Dale Fred Ferguson

Dale was born on March 23, 1934 in a big stone house on the family homestead, near the town of Mortlach, Saskatchewan. The third child of Fred and Louise Ferguson, Dale was a curious boy who loved to take things apart to figure out how they worked. Living on the farm taught him many things including the fact that he did not want to be a farmer. So after high school, he left to study Radio Technology where he learned how to take electronics apart and how to put them back together. For a while he had his own TV and radio repair business in Prince Albert. But he was too kind and didn't charge enough for his work, so his business didn’t work out.

On a cold and snowy December 22, 1956, Dale married Pat (Luella Patricia Felt). From 1955 to 1967, they lived in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, where they had four children: Stacey, Martin, Dana and Jeff. Dale worked as a Radio Technician, which took him across the far north of Saskatchewan maintaining and repairing radio towers in remote communities. As his family grew up, Dale upgraded his high school diploma and took various additional courses in Toronto and Saskatoon. He eventually decided to study Education at the University of Alberta. He finished a four-year Bachelor of Education degree in two years by studying year-round while Pat managed the house.

In 1969, the family moved to Ponoka where Dale became an Industrial Arts (I.A.) teacher at the Ponoka Junior High School, where he worked until his retirement in 1997. He excelled at teaching and students loved his class. He won an award for the instructional booklets he wrote for electronic and woodworking projects, which were published and used by I.A. teachers across the province. His sense of humour helped him build rapport with his students — he began every semester with safety instructions that included a fake severed finger that he placed on the bandsaw to highlight the dangers of the equipment. Dale’s sense of humour was a big part of who he was.

Dale was a talented woodworker who loved to design and build things. When raising his young family, there were many things that he and Pat couldn’t afford, so Dale found ways to build them himself. Christmas presents were almost always hand-built or hand-made. He built a soft-top tent trailer in 1963 and, ten years later, built a bigger, better hard-top tent trailer for his growing family. He built his first pair of cross-country skis by cutting down an old pair of downhill skis. He built a cedar-strip-and-fibreglass canoe. As the cost of new fibreglass cloth was too expensive, Dale used Pat's old fibreglass curtains, which had flowers on them. His kids, sharing in his sense of humour, thought the canoe should be christened the Mayflower. Dale built custom sleds for his kids that were the envy of the neighbourhood. He used metal tube runners that were faster than any other sled on the snow hill. He built dressers, tables, cabinets, and more. Dale built Wahoo boards (a favourite board game of the Ferguson clan) for his four kids, his fifteen grandkids and his three great grandkids -- four generations worth. At 80 years old, he used the workshop in his apartment building in Red Deer to build a china cabinet for Stacey. The china cabinet was greatly admired by the other woodworkers in the workshop (and by Stacey, of course). Dale, with Pat’s input, even designed and built three of their houses: two in Ponoka and their retirement house in Red Deer. Throughout his life, Dale liked to draw diagrams to determine or explain how things worked or were designed. Because of this predilection, he always kept a notepad and a pen in his chest pocket

Dale and Pat were married for 63 wonderful years. They were that rare kind of couple who always held hands, stole kisses, and danced in the kitchen, right up to when Pat passed away, on May 28, 2019. Dale and Pat raised a family who worked and played together. Everyone was required to pitch in to get work done and everyone got to have fun. Lots of fun: camping, skiing, canoeing, hiking, playing board games, helping to host regular Friday night dinners, going to concerts, and having winter wiener roasts after skiing or tobogganing. After retirement, Dale and Pat enjoyed travelling with friends across Canada and around the world (USA, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Hawaii, Greece), and went on cruises in Europe and the Mediterranean. Dale always had a hard time sitting still. He was always busy, at work or at play, living his life to its fullest.

Friends and family were the most important part of Dale’s life. We encourage you to take a walk outside (preferably in the mountains), follow that up with a big slice of pie, and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to remember Dale and his big warm smile. Rest in peace, Dale.

A special thank you to the staff at the Touchmark at Wedgewood Retirement Home for their kindness and care over the past four years.