Rodney August Pelton

Rod was born at home in Luseland, Saskatchewan, on the night of January 24, 1936, during a blizzard. The snow prevented grandma and grandpa getting him to the hospital in Kerrobert.

He always said it was the best time and place in all of history to come into the world. The prairie was wide open, offering limitless freedom. The Great Depression and its lingering after effects taught him thrift and self reliance in his earliest boyhood and the war years filled his head with schemes of mischief and adventure.

He was the second of five children and, being neither the eldest nor the baby, he was largely able to cause trouble without undue scrutiny. His maternal grandfather and namesake, August Zirk, was the local government representative who issued driving licenses and vehicle registration, allowing Rod to become a car owner and exponentially expand his perimeter of hijinks at a very early age.

At 15, in the summer of 1951, Rod joined the Army Reserve at Dunderne, Saskatchewan, to receive his basic training. To his disappointment (and his descendant’s huge relief ) the war in Korea ended before grandpa consented to sign the papers permitting Rod to enlist and ship out as an underage combatant.

He farmed for both his grandfathers for a while but found it difficult, unrewarding, and dull. His curiosity and love of tinkering led him to begin working in the garage of his father’s implement dealership, but at age 17 he went north to spend six months working for his Uncle Bud on Lake Athabasca. Rod delivered supplies by barge to small independent miners on the lake’s shore until freeze up. He spent that winter with a dog team cutting and hauling timber out of the bush. He developed a love of the north and eventually went to work as an electrician in the El Dorado uranium mine in Uranium City.

After that he worked in a nickel mine in northern Manitoba, a potash mine in southern Saskatchewan, a copper mine in the British Columbia interior, a gypsum mine on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains and finally in oil sands in northern Alberta, moving his family each time.

He eventually landed at a desk somewhere during all this and ended his career as an estimator and project manager at the age of 79. He then moved to Surrey in 2015 for an all too brief retirement.

Dad met mom ( Juliana Buhr at the time, thereafter known as Bunny Pelton) as the 1950s were turning into the 1960s. They were married in September 1960 and had their first child, Greg, a respectable 12 months later in September, 1961, just in case anyone was counting. Jeff followed in 1963 and Kelly in 1967.

Rod was a perfect model of what every 1960s father was expected to be, but as he was so frequently away at work, he appointed mom “Steward of the Wooden Spoons” with authority to mete out corporal punishment as necessary. A rigorous schedule of child rearing ensued, but no one can argue that their parenting method resulted in anything other than three (now old) men who are each successful and respected in their own families and professional endeavors.

Rod lost mom far too soon, at the end of 1987, but this only briefly curbed his zest for life and love of travel and adventure. He said late in life that as a boy he thought he would never see anything farther from Luseland than the graveyard across the highway. But he saw the skyline of New York City from an open helicopter. He saw Paris. He Saw London. He drove the length of Scotland on the wrong side of the road. He went to Germany and Switzerland and Italy and France and Belgium. He soaked up the sun in Hawaii and Mexico. He cruised the inside passage to Alaska.

His most personally meaningful trip, however, may have been just this past April when he accompanied a quorum of his sons to the bar of the King George Hotel in his hometown of Luseland, ending a 70 year self imposed exile. Rod had helped dig his paternal grandfather’s grave in the frozen Saskatchewan soil in January of 1955 and afterwards retired to the bar with the hired hands to drink a salutary beer in the old man’s honor. But, Rod was 19 and the drinking age at the time was 21 and the owner gave him the bum’s rush. He vowed never to return but was finally convinced he had outlasted his foe and could return for a quick victory lap in 2025. His first and last beer in that establishment.

Rod was a flirt and a social butterfly. He was untroubled by solitude but really came to life in a gathering. He was never at a loss for an opinion. Usually well informed but sometimes otherwise. As he rarely wore his hearing aids he was never reluctant to offer those opinions whether or not someone else was mid sentence.

He was a product of his place and time. He stood fast as a proponent of a moderate 1950s conservative family values ethos, but as he aged he grew unexpectedly conciliatory and a bit squishy around the edges. He could regularly startle the listener with an opinion clearly formed later than the turn of the most recent century.

Rod never backed down from a fair fight, or an unfair one if the odds were tilted towards him, but by the time he reached round three with Cancer and with Pulmonary Fibrosis waiting ringside to join the melee he knew it was time to retreat to his corner and throw in the towel. The beating was merciless, but mercifully brief and his suffering was kept to a minimum.

He stayed sharp to the last. The mind was willing but the body, sadly, too weak.

He was able to say goodbye to his friends at Arbourside Court during one last Friday Happy Hour a week before the end came. They can’t possibly know how sorry he was to leave them that last time and how much he misses them.

His and his family’s gratitude goes out to Dr. Louise Low and Dr. Dinesh Samaraskera as well as to all the staff in the multiple wards Rod stayed in in Surrey Memorial and to the exceptionally kind staff at Laurel Place.

The words do not exist that can adequately express the love and appreciation the family feel for Rod’s sister-in-law Denise Pelton for all the care and attention she offered Rod in his later years and especially at the end.

Rod lived long enough to be predeceased by almost everyone but three names stand out: His father, Young Wellington, his older brother, also Young Wellington, and his younger brother Harold Grant. All three died from ALS so if anyone would like to memorialize Rod with a charitable donation to the BC ALS Society he would appreciate it. Other than that, please drink a toast to his memory, often and at length.

A private remembrance ceremony will be held late next spring is Surrey so that snow bound admirers from less mild locales can make the trek.

Rod misses you all.