Below is the complete (unproofed) version of the Eulogy Scott and I read at Dad’s Celebration of Life service.
Richard Davies Eulogy – Part 1 (Heather Davies)
Hi, I’m Heather, Richard Davies’ daughter and older sister to Scott, and I’d like to share some memories about my beloved Dad’s beautiful life with you from his birth up to the time I was born, and then add a few personal reflections.
Richard Delmar Davies was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on August 31, 1949, an only child to Vernon Delmar and Rosalie Davies. He was born the same year Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet won best picture, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman debuted, and George Orwell’s 1984 was published. Truly, as Paul Simon sings, “Born at the Right Time”.
In his early years Dad and his parents lived in his grandmother Lucy’s house off Portage Avenue in St. James. Lucy owned a café, or as he called it, a greasy spoon, at the corner. His earliest memories from that period started around age three – he would sit in front of the radio console and record player, which often served as babysitter, listening to songs like Stan Freberg’s “Dear John”, and programs like “The Happy Gang”. Over time, entire worlds and soundscapes were introduced and began opening up to him. Many other early memories were also musical. In the summer of 1953 at age four, he remembered going to the move Calamity Jane with his mother and hearing Doris Day sing “Secret Love”. He also remembers Mr. Sandman playing on the jukebox in the old Winnipeg bus depot cafe while he listened with his Dad in the summer of 1955 and being in wonder at the magical illusions the song evoked. He had an uncanny ability to recall pop songs, dates, the location, and how he felt hearing them for the first time, and this continued throughout his life.
Dad attended the original Bannatyne school, built before WW1, for his early grades, and enjoyed his elementary studies, receiving honours about five times. That said, he also recalled skipping school in the fall to watch the New York Yankees in the World Series on a black and white TV. Trips to the Winnipeg Arena and Stadium to watch local hockey, baseball, and football games sparked a lifelong appreciation for sports. Eventually he played goal for the school soccer team, captained the baseball team from second base, and played goal on a playground C hockey team. In later grades he continued athletic pursuits, and was notably a fast runner and very good receiver in pickup football games, despite also discovering girls.
His deep love of dogs and the unwavering love and loyalty they offer first started with Scamp, an adopted mongrel (part Corgi) who was a steadfast companion for the only child starting in grade 1. Unfortunately on a summer day in grade 8 Dad returned home from a Grand Beach trip to find Scamp missing. His grandmother seemed unconcerned and had no clue where the dog had gone. Dad never fully recovered from losing his boyhood companion that day.
When the family moved into their own first house on Wallasey Street in 1955, grandpa decorated the veranda walls with Walt Disney cartoon characters for Dad to enjoy. Dad began to voraciously read MAD Magazine and the original Classic comics. In later years, he revisited this time period, listening to a similar transistor radio and collecting Classic Comics from his youth.
Dad’s life changed when he brought his first 45s in the later grades of elementary school – the first big three were “Blue Moon” by The Marcelles, a doo-wop band, Floyd Cramer’s “On the Rebound”, and “Bumble Boogie” by B. Bumble and The Stingers. He was in seventh heaven with his new records, spinning discs endlessly for himself, pretending he was a disc jockey.
Dad became a paperboy in 1958, when he was in grade 4, and delivered for the (long defunct) Winnipeg Tribune until 1963. He delivered the newspaper after school and Saturdays through all weather extremes. He bought his own 2-transistor radio with money earned and would bring his transistor radio everywhere he went between grades 5 and 11 – including on his paper route, of course! Long enamoured by the coin changers sported by bus drivers, Dad also bought his own coin changer to use when collecting, greatly impressing his customers!
A bus driver, in fact, was what young Richard aspired to become in the 1950s. He once said, “I was always impressed by these guys because if my car-less family went anywhere, it was by bus. I was always interested… to sit upfront where I could see the drivers and their routines. In my only-child fantasy life, I would pretend to be a bus driver and ride my mother’s bike, making stops, pretending to have a route of my own.”
