My Dad's Eulogy

To anyone who actually read this, I hope you never have to do this for your parent. I was lucky we had no more issues and nothing really left to say. We had already said "I love you", when you can say that and mean it, the rest is mere window dressing.

Eulogy for My Father
Some of you called him Canute

Some of you called him bumpa

It doesn’t really matter what you called him, he called all of you family and family was very important to him

I just called him dad so that’s how I’ll talk about him this afternoon. We will never each see any person the same way but sometimes if you hear enough about them from several different people you can get a really clear picture, this is my piece of the puzzle.

My dad was born in Trinidad West Indies in 1931 and by the time he was 11 he had survived Diphtheria, Malaria and Typhoid. Graduating high school in his teens he went to teacher’s college where he started his first career as a teacher. He met and married his first wife my Mom Yvonne and they moved with my brother Canute and me to Canada in 1958.

Dad studied to become a psychiatric nurse at the Moose Jaw Technical School and later studied engineering at Queens and the University of Saskatchewan. Fortunately for hundreds of students and many friends engineering was not really his thing. Instead he returned to his first love teaching. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Education in 1969 and taught for a time in rural Saskatchewan. By then his family had expanded to five children with the addition of Stephanie, Craig and Allison.

As time passed my mom and he went in separate directions and he found himself teaching in …. Here he met and was I am told, immediately smitten with his loving wife Gail. Over the next four years their love grew and finally they married adding an untold number to his family group but most especially adding Gail, Holly and Rae Lea. He connected strongly with the quiet strength of his father-in-law Glen and always felt welcome at Bertha’s table, even when he said things were “Quite nice” when he meant “Very Nice”.

It was during this period in his life that most of you got the opportunity to meet and get to know my dad; it was the beginning of a very special phase in my dad’s life. He continued to teach for the … Public School Board for 23 years and became very active in his church. I am sure I cannot look at this crowd without knowing that in many ways he touched each and every one of you.

All of you know of his intense love of children and how he could get any child’s trust in an instant. What some of you may not know is of his love of poetry – you knew he could recite large portions of the Bible but he could also recall many of the poems he learned in his youth.

My brothers and sisters and I will always remember him reading, wherever he could, whenever he could. When I was a teenager he discovered the used book store and he started bringing home westerns – 12 at a time. Canute and I initially struggled to hide our current book two weeks later before he swept them up and went back to the store for 12 more. That is how I ended up being such a fast reader; I was just trying to keep up. In the last few years I think every clerk in a Chapters in this city has seen him haunting their store and sitting in for a read.

From his work in marriage counselling to singing with the choir we just had the pleasure of listening to, he involved himself in living and loving and doing both with all his heart and doing both well. When he retired he was able to complete his dream of getting a Master’s degree in Divinity which he immediately put to work doing palliative care at the Royal Alex hospital.

My dad got sick last April as many of you know but he did not let it stop him from living his life to the fullest. He had just returned from a trip to Hawaii on Saturday and you should know that he had the chance to see many of the fruits and vegetables from his youth on a drive he took the day before he returned, he also managed to read a paper and be a pain to the nurses.

That all tells you a bit about who he was and what he did but I think I would like to tell you a bit about how he taught us lessons.

How many of you grandchildren can remember seeing your mom or dad with a gift from Santa that looked like this. I never really asked him why but we all got them every year; let me tell you what I finally figured out. When we were very young Canute and I our family did not have a lot of money, we had recently immigrated and our parents were just getting set up. Every year for Christmas as a very special treat we would buy a few cans of oysters, some years only two cans. We would share one can on Christmas eve and the other some time before New Years. That was really Christmas for him, we get those cans to remember how very lucky we are today.

Lately the cans of oysters have been replaced with the New Years Day supper. Some of you may even remember the instructions “Okay I made three kinds of meat one is chicken, one is goat and one is beef. There is roti over there also, take what you want but eat what you take.”

That is a good motto for the way he lived his life, “take what you want but eat what you take”. He may not have always agreed with us for how we followed that motto but he was always there for us as we did; thanks for the lessons dad

My Dad's Obituary

Canute Andrew Sr.
On february 4, 2006 Canute .... of ..., Canada was called home to Glory at the age of 75.

Darling husband and best friend of Gail and much loved father of (large list of children, step children, in-laws etc., and those who went before him).

Canute was born in Trinidad, W.I., January 19, 1931 to Jeremiah and Isabella. He immigrated to Canada in 1957 and was joined by his family a year later. Cnaute continued his pursuit of eductation in Saskatchewan and Kingston, ON. Throughout the years he was a nurse, a teacher and an educational counselor with the Department of Indaina Affairs. In the early 70's he moved to Edmonton where he was a dedicated counselor and teacher with ... Public Schools for 23 years. After retiring at age 65 he returned to his first love (education), earning a Master of Divinity degree from .... Baptist Seminary. Canute and Gail served as counselors in .... Church for over twenty years, up to the time of his passing.