the age of 97. He was predeceased by his wife Charlotte (Sande) and his siblings Charles (Matilda) and
Irene (Tom Morkin). He is survived by his brother Jack (Irene Noel) and seven sexagenarian offspring and
their partners: Kathleen, Maureen (Fred Beckwith), Dennis (Mary-Anne Parker), Colleen (Greg Shotton),
Kevin (Donna Gibbons), Brian (Jackie Stokvis), Connie (Jaycen Snider), as well as over twenty
grandchildren and a dozen great grandchildren.
Terry was born in Edmonton, AB on April 19, 1924. He played sports, particularly hockey and baseball, as
soon as he could walk and his twice broken nose (Eaglebeak YBB) and missing front teeth tell the story of
a physically active, even daredevil, tease of a boy who engaged life with gusto and a twinkle. He enlisted
in the army, then the air force, during WW2 and was one of those fresh-faced boys who came away from
gunnery training with a life-altering hearing loss due to a damaged ear drum. On the plus side, he was a
wiz at Morse code, which garnered him a telegrapher job at CN that turned into a career on the
paperwork and management side of the railroad. He met and married Charlotte (“the pick of the litter”)
in Lloydminster in 1950 and they started on a deliberate family-building project as they moved from one
small prairie town to another (Endiang AB, Legal AB, Warspite AB, Lashburn SK, Bonnyville AB, Biggar,
SK).
The stories he told over the years (“I’m repeating myself”) revealed his passion for team sports and his
humane coaching philosophy – everyone plays, a good game is more important than a win, no cheating,
practice helps you get better – as well as his belief in education and community service. He was a good
organizer and actively involved in community service clubs everywhere he lived (Legion, Kinsmen,
Chamber of Commerce) as well as serving as volunteer coach for hockey and baseball at many levels. He
was a passionate fan (Edmonton Oilers, Kamloops Blazers, the team now called Edmonton Elks) who
could dispassionately analyze the game. He played hockey until he was a senior. He stopped refereeing
senior hockey when he broke his wrist at 86. He curled until he was 90. His other passion was the lake
property on the Little Shuswap he inherited from his father; he loved it so much he retired to Kamloops
in 1983.
TV was gregarious. He loved to tease, he loved sports talk, he found good in (almost) everyone, he loved
to hear other peoples’ stories. There was a family belief that he could find connection in any encounter
– the guy he picked up hitch-hiking had an aunt who once lived in Lashburn; the couple he met on the
ferry to St. John’s was distantly related to someone he knew in Bonnyville. He loved being the patriarch
of a large family. He found joy in young children. He liked pets, especially dogs, almost as much as
people. He needed to be doing something and could always be found tinkering with things, mostly
ineffectually; those of us who inherited any mechanical ability got it from Mom.
His aging children will miss Terry for his compassion, his encouragement of our youthful intellectual
growth, his coaching, his inventions in our private family language, his late-in-life embrace of his
emotions and his appetite for spontaneous moments of joy, and love of ice cream. He learned how to be
a Dad on the job and he never stopped learning and growing.
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