Initially, Dad rode his mother’s pink single-speed despite criticisms by school friends who owned multi-speed bikes. Dad said after several years of paying his dues with that wonky pink bicycle, his grandmother surprised him with a CCM 3-speed bike from Eaton’s as a birthday present before he began grade 5, and that’s when his bike career moved into a higher gear. He began to use it for delivering newspapers, delivering drug store prescriptions, and getting around with friends, including to the air force base to watch movies.
Meanwhile in school, Dad began acting in grade 8, starting with a narrator role in Tom Sawyer (a grade 9 school operetta at Bannatyne). The plays and musicals to follow laid a path toward becoming Richard Davies the performer.
In the summer of ’63 when Dad was in grade 9 the family sold the house on Wallasey Street. Dad recalled, “My mother had me check the mail for the buyer’s cheque then come to her workplace downtown… so she could put it in the bank before the buyer changed his mind, as she put it”.
He was in grade 9 in 1964 when I first heard the Guess Who’s “Stop Teasin’ Me” on a 45 rpm single played on local Winnipeg radio. It fit in perfectly with the British Invasion songs on the radio at the time and he remembered being surprised and inspired that it was written and sung by a Winnipeg group. He quickly bought their first album.
Dad attended Silver Heights Collegiate for grades 10, 11 and 12. It was a relatively short walk across the field behind Billingsley Manor, the apartment complex the family now called home. He had his first writing stint in high school, writing for the student newspaper, covering sports and entertainment.
Dad joined a Kiwanis high school group for boys called the Key Club, and was responsible for booking talent for gatherings including the Burton Cummings band (before they earned the moniker The Guess Who on an American tour) for a school winter dance. It was a huge success, and shortly after their album later went to number one in Canada. To Winnipeg kids of the day, with the Guess Who and so many other great bands starting out, Dad always said the city felt like the center of the musical universe.
Dad also travelled with the Key Club to Ottawa and Toronto by train in a sleeper car of unsupervised grade 11 and 12 boys. Details of this first trip away from home were never fully disclosed, although he would say with a laugh and a shake of the head that it was a memorable and “very wild” time!
Dad encountered Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Robert Frost for the first time in grade 11 and Hamlet in grade 12. He also studied Keats’ Odes and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, which opened up large, lofty, transcendent views of humans and Nature. This led him directly to university English studies, a career teaching high-school English, and a life-long interest in drama and poetry.
Between 1964 and 1972 he was enchanted by the lyrics of folk songs and folk songs by Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and Gordon Lightfoot. He enjoyed the biting satire of folks songs by Phil Ochs such as “Draft Dodger Rage” and “I Ain’t Marching Anymore”. In the fall of 1967, he bought Och’s first album, Pleasures of the Harbor, and was delighted by every song, including the title track.
The hootenanny and Beatles eras of the early 1960s inspired Dad to finally buy a guitar, and he taught himself how to play chords in 1965-66. His music got more serious with his own performances in high school musicals such as The Mikado, Brigadoon, and Trial by Jury, coupled with listening to folk rock and music by The Beatles and the British Invasion. Dad started playing rock music with high school buddies – and formed many bands that never made it out of the basement. Years later he reconnected with a former classmate, Wayne Fraser, and they recorded demos around 1983 for about 25 songs Dad had written. The songs drew comments from Glen Campbell’s manager and Rita McNeill. Jack Richardson, who produced the Guess Who, liked Dad’s song “Computer Kid”.
Meanwhile, his high school marks went down. In fact, he had a D in grade 12 English going into final exams.
Over two summers he worked as nursing orderly at Winnipeg General Hospital. The work was physically demanding and he recalled lifting inpatients significantly heavier than his boyish frame. Unglamorous memories from that time lingered long after those two summers – for example, he remembered helping a large male patient relieve himself and discussing colloquial language for toilet paper. He learned the term “crap wrap” and thought it was quite clever.
In 1967 he attended the University of Winnipeg, enrolled in Arts, and had a very distracting first year. He met Mom in English class. Shortly after on a Friday lunch hour he met Mom by her locker, boldly suggesting she put her brown bag lunch back in the locker and join him for lunch at The Bay’s Paddlewheel restaurant instead. They had a fantastic year together. Dad was also playing solo gigs, and formed a very good folk trio with Glen Hall (guitar) who is now a jazz musician, and Ian Gardner, who ended up playing bass in Burton Cummings’ post-Guess Who band. He also led a folk quartet group called Clover. Dad also participated in the Vietnam demonstration on Memorial Boulevard, performing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” with Bob Mowbray.
