The following are notes for comments by Jim Meek, Don Dennison’s cousin, at the celebration of Don’s life on July 17, 2015 at Gallery 78 in Fredericton. Jim has kindly agreed to share his comments here. Jim’s comments were preceded by those of Don’s daughter Anne. The image above shows Don sailing away from his cottage at Glass Point on the Bay of Fundy.
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Good day. My name is Jim Meek. I am Don’s cousin. Today I am going to say a few words about the man and the boy I knew.
In starting – on behalf of Gail and the family, I would like to thank all of you for being here. This turnout is a tribute to the great respect and affection people feel for Donald.
Gail, Anne and Christie and their families have been overwhelmed by the support that has poured in – from neighbours dropping by with meals, to notes from long-time friends, to people like Frank McKenna and Bob Rae sending notes in which they remember Don fondly.
I should also stress at the outset that Donald Gordon Dennison set some ground rules for this event, which he hoped would be celebratory.
- He wanted people to enjoy a glass of wine.
- He wanted you to hear some good jazz, and the trio is playing his favourite playlist today.
- He loved great design and good art. So here we are in this beautiful venue, at Gallery 78, with a Stephen May painting of Christ Church Cathedral – from the Dennison home – hanging over the mantel.
- And he wanted to be remembered honestly and fondly, but not tearfully.
- Our marching orders from Don also include no sobbing friends, and no crying cousins.
Many of you will already know how remarkable Don’s last months on earth were.
He started writing his extraordinary memoir between twice-daily radiation treatments.
Just a few weeks ago, he wrote a wise and learned op-ed on the Canadian Senate for the Telegraph Journal. [It is also available here.]
And he remained lovingly attentive to the present and future needs of Gail, the family and their friends.
It is a tribute to Don’s spirit that he may have been killed by his illness, but he was never conquered by it.
He spent his last weeks completing a life in full, rather than lamenting its passing.
I am going to step back in time now, and – at Gail’s suggestion, I will take excerpts from Don’s Memoir to guide what I say here today.
In this passage, Donald comments on his early school years in Etobicoke. “Humber Valley Village Public School was a pleasant experience, but the best times were on the way home from school, dawdling along by the road, ditches, and through short cuts. My report cards in early grades indicated that I chewed my pencil, was a day-dreamer, and was strong in current affairs.”
Strong in current affairs?
When I first met Don in the early 1950s, Louis St. Laurent was prime minister.
I’m sure that Don (at age 3 or 4) not only knew Laurent was prime minister, but that his nickname was Uncle Louis, and that he was exactly the kind of steady-as-she-goes leader that Canada needed after the war.
St. Laurent was also the prime minister who introduced equalization payments, and while I cannot produce documented evidence that Don advised him to do so, I’m going to believe it until someone proves me wrong.
Here’s the other thing that stands out most clearly from my early memories of Don.
Three or so years older than me, he took me under his wing. He played with me, he shared his toys, he took me outside his home in Etobicoke to play in what felt like magical surroundings.
The home was designed by his father Gordon, a graphic artist and accomplished war painter, and it let in lots of light and felt like it was in the woods.
Wordsworth said that the child is the Father of the Man, and it will surprise no one who knew Donald as an adult that he had a generous spirit as a boy – and like I said, a strong interest in current affairs.
Here are some words from Don’s memoir about what turned out to be his enduring interest in public life. ”The attachment to the idea of a more prosperous New Brunswick in a Canada that will rediscover its purpose is what interests me, and partly explains why Gail and I haven’t become snowbirds or retreated to a villa in Portugal. As retirees, we are free, but also committed.”
Those are the words of a man who knew who he was, and what he stood for.
As many of you will know, Don served as deputy minister of three departments in the New Brunswick government. He was a trusted constitutional adviser to Richard Hatfield on patriation of the Canadian constitution, and to Frank McKenna on Meech Lake.
He was at the centre of some of the most important developments in recent Canadian history, but he would never have put it that way himself.
It is characteristic of Don that you would only get an inkling of his accomplishments in public service by reading his words.
It is the photographs in his memoir – showing him in close consultation with Premiers Hatfield and McKenna – that tell the story, that show he was in and of the inner circle.
