Thursday, June 11, 2026
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I feel many of us each know a different Alfie. So, I’d like to briefly share my Alfie. My earliest memories at Aunt Eileen and Uncle Az’s house were playing with some of Alfie’s toys which were more sophisticated than mine (he was 7 yrs older). When I would play or sleep upstairs, Alfie’s room was like no other. It was grand, maybe even inspiring, to see his walls filled with maps and nature photos. Earth maps, intertwined and overlapped by elephant migration paths or shaded relief maps of valleys on Mars or moon craters. And flags. Outdoors, Alfie was like a second dad, brother, and uncle to me. My first canoe paddle was on Twin Lakes with Alfie, and those trips culminated when he was 26 in a three-day trip down the lakes, string bogs and streams of the Gaff Topsails—with just blankets and his new pup tent. My first motorcycle ride was just after he got his road motorcycle, probably when he was 17. Again, not ‘down town’, but up Massey Drive to the lakes, and up the highway a little, careful, with safety foremost. One summer when he was about 18 and I began life in Massey Drive, Alfie took me up on the land to set up our rabbit snares. I panicked when one of my snares had a live bunny, but he showed me how to deal with that. Eventually as I went through school and university, he continued helping as a big brother to me, and to Little Brothers, and he kept in contact with at least one of those until very recently. When he bought land in Cormack he had a vision that it would be a school to teach kids about raising farm animals and food sustainability…no longer prescient or ideological thinking. Like many of us, many of his projects did not get completed, but anyone who visited his farm animals witnessed the cleanest and happiest pigs and cows…even Carnations could have bought his milk! Alfie would call me in every state I lived, and then in Nova Scotia. The conversations became much more science-focussed, and many were inspired by Quirks and Quarks, CBC News, books, or his many conversations with profs at Grenfell. A few years ago there was a subtle alignment of planets that most of us would have missed, but skies were clear, and a few days later Annette and I visited him in Cormack—his first question was if I saw it! As his health continued to fail in the past five years the phone calls were more frequent, about once a month, sometimes multiple in a week. He easily pushed my knowledge of physics to the limit. We didn’t talk religion or politics (beyond a one liner here and there), but he was certainly up on the importance of advances in particle physics, black holes, and AI. We shared ignorance in biology except for pollinators and things we ate, and like him, I developed some sense of spirituality among humans and biology, from roots to birds. In November 2025 at 5 am (Atlantic!) he called to see if I could see Mercury. I thought it was a bit of a trick, because it is very difficult to see Mercury from Earth. I went out in my undies, wiped my eyes, he guided my view, and it was the morning star Venus. What was interesting about this is not only that he could see this with his remaining weak eye, but that he was wrong. In decades of looking at the stars and planets with Alfie, he would not have made that mistake, and I must admit it dawned on me that my cousin was changing. That December he called and insisted on its urgent nature. He needed me to contact Quirks and Quarks because he had an idea for their year-end program. This year, like some others, they asked listeners for ideas for their final show of 2025. Alfie had an idea, and it was quirky enough that it seemed like a good fit! So, that afternoon I wrote the Q&Q producer, and after some exchanges, they indicated that they already had something lined up, but they thanked Alfie for the idea, and they thought it might be suitable for a future year. When I told Alfie, he simply said ‘good’, and got to the new point of the day. Alfie spoke generously of his friends, especially his little brothers, numerous mill co-workers, farmers nearby. He would ask about my family, including my first grand-daughter Margaret, and knew that two other grand-daughters arrived safely this winter. I hope I can share Alfie’s incessant curiosity and love for nature with my grand-children, and I am deeply sorry he and I didn’t take the time to reminisce before he left our physical world.