A busy year indeed. Through the year he only ended up taking three courses – and, he failed all three.
This was a major turning point. Mom moved to Edmonton with her family, and he got serious and buckled down in year 2.
After a long year apart from each other, dad said the reunion with Mom was the day above all days he would choose to relieve. In his own words: (It would be) “The May afternoon, 1969, when I stepped off the train from Winnipeg and walked two blocks to the old courthouse on Winston Churchill Square where my fiancé worked and we were reunited after a long year apart. (I sold my beautiful Gibson guitar to a Winnipeg pawn shop to buy the train ticket. I have always had my priorities straight in significant matters.) This event pretty much showed that the impossible was possible (in true Davies style), and confirmed that we were destined to be together despite the parental preferences, geographical and time-apart factors.”
After moving to Edmonton to be with Mom, Dad attended the University of Alberta, finishing his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971 and graduation diploma in 1972.
Shockingly, his 30-year career as a senior high English teacher almost didn’t happen. He had an awful first round of student teaching at a junior high school: In his own words, “The first batch of writing assignments I took in were horrific: a ridiculous number of spelling and grammatical errors. ‘Twas very discouraging. Plus some run-ins with kids who were more like animals than human beings.” After vowing to quit, an auspicious encounter with a revered Education professor Glen Martin after hours in the education building convinced him to stick with it. And Glen was right – he had an encouraging, funny teacher for the senior high practicum, and the kids were better, smarter, had fewer errors in their work, and were overall more civil.
Mom and Dad married in Edmonton in 1971 at the Pleasantview United Church and travelled to Jasper for their honeymoon by train. As they arrived, the clerk was on the phone at the front desk, and upon seeing them, said “Oh there’s a call for you”. He had applied to Canada Post and they needed him to start work the very next day. Despite protests that he had just started his honeymoon, they told him that if he wanted the job he had to return to Edmonton tomorrow by noon. Mom and Dad nevertheless made the most of it and had an amazing day, renting bikes and exploring, before heading back to Edmonton the next morning.
Dad accepted a job in the remote northern town of Grand Centre, Alberta in 1972, where he would teach Senior High English for three years at the new Douglas Cardinal senior high school. Students of the day were just getting into pot, although drinking was still the mainstay in the area for both young and old. He recalled surreal school experiences during that time, including one afternoon when bands of students rounded up the teachers, individually summoning them where they were taunted, in a stunt reminiscent of the French Revolution.
Dad lived a double life during those Grand Centre years, teaching school by day and writing songs and playing country and rock music at night. He led a band called Four in 1972 as a rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist, which later morphed into Betty Plus Four. The band played bars, weddings, holiday parties in town, the air base, and as far as Namao. Playing New Year’s Eve in Wainwright scored the band $1200 – a lot of dough back then – and barracks accommodation, to boot. Believe it or not, reel-to-reel tape recordings of these gigs still exist in our basement.
Dad said, “We became the band in the area, playing many smoke-filled rooms for masses of drunk people. It was customary for the band to drink before and after shows and during sets. I was in some danger of becoming an alcoholic had I stayed in Grande Centre.”
I was born in 1975. At a cross roads between family, health, and career (he always reckoned could have stayed with Betty Plus Four, added a keyboard player and written more Neil Diamond-type songs), Mom and Dad chose to return to Edmonton.
I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, which was a time period of immense personal and professional growth for Dad. He had hit his stride and was in his absolute prime, seeking out and seizing opportunities, taking his career and personal interests to the next level with boundless enthusiasm and energy. He truly was the embodiment of Walt Whitman’s “I am large, I contain multitudes”.
Scott will talk a bit more about this incredible productive time period in a minute, I’ll quickly add a few more personal reflections.
As a child I had only a vague awareness of what was going on – I remember the electric typewriter hum in the dinette, using the backs of photocopies he’d made for planning textbooks and teaching for art projects, and seeing him mark student papers on Sundays at family gatherings. I remember the pride and excitement I felt attending his poetry readings and book releases – and seeing his name authoring books. He was a celebrity superstar to me!
