In Memoriam: Captain David E. Stanton (1931-2015)

A man’s father is his greatest inspiration in life, and I have decided to dedicate my new novel, Freenet, to the memory of David Stanton. This eulogy, written in haste at the time, was delivered at his funeral on June 30, 2015 to a modest crowd at Carson Funeral Homes in Orillia, Ontario, and I’m posting it here to provide a public record of the event.

My father was a commercial airline pilot and always a hero to me. He was an adventurer and a pioneer on the frontier of technology as Air Canada advanced from propeller aircraft to the modern jets we now take for granted. I grew up in a far different world from today, almost a magical world. For one thing, during the period from 1962 to 1967, the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup four times, if you can believe that. And we sure cheered them on from our home in the Toronto suburbs. Then, during the period from 1969-1972, twelve humans set foot on the moon in six separate manned landings, and I still remember watching the first one on TV with my dad at our cottage on Sparrow Lake. In later years, Dave made the local papers when he jury-rigged a special antenna and contacted the Columbia space shuttle on his Ham radio to give them private greetings.

My father was always building things in the basement. Even when he was working in a stressful and glamorous vocation, he built a hydroplane sea flea in his spare time and raced it in regattas at local lakes with his family cheering him on. He built radio-controlled airplanes and flew them with local aviation club members while we kids made forts in the hay fields and watched the planes sail overhead. I can still hear the engines whine and smell the high-octane fuel. Occasionally radio contact would be lost, and the chase would be on to track down the wounded bird when it crashed. Good times.

Dave built his own retirement home on the shore of Sparrow Lake and lived in it for thirty-five years after leaving Air Canada. He built his own biplane from plans and flew it successfully for many years, crashing only once. And even then, he rebuilt the plane and flew it again before selling it. In the winter he raced radio-controlled sailboats with a local gang of hobbyists near his home in Florida, and built computers for the family from salvaged parts. Looking back, I remember when he bought one of the first retail computers from Radio Shack with 16k memory, and I double-upped him a few months later when the next model came out with 32k. Wow. Now a common cell phone today has more computer power than all of NASA had when it put two men on the moon in 1969.

My father had the privilege of dying peacefully in his own home, thanks to the heroic efforts of his three sons and especially their wives, Angie, Karen and Wendy. We watched the Stanley Cup finals together during his last days and cheered for Florida because we both own property down there, but Chicago took the cup this year well deserved. On Father’s Day we wheeled Dave’s hospital bed out on the deck in the sun so he could view the Wildwood dance hall across the bay where he first met my mother. We celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversay just prior to his passing, and life doesn’t get any better than that.

Dave was fond of saying that his father built the Wildwood Inn with nothing but a wheelbarrow and a bank loan, and some of you will remember my grandfather’s funeral here many years ago, when Poppa Walter’s voice came out of the speakers from a prepared tape. That was a bit spooky for me at the time, but Dave didn’t arrange anything specific for this occasion, although he did leave behind many stories and videos for us to enjoy long into the future. In going through his paperwork over the weekend looking for various codicils and life-insurance documents, I stumbled across some rough notes he made a few years ago about possible eulogies, so I’ll just give him this last legacy in his own words.

“I am at peace. Be happy and love one another always. I am proud to have been a part of your lives in our earthly journeys. I have had a rich and full life with many adventures and friends. My Spirit now soars with God. Farewell. Goodbye, till we meet again. I love you all. David Stanton.”