Jean Guy "John" Gareau

GAREAU, Jean Guy – Peacefully at the Hawkesbury General Hospital, on Saturday, June 24, 2017. Jean Guy Gareau of Williamstown; age 90 years. Beloved husband of Gladys Gareau. Loving father of Larry Gareau (Elaine), Patsy St. Pierre (Jean), John J. Gareau (Andrea), Debbie Charlebois (Yvon), Kathie Chatterton (Gary) and Gayle Reichwein. Cherished grandfather of Wanda, Lori, Steven, Renée, Sarah, Adam and Dean. Great grandfather of 9. Dear brother of Rodriquez Gareau and Sylvio Gareau (Norma). Predeceased by his parents Osée and Irène (née Bourbonnais) Gareau. Also predeceased by his siblings Alban Gareau (late Lucienne), Mario Gareau (Patricia), Aurele Gareau (Alice), Rene Gareau (Jill) and Huguette Disotell (late Russell). Jean Guy will be missed by many family and friends. Resting at LAHAIE AND SULLIVAN, CORNWALL FUNERAL HOME, WEST BRANCH, 20 Seventh Street West, (613-932-8482) on Thursday from 10 am until time of Service. A Funeral Service will be held in the Memorial Chapel of the Funeral Home at 12 noon on Thursday, June 29, 2017. As expressions of sympathy, Memorial Donations to the Alzheimer’s Society would be greatly appreciated by the family. Messages of condolences may be left at www.lahaiesullivan.ca

“C’est pas toujours drôle dans la vie”

Dad’s Eulogy

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen – My name is John Gareau and I am Jean-Guy’s son.

It is difficult, at best, to stand before you and attempt to honour my father in words. It is never an easy task to try to capture the essence of someone in a speech. Words fall short of doing that; in this case, they fall so far below the mark that I feel it is almost futile to try. But try I must.

As I look out into the church, I think my father would be very proud to see so many in attendance and to see the faces of those he has touched on his journey.

MY FATHER WAS A SIMPLE MAN.

He was a simple man in the strictest sense of the word; born July 9th, 1926 in St. Telesphore, into a family of 7 boys and one sister – and into a farming lifestyle; I can only imagine the time my grandmother must have had trying to raise those 7 boys! I knew them when they were adults and they were –shall we say - colourful. I think she invented the phrase – “c’est pas toujours drole dans la vie”!!

At some point, the family moved from St. Telesphore to Ontario and took up residence on a farm in Glengarry - a place called Glen Gordon Station. I have no idea why they called it a station – there was nothing there but a set of railway tracks and a flashing light – complete with a gas station on the west side of Highway 34. And there he spent his formative years and transformed from a youth to an adult – either working on my grandparents’ farm or hiring himself out to work on neighboring farms.

Born during the years of the Great Depression – and raised during the war years – he knew deprivation and the value of saving money once it was earned. It’s been mentioned that he was a mechanic; but he was also a carpenter, an electrician and a handyman – nothing got fixed, repaired or mended on our farm that wasn’t fixed by him. He wasn’t about to pay someone else to fix the motor in the tractor or put a new roof on the barn when he could do that himself. I inherited none of those skills!

(I got my Mom’s mechanical abilities - and my father’s cooking skills) - I only have two works for Andrea; “Thank you” - and “I’m sorry”!!

Because it was the war years – everything was rationed and there were no parts to replace old worn out ones – you simply had to make do. Flat tires were common, and simply had to be repaired. Tubes were patched and re-patched, engines were overhauled and life carried on.

There’s a story he told many times about an old car he had during this time and a trip to Mount Royal in Montreal with my mother and my uncle Alban and his wife – aunt Lucienne. The car had no brakes – and those of us who remember him will remember why the car had no brakes:

“Because the master cylinder was hanging in the tool shed at home”!!

I heard that story so often – I came to think that’s where master cylinders were supposed to be! It’s not surprising I never succeeded as a mechanic!!

He would get the car to stop by gearing down and letting out the clutch and coasting to a stop. Which worked fine in Glengarry – especially during those years when traffic would not have been very heavy. Not quite so well in Montreal – or worse yet – Mount Royal.

They apparently made it up Mount Royal okay – but on their way back down – luck ran out; they had to stop. So, he did his customary gearing down, let out the clutch, gear down again, let out the clutch - and coast to a stop – except this time – the drive shaft snapped in two!!

So, there they are – rocketing down Mount Royal – no brakes –

“because the master cylinder is hanging in the tool shed” – and no drive shaft.

