.

The Second World War had concluded. My father was home from his service in the Canadian Air Force. Canada had the role of trainer of pilots and aircrew for the Allied war effort under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, an agreement signed in December 1939 by Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Dad was one of the aircraft maintenance personnel that prepared aircraft, so he was stationed in Ontario, Vancouver and Skagway, Alaska. He had never shipped overseas.

Following he war my father and mother worked in their home town of Hepburn Saskatchewan but opportunities to advance oneself were absent so they chose the great adventure of moving east, to the golden triangle, the Niagara Peninsula, and specifically St. Catharines, the Garden City. I was four years old.

My parents found a run down wooden shack on Geneva Street in which they could live as they looked for work and settled into this new life. My mom was pregnant. I remember this place being back from the busy road, and consisting of one room, with a curtain pulled over the section where mom’s and dad’s bed was. An out house serviced us. Sunlight shone between the wall boards so before winter, my parents moved into a home owned by my Uncle Ed Willems.

On September 7th 1947 my bother, oops Freudian slip, my brother Murray was born. He was a beautiful looking little guy. It was maddening. He got so much attention. As he grew he had the blond, curly hair and blue eyes. I recall the day of his birth because after sharing with me his good news of a second son, my father took me to Montebello Park and gave me a gift box in which I found a pair of roller skates, the kind that are fastened to shoes with a tightening key. They are also known as quad skates. He sat and watched me for a long time as I skated around the wooden pavilion. The gift was not only celebrative of Murray’s birth but in anticipation of my birthday the following week, September 13th when I turned five years of age.

Montebello Park is located on Ontario Street, in the heart of the downtown area. With an adjacent band shell that still hosts musical concerts today. Montebello Park remains a prominent memory from my childhood and young adult years. On Sunday night my parents would walk with us to sit on a blanket to hear a summer evening concert. Often Mom brought some snacks for us to munch on while we listened. It was in the rose garden of this park that Christine and I and our wedding party had our pictures taken when we began our life together as husband and wife on August 12, 1967.

Pictures
*Dad (Edward)and his first two sons, Ron and Murray
*1910 Montebello Park
*Quad Roller Skates
*Montebello Park Pavillion and Band Stand 2009
*Ron and Murray