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Remembering Dave

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Dave got a new gig: understudy to Buddy Rich in Benny Goodman’s Swinging Angelic Ensemble. He is now playing way up there, ‘where the air is rarified’. He left us recently but leaves us a legacy of memories from his many endeavours. See some of his footprints below.

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On the death of his brother Bill in 2013, Dave shared an intimate look at the anticipation of Bill’s return from service in the Canadian Armed forces after the Second World War. He wrote the following touching account of the moments before Bill’s arrival:

*Note: Dave was 19 years younger than his brother Bill! As a consequence the 5 year old Dave in 1947 initially sees his brother as a stranger: He writes:

I‘m up early, and will drop Hagen off at school on my way to the funeral on Friday.  Incredible memories, such as of Bill, Johnny and me, building, (in 6 weeks) my little cabin on McLennan Lake, North of the Churchill in Saskatchewan.

My first memory of him was mom yelling one day, “Billy is coming home!”.  I thought (at 5 yrs), “who the heck is Billy?”  They bundled me up in my footy bag pjs and headed to the CN station.  The troupe train was coming in, and guys were hanging out the windows and waving.  Just as it came to a stop, this great big guy in Blue jumped off the train, and lifted me higher than I had ever been.

Later, my sister, Eleanor, told me that 2 old ladies standing by, broke into tears, thinking I was his son, born while he was over seas.

The next day his trunk arrived, and he sealed his love in my heart with a gift of P-38.  I wanted the German Luger but it was too big for me to even hold.

Just a few of the many memories of the kindness of a very good man from the “Greatest Generation”.

Love to you all,

Dave

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The Many Lives of Dave:

Friend, Family Man, Musician,

Outdoors-man, Builder, Entrepreneur, Teacher, Mentor

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Gestures of Generosity

Celebration of Dave and the Warne Family

Neighbourhood is much more than the state of geographical proximity. We have learned that lesson since leaving Oshawa, Ontario fifty years ago.

In 1969 we were  heading to B.C.  with short detours in Ottawa and in Lachine, Quebec. Curiosity and employment had taken us to central British Columbia. At that time in our lives, we were almost totally absorbed with the immediacy and the excitement of raising a family and building a home. We had managed like most people do, to arrange our consciousness in convenient little packets: then and now, here and there, past and present, east and west.

In B.C., out of the sight of friends did not quite mean out of mind, but in the normal trajectory of people’s lives, distance and the unconscious drift in time away from frequent meetings with friends, would remove the ideal of continuing interactions with the people who inspired the past.

1980: It would have been close to twenty years since we last saw Bill when In 1980  we saw him again. We were out of the mainstream, off the beaten path in rural north-central B,C . when Bill, Dot and Eleanor and Johnny rolled up our country road, into our driveway in their motor home and back into our consciousness to reestablish the link to a cherished past. We were humbled  by their gesture to include us in  their transcontinental trip.

The Warne gestures of generosity and inclusion had been initiated many years earlier in the early 1960s at Kennisis Lake. In April of 1972 or 1973, Everett and Ella visited us in Prince George on the way home from Australia. Already fairly advanced in age, they overlooked the discomfort, interrupting their itinerary to spend a night with us in April in a camper without heat as we drove them from Prince George to Calgary where they resumed their return flight home. Dave would also make the trek to our interior B.C. location from Traverse City, Michigan a couple of times before the turn of the twenty first century to reconnect with us. Nor were we surprised that in October 2012 the persistent genetic tendency of welcome in the Warne DNA once again kicked in when we returned briefly to Oshawa to be greeted by Dave, Eleanor and Johnny at The Mandarin Restaurant.

These gestures of generous inclusion on the part of the Warne family suggest to us that neighbourhood transcends geography. In the wide geography of the mind, where  the best of all possible worlds exists, our expansive neighbourhood  stretches “from sea to shining sea” and across a national border.

Although sad to lose you from the earthly neighbourhood Dave, Bill, Everett, Ella, and Johnny, we wish you Bon Voyage as you set off on your grand, cosmic, post mortem adventures.

Much Love and Comfort to the families on the loss of your Beloveds.

Deanne and Garry Girvan and the

Laurentian Family,

Gord and Joy,

Jerry and

Judy:

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