And yet – and quite separate from the personal and professional activities of the day- he was very much the ever present, loving, kind, doting, supporting father. He attended every one of my plays, concerts, award and grad ceremonies – always supporting and cheering me on. And holidays and birthdays were always enthusiastically celebrated, with endless joy and laughter.
He taught me fundamentals like how to ride a bike (which was an important symbol of autonomy for him), and how to play baseball. But beyond being pushed on the swing, tobogganing, taking me out stargazing, and seemingly endless and exquisitely planned summer trips, he also introduced me to the worlds of words, language, ideas, music, and the arts. Having a writer/poet/thinker as a Dad meant he might not be able to fix a leaky faucet or perfectly patch a wall, but we would have amazing conversations about consciousness, autonomy, and recurring themes and motifs in literature.
Dad introduced me to the concept of Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being- those conscious moments where you purely experience reality. In high school we’d escape at lunch and go visit Hawrelak Park or Emily Murphy and drink in nature’s serenity and beauty. He showed me how to make time for my inner myself, and that I could experience the divine and the eternal in the simple here and now. Dad later said our trip to see the Dalai Lama in Calgary was one of the most uplifting and spiritual experiences of his life.
He introduced me to Joseph Campbell and the concept of following your bliss. We lived this mantra, seizing opportunities to go to plays, symphonies, concerts, art shows, and take quick trips out to the mountains. I was blessed to experience particularly moving concerts like Sting’s Soul Cages tour, Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints and South Africa’s Johnny Clegg with him. I remember walking around Banff with him in the early hours of the morning absolutely euphotic after an out of this world performance by Johnny Clegg, his song “I’m searching for the spirit of the great heart” ringing in our ears. I reflect back now and realize this song is truly Dad. He really did have the spirit of the great heart and seized every day that way.
And he always approached the world with pure wonder. Simple pleasures, like having a sip of Baileys sitting outside on a crisp fall evening, hand feeding chickadees, or enjoying Italian coffee on Saturday mornings on the deck, were all rituals to experience, whether alone or with others, and savour. In the fall we would go “leafing”. Leafing was his unique fall term describing the transcendent experience of appreciating and taking in all fall has to offer, and return home from the river valley and University area with leaves to press – artefacts of this sacred experience.
His personal credo for living his life, as most of you know, was Emily Dickinson’s “I dwell in possibility”. Beyond living this way every day himself, which in and of itself is extraordinary, he also impacted all of us around him, in this same spirit. He had the unique ability to see the possibilities within ourselves and be a catalyst for us, connecting us to new ideas, opportunities for growth, new connections. He was a true possibilitarian, as he called himself. Dad collected spoken word LPs, cassettes, and CDs by numerous famous poets and writers and loved to share them with others to open up new experiences. He would send me an unbreaking stream of ideas, thoughts, possibilities by way of books, movies, music, and a heads up of live events coming up. He was always seeking to connect me to items he knew would resonate, open my mind, or fill my heart.
One time he shared a bookmark he had picked up at the Wild Book Store, as he’d happened to notice an old astronomy prof was giving a talk on solar eclipses and thought Jason and I might be interested. Were we ever! After attending the talk, Jason and I took a solar eclipse road trip odyssey that will likely be the greatest travel and spiritual experience of our lives.
Throughout all my childhood experiences, as I began to strike out into this devastatingly harsh and beautifully sublime world on my own, and as recent as this past July, one single, constant truth remained clear. I always had his rock-solid, always got your back, always in your corner, cheering you on, give-you-anything-you-need-even-at-great-personal-sacrifice support. I think about the endless opportunities he afforded me, the sacrifices he made, and the support he provided to ensure I had everything I needed to survive – and indeed thrive. So much of what was him lives in me, and I am so grateful. I love you so much, Dad.
Richard Davies Eulogy – Part 2 (Scott Davies)
I’ll pick up the story now, thinking a bit more about Mr. Davies, the teacher. Relocating to Edmonton, his time with Edmonton Public started in 1975 at McNally High School. In 1984, after 9 years at McNally, he spent two years at J. Percy Page, then in 1986 moved into what would be his longest tenure at Strathcona Composite – taking an early retirement 16 years later in 2002.
