Celebrating My Father's Life
Saying goodbye to the man who made me.
Tomorrow would have been my father Dermont’s 86th birthday. This past weekend we had an event in celebration of his life, gathering together old friends to reminisce and remember him. It was a good time. This is the speech I gave (along with some deeply inessential footnotes).
A few days after my dad died, my friend had a dream about him.
In the dream, Dermont was riding a motorcycle while wearing a leather jacket without a shirt.
My friend told me he looked happy and wild and free — kind of like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.
I can guarantee that when he was alive, dad would not be eager to get on (let alone own) a motorcycle.1
He would also never put on a jacket without putting on a shirt first (usually a rugby shirt, likely at least 25 years old with a few moth-eaten holes here and there).2
And if I told him he looked like Dennis Hopper in the movie Easy Rider, dad’s response would be first, “who?”
Followed by, “I don’t like movies.”3
Dreams vs. reality.
I’m telling you about the dream of Dermont as a shirtless biker because it helped me understand something about him that wasn’t always clear to me in the course of our relationship:
Dad wasn’t really who he appeared to be.
Throughout his life, he mostly followed the rules.
He acted conservatively in almost every situation (except when pouring drinks, as so many of you reminded me after he passed).
He didn’t like to take risks. He felt safest in familiar surroundings, following rigid routines.
And that’s how I started to see him: as a person I loved who was living a small, constrained life.
But that’s not how I remember him.
An enormous heart.
Since he died, what I think about most often is his heart.
Dad had an enormous, loving, warm heart.
He loved his wife, his kids, his friends, his grandchildren. He loved sitting in High Park and looking at the trees. He loved a nice glass of wine at the end of the day.
He was filled with love, but he didn’t always have the tools to express it.
The more I learned about his upbringing, the more I understood why he had trouble being in touch with his feelings.
A very English life.
Dermont was born in Argentina in 1938 to an English couple who had truly absorbed the excellent parenting lessons of their social class and culture:
Isolate the child
Toughen the child up
Ensure that the child does what they’re told, not what they want to do
My grandparents as I knew them were loving and warm.4
But they did what was expected of British parents in their community in the 1940s, which included sending their son to boarding school at the age of seven.
After four years spent rarely seeing his parents, but at least remaining in the country where he was born, dad was shipped overseas to England, age 11, to continue his education.
From the moment he arrived, he was mocked and bullied for his heavily accented English.
He learned to fight as a way to compensate.
He also learned, I suspect, to suppress any lingering vulnerabilities and present a stoic face to the world.
Once school was done, he enlisted in the British army and spent three years in various African countries, following orders and taking on responsibilities as a 19-year-old that I definitely couldn’t handle at 45.5
Living fully.
How amazing was Dermont?
All these difficult early experiences shaped him. They left him, I think, out of touch with his own needs and desires.
And in spite of all that, look what dad made of himself.
He met the love of his life, Kate, while working in advertising in London.6
He moved to Canada, and is still seen by his nieces and nephews as a kind of hero — the one who got out and forged his own path. Kind of like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider.
He established himself here and had a successful career in advertising, launching the Financial Post and using his creative ingenuity and immense intelligence to pioneer new sales techniques.7
He had two kids who loved him and have lived comfortable and happy lives thanks to his support and care, and who went on to have kids of their own.
He was loved by so many people, all of whom seem to remember him grinning, cracking some good jokes, and secretly refilling their drinks when they least expect it.8
Enough speeches — let’s drink.
If dad was here, he’d probably want the speeches to be over as soon as possible so we could get back to drinking.
But he’d also be so happy to see all these people he loves gathered together.
So let’s raise a glass to him.
Dermont — dad — we love you, we miss you, we’ll always think of you when raising a glass.
Cheers.
When I finished speaking, an old friend of my dad’s got on the mic and let me know that in fact, my father was trained in riding motorcycles in the 1950s by the SAS. So… maybe not an entirely accurate assessment of his full life story.
That part is absolutely true.
Although he refused to actively watch most films, when my sister and I were teenagers, my dad had a suspicious habit of standing behind the couch, grunting with annoyance at the stupidity of what we were watching. But for like an hour. He may have just been watching the movie…
They really were. I think a lot about the cognitive dissonance for people who grew up with difficult parents watching them fawn over and spoil their grandchildren. “Where was this when I was that age?”
For instance: settling disputes between different groups in a village in Sierra Leone. The hardest decision I had to make at that age was “which Nine Inch Nails CD should I put in my bag to play on my Discman?” It would keep me up at night sometimes…
Another speaker at the event talked about how my father met my mother. She was working at the same office as him and he literally stole her coat and wouldn’t give it back unless she went and got a drink with him. Deeply problematic behaviour, but as it resulted in my existence, I guess I’m okay with it?
For instance: my dad sort of invented the slide projector. He figured out a method for shining a light through a transparent slide onto a screen before that was a thing that you do, and apparently sold a lot of advertising by amazing people with the trick. What he didn’t do was patent the invention, thus making his children fabulously and permanently rich. So for now, more Substacking I guess.
I think seven people spoke at the event. Not one of them didn’t mention this.
What wonderful insight and empathy. Beautiful.
So insightful and heartrending. He was a loving, caring man who never gave in to self pity, even as his health worsened and his life became more painful. We were so lucky to have him.