I am saddened by the news of Bill"spassing

Bill and I grew up together. I lived at 195 and The Young"s lived at 192 Macdonell Avenue.

We played all Sports together and were very close in our teenage years. I married Barbara December 1956 and moved to East York.

Bill, Raymond and I met several times for coffee a couple of years ago and relived  our lives, very interesting and many laughs

My condolences on the passing of your Father.

Bob Campbell

            But for ORTA Bill wasn’t just a hiker. He was a dedicated volunteer helping out with numerous ORTA events. And he always approached all tasks with a light-hearted manner and that unique smile he had. He was almost always on the annual York Region ‘Green Up Clean Up’ of the forest tracts and was often out distributing ORTA leaflets on many of the Spring and summer festivals where OTTA has booths. He could always be counted on to help out.

            Bill also liked his music and sang in a choir. He liked the old crooners and I recall getting him to sing a few bars of a Frank Sinatra tune on a hike. He had a good voice. Bill told me he loved to go to concerts and several times attended the Montreal Jazz Festival. I would have loved to have accompanied him on that and now wish I had arranged to do it with him. Bill coaxed me to go with him to the Stouffville Strawberry Festival concert by the Blackboard blues Band, a group of teachers who loved doing the old 70s and 80s blues/rock hits. I was blown away. Bill really knew his music and they were excellent. In fact, on finding out that they were a regular feature at the annual festival. I persuaded Bill to help me organize a bigger turnout amongst our fellow hikers next year. So next year we spread the word and had about two dozen ORTA members come. We started out with a dinner at the Earl of Whitchurch pub, occupying several tables upstairs. Then we walked the 5 or 6 minutes along the stream to the concert held in a big tent by Park Drive on the festival grounds. It was another great concert. Everyone loved it!

            Bill really showed his dedication with ORTA’s big annual fund-raiser event, the Adventure Relay. Several years ago we started a big drive to expand our publicity distribution to get participants for the event. Bill took on his home turf, Richmond Hill. He covered it in detail. Using his work experience and business acumen he connected well with local managers of key outlets such as bike shops and got many of them on our side actively promoting the relay amongst their customers. He was a model for other publicity distributers to follow. He also got a donation towards the relay from his local car dealer. But his biggest contribution was with Keen Footwear. Bill got to know the regional manager of Keen and started a dialog with her. After several discussions, he persuaded her to get Keen to donate $2000 to the Adventure Relay. I believe this is – besides corporate fees for fielding an actual team – the biggest donation we’ve had for the relay. She also came to the awards ceremony at the Finish Line that year and presented the cheque. While there, she also handed out coupons for free boots to several of the volunteers. I happened to be standing by Bill and she handed coupons to both of us. Later, Bill and I drove down together to their store at the Beaches and got our free Keen boots – the best summer hiking boots I ever had, which I’m still using! Bill was equally pleased with his selection.

            Every year Bill and I, along with a couple of others, would set up the signage and flashing lights for the Adventure Relay from Bathurst to the Finish Line, which is usually at Seneca College. We never put the flashing lights on the last half of this route until dusk, and Bill would always wait to then – way past his regular shift – to help me put those flashing lights on the signs before full darkness fell. This is also the time that the mosquitoes are at their worst, and there is a lot of swampy ground beside the forest path from Dufferin to the Finish Line at Seneca’s log cabin. I recall going out with Bill a couple of years ago. Now usually Bill liked to take things slow and easy but with those mosquitoes buzzing around I never saw him work so fast! He was trying to outrun them between signs and I had a