A favourite McNally memory was taking his students out in the fall and spring to the nearby view of the city to seek inspiration to write haiku poems. He always enjoyed revisiting this spot over the years.
After being declared surplus at McNally due to falling enrollment and a lack of seniority, he home-ran his interview at the brand-new Percy Page, getting the job on the spot and ultimately making the most of a chaotic, wild-west environment. I’ve heard some stories of staff mischief and practical jokes, too… This is when he had a movie camera and no one was safe from being caught on film only to reappear on-screen at a future staff function.
I do believe that Strathcona felt most like ‘home’ to him, even as the teaching profession changed over the years. He didn’t unload too much at the dinner table, but I caught the drift that he wasn’t always seeing eye to eye with administrators. When he had the chance, he seemed to know how to push the envelope just enough to make them squirm and eat their words, but without serious repercussions. “You’re going to get yourself fired!” my mom would say.
At Scona, Dad met music teacher Ken Klause, whom he described as his musical soulmate – an “ever youthful, pianist-vocalist”. Together, they founded Fudge – the teacher band, accompanied by a drum machine (some tech that my friends’ households certainly didn’t have!). They shared many laughs and it was said that whatever music they tackled they always went the “whole ten yards”. The core duo later became a trio with math teacher Ken Kulka, and they were joined by other talented colleagues over the years. From 1990 to 2002, Fudge had countless live performances for the Strathcona school community – lunch hour concerts, staff parties, graduation – you name it.
One might think that would be plenty for anyone, but my dad had yet another side-hustle: school textbooks! Dad met Glen Kirkland around 1977 in an evening grad course and they decided they could put together an education textbook for English 13-23-33. He and Glen formed a partnership in 1978 that extended to 2000. The Connections series – Imagining, Relating, and Discovering – was published by Gage in 1980. The books were popular and beat out all competition. This began a steady of publishing over the next 30 years of textbooks and guides, with some being used in every province across the country.
In conjunction with textbooks, he gave well over 100 workshops and presentations across Canada. Jerry Wowk, another equally-talented friend, carried the textbook writing torch with Dad in the 2000s. They collaborated on many excellent works together, but Dad always felt that the best book they worked on together could have been their E-Media book in 2010 – unfortunately the publisher that commissioned it backed out. By the time his textbook career wrapped up, he’d written over 60 texts and guides, selling over 1 million books (a huge number, considering schools don’t buy a new textbook every year for every student), reaching an estimated 5 million kids.
But wait, there’s more! During the 1980s and 1990s he was writing poetry, performing with Dean McKenzie and Glen Kirkland in their poetry trio Spiritus, reading in cafes, on radio, and even in the mall, and publishing two chapbooks – Lost, Not Missing in 1990 and This, That, The Other in 1991. In 2001, his first chapbook was launched – Negative Capability. The poetry collection was rounded out by four other self-published chapbooks over the last 8 years. He was an early recruit and regular reader for the Edmonton Stroll of Poets from its inception and happily returned to the fold 11 years ago after a hiatus.
Somewhere in all this, he also had a chance to revisit his drama days of yore. He formed the August Company – a troupe of teachers with a bent for drama, who performed two plays in Edmonton’s Fringe Festival. He co-wrote, acted and produced 60 Minutes Live from Loon River in 1988 and acted and produced the A Matter of Censorship in 1991.
A few other highlights to mention from these years. Dad’s love of the fall culminated in two bliss filled trips to New England – a perfect melting of Dad’s love of fall, the area, and the beloved writers of the past, including Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson who called New England home.
While teaching part time before retirement, he began working at Alberta Film Classification Services with Gerry Lawson as a Film Classifier for the province, and continued this role for a few years after retiring from the classroom. Yes, he got to see the movies before anyone else and determine the rating assigned in Alberta.
My family had a miniature poodle named Pepper for 18 years. She was the alpha female to his alpha male, and the two were closely bonded, sharing many a walk, Mandarin orange, and laugh. He would often pull a blanket over her head so only her eyes and nose would poke out, and blow on her face so she would bear her teeth, playing a pseudo Red Riding Hood wolf.