After Don “retired”, he continued to take on important roles – as the first Executive Director of the New Brunswick Business Council, as Bob Rae’s vice-president at the Forum of Federations, and as President of the Nature Trust of New Brunswick, which he basically willed into being.
This list goes on and on, but Don would dial me back now so I’ll end this summary of his public service by adding one thing:
Don’s Dennison’s motive was not just about building a good career. His passion for public policy, for Constitutional arrangements that reflected what Canada is at its best, for the value of education, for balanced, sustainable growth – these passions were driven by his interest in the province’s progress, and the nation’s.
For him, public service really was a higher calling.
As Don’s memoir attests, his other great focus was what he called his commitment to family and friends.
I cannot possibly name everyone who was close to Don. But I do want to mention his older sister Jane, and her husband Bill, his daughters Christie and Anne, their partners Marc and Ken, and of course his wife, best friend, and staunchest supporter Gail. She was his rock, as he was hers, through good times and bad.
And of course his granddaughters: Here is what Don writes about them in the memoir:
“Tess appears to be a born performer, musically adept, and eager to mount any stage. Beatrice is emerging as a quiet charmer, kindly older sister, and a budding philosopher. Celeste is too young for me to read, but she has already, by her arrival and alert nature, brought added strength to this family.”
Don was already forming the kind of close, loving relationships with his granddaughters that he had enjoyed with Christie and Anne. It is sad to lose him but there is a kind of quiet comfort in knowing that his memory will be kept alive by his daughters, for his granddaughters.
There is a wonderful section of the Memoir called Soaring, in which he describes the joy of moving through space, through nature, “aided by the elements or your own momentum.”
Imagine skating across a perfect sheet of ice on a lake or a river. Or running white water in a canoe. Or coasting downhill on a bicycle after you had earned that joy by peddling to the top. Or sailing.
Don, of course, did teach Anne and Christie to sail.
And about five years ago, Don took me sailing aboard his fabled “Paceship” in Passamaquoddy Bay.
I’m not exactly a landlubber, but my previous experiences with sailing had always involved taking orders from skippers who should have been known as Captain Bligh.
What Don did was calmly talk me through every step I had to take to help him sail the boat – and soon we were soaring before the wind with smiles plastered on our faces.
The boy who shared his toys had grown into the man who shared his joy.
Now, I want to turn to another passage from Don’s memoir. He wrote in on Valentine’s Day, this year, as he notes.
“I am more aware than ever how the word ‘love’ gets bandied about with various intent. Even on a normal day the range of use is astounding, from the courteous ‘I’d love a coffee’, to the profane ‘for the love of god’, to the most sublime ‘God’s love’. In our relationship I think Gail and I have avoided the perfunctory expression of love in favour of demonstrating it in small ways on a daily basis.”
Well, I guess you can tell from that passage that Don was no big fan of Oprah.
You can debase the concept of love by using the word too much or too loosely, and we can best honour it by the way you live – by, as he says, “demonstrating it in small ways on a daily basis.”
Don and I come from families in which love was rarely expressed in words but never doubted, in which expectations were high and better be met by the kids, in which – as he says in his memoir – it was assumed you’d go to university and that was that.
I know Don and Gail built that kind of security, that kind of expectation, and that steady, certain love into their family.
I last talked to Don on the phone about a week before his death. He was in a palliative care unit at the time. We both knew it might be our last conversation.
Being Don, he talked about the Senate [Don’s article on the Senate, published shortly before he died, can be seen here], and he talked about how comfortable his room was, and he asked how my wife Maureen was faring.
She was being treated for cancer at the same time as Don, and Don, Gail, Maureen and I spent many hours together – helping each other through – over the past two years.
‘Maureen was getting stronger’, I told Don. ‘How much stronger?’ Don said. ‘Slowly but steadily stronger,’ I said. ‘What’s next for treatment?’ he asked. ‘Just monitoring,’ I said. ‘That’s great,’ he said.
And so it went. Don was Don to the end. On a personal level, I know that Don’s life can be well measured by what Wordsworth called “the best part of a good man’s life, those little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
Except that we will remember you, Don and we will remember those acts of kindness. Your spirit will go with us, and for that we are all grateful.
And if your body were travelling with us as well, right now you’d say “Enough, already.” You’d tell us to enjoy some fine music and conversation.
So I will leave it there. Thanks so much for being here to remember a good man.