They were rapidly approaching the bottom of the hill – and picking up speed – and he says he could see traffic ‘whizzing by going in both directions’ and they’re headed right for it; (he pantomimed the speeding traffic by flashing both hands together – which I guessed was French for: “lots of cars – going really, really fast”)!!

All he could think to do was when they hit the bottom of the hill and were just about to enter those lanes of traffic – he cut the wheel as hard as he could and put the car crossways to the hill. He said it rocked like it was going to tip over but at the last minute – it held steady and stayed on all four wheels - disaster was averted. Just another day in the life of Jean-Guy! My mother refers to this day as “an outing”!!

My father was illiterate – he could neither read nor write – but he managed to learn both official languages – French and English - and he spoke both fluently. He was the only member of our family who could do this. With no education – he was limited in his career choices and made more so because we lived in the tiny village of Lancaster at that time with very few job opportunities – and he often said the only work he could get was “pick and shovel” and if he was going to work pick and shovel - he was going to do it on his own terms, on his own land – for himself and his family.

So, with that, when I was about eight years old, we moved from the tiny village of Lancaster (where I had been quite content with village life, going to catholic school, skating at the village rink, swimming at the wharf in South Lancaster, having a circle of friends and a downtown to go to, hang out with my Grandmother – whom I adored – Snukie would buy me an occasional ice-cream cone – I was quite happy there!) - to a small farm my parents had purchased just outside of Williamstown – and we made a new life for ourselves. My father made a living raising beef cattle, growing crops – mainly hay and corn, and wheat – and buying and selling cattle at the local sale barn. As growing children – we all attended a small one-room rural school and later Char-Lan high school in Williamstown. In all those years – that simple man, who could neither read nor write – provided for his family - and I don’t ever remember going to bed hungry or cold. We had challenges to be sure – but he persevered and he overcame.

With no formal education of his own – and understanding full well the limitations that puts on career choices – he encouraged his children to stay in school – “so you don’t have to work pick and shovel” – and I’m proud to say – we did our best to heed his words.

He retired to Cornwall after working that farm – and although he was a simple man – he and my mother managed to live off the proceeds from the sale of that farm for the rest of his life and up until today.

In retirement life – he enjoyed his music –mainly country and western – and mainly Johnny Cash – although I do recall him being impressed with Tom Jones as well – (or it might have been my mother who was impressed with Tom Jones – and he just went along with it)! He also enjoyed tinkering on his car, his various lawnmowers – pretty much anything he could find with a motor in it. His motto was not so much, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – as it was: “if it’s running fine, we really should tear it all apart and see why”!!

And he enjoyed dancing which was a pastime he took up frequently at the Senior’s Centre in Downtown Cornwall for many years. In later years, he developed Tinnitus – which caused a constant ringing in his ears – and he could no longer tolerate the noises of music and television. Or small children!

Later still, he developed Alzheimer’s – which robbed him of his ability to drive his beloved 1987 Ford Tempo – and although he wasn’t really known for his charitable acts (no doubt a throwback to the shortages and hardships experienced growing up during the Great depression) – in an uncharacteristic move – he donated his car to one of his grandchildren.

He taught us the value of hard work and his French expression of “C’est pas toujours drole dans la vie” – was ever present in English as well….at least the spirit of it was.

I see my sisters, and I’m sure, each of us remembering how Dad would check the amount of gas left in the farm gas tank every time we drove either his car, (or as we got older, cars of our own) - to see how much we had managed to siphon out! I see my brother the day he taught me how to ride a bike and I ran into a large glass jug, knocking it against the side of the basement wall and shattering it. Glass everywhere and Dad promising me I’d never own a bike of my own!! And the time we thought it would be cool to lasso a steer the way they did on TV. We had to fix fence for a week after that one.

I remember my eldest sister, Patsy, begging him to install a phone so we would be connected to the outside world – although in hindsight I think it was more because she was 16 and entering the dating years – and she wanted to be connected to the outside world! And so, it came to be. It was great as we no longer had to yell across three pastures to the neighbours; we could simply call them and speak in a conversational tone!

And my mother…my mother has the most treasured memories of any of us, none of us knew him or loved him as she did and so, today, we extend to you Mom, all the sympathy and compassion that we can give. We ask that you hold your memories close, and we hope they will help sustain you through any loneliness you may feel... that they will somehow keep you warm and safe and I do know that somewhere, in whatever lies beyond, dad is smiling down on us and wishing us well.

He is smiling down on you Mom – looking down on all of us – and I know he is very pleased with what he has accomplished and the course he has set us on.

We will not let him down and we will not disappoint him.

Thank you.