I can certainly echo much of what Heather shared about our childhood. I am incredibly fortunate for the life my parents were able to provide for me. Raising my own family, I am still learning to appreciate the enthusiasm and patience, but also sense of duty, he had in bringing us to live theatre, jazz, classical, & rock concerts, movies, poetry readings, museums, art galleries, and so on, and reading to us all the time, including longer novels as we grew up. He wasn’t just trying to “keep us busy” or “kill time” – each of these choices was carefully considered and he would prepare us with ideas and context beforehand. That might sound like “work” and, sure, sometimes his mopey teenaged kids needed some convincing, but it was ALWAYS a great time with him.
He had to be a very organized person to harness all those ideas and all that enthusiasm. Alas, there is no sight more familiar in my parents’ house than the classic yellow Post-It note. He would never leave a good idea or an important thought to chance – it was always written down.
So, whether it was various to-do lists or little notes and reminders to himself and others, the Post-It notes were quite endearing and a part of the behind-the-scenes magic that made our household a wonderful place. With the to-do lists, it kept everything important to him at the top of his mind. He loved celebrating holidays, birthdays, milestones, and any other special occasion, and never went too long without keeping in touch with his friends.
The Post-It notes made their way to others, too. Gifts would often have editorial comments attached to show what excited him about the gift. Indeed, giving was one of his love languages. Yes, he always wanted to know what to get for our birthdays, but there would always be surprise gifts that picked up on our interests and experiences, or that were a way of him sharing a part of himself, such as when he gave me a copy of Bob Dylan’s Bringing it all Back Home, probably 25 years ago now, which was the first of MANY CDs that were given to me with handwritten notes.
He would also hand off newspaper and magazine articles and email us links to things he wanted to share. I actually have the last one here…
I will say, it was hard to keep up sometimes! With his passing, I realized though that he probably knew this on some level, but also knew that he was filling my bucket for years to come.
“Always put something in, every day,” he would often remind me. And again, it would sometimes drive me nuts that he knew me so well! He knew exactly what I needed to hear. I was working too hard earlier this year and his prescription was always to find time to enjoy music, do some reading, keep learning, and enjoy my family. Follow my bliss.
In particular this last year, every time we spoke, and in his longer emails, he would always remind me, front and centre, that I have an amazing partner, wonderful children, an ideal family dog, a comfortable house, and a unique and fulfilling career at the U of A, the place we used to collect leaves and bike ride to.
Speaking of my family, I could talk all day about grandpa. From the moment my son Ben was born, my dad was in awe and in love with my kids in a way that wrote a completely new chapter in his life. We all quietly marveled at how he evolved his whole self into being grandpa.
In those early days, there was a rhythm to my parents’ daytime visits that my wife still speaks of to this day as being exactly what she needed, especially after I went back to work. He would bring a bag of ever-changing toys and books, some from my childhood, and just sit there with Ben. He was so patient, just watching and helping Ben explore the world, and later, walking around the house, pointing at objects and saying their names. No wonder Ben had an amazing vocabulary at such a young age.
A few years later, Caleb was born and grandpa didn’t miss a beat. He would take scores of pictures and videos and then later write emails to us reflecting on each visit and tracking both kids’ growth. Once again, he was helping give us perspective while we were in the thick of a busy young family’s life.
There is something of my dad in all of us, and you can definitely look at my kids to see him. They both have sharp minds, love to learn new things, and have seemingly endless possibilities in their future. Ben, it’s your relentless enthusiasm and planning and organization. Caleb, it’s your restless creativity and your love of reading. I’m never far from grandpa with you in my lives.
It was a great challenge when the pandemic started, as we would hear about the particular dangers of the virus for vulnerable people. Many of us are fortunate and haven’t had as much to worry about since the vaccines came about. Unfortunately, my dad had some conditions that put him at a greater risk. The last several years, he kept close to home, but adapted and found other ways to keep in touch and enjoy life. He dearly missed the visits and gatherings, but continued to savour his passions and relationships however he could. Ultimately, he lived his best life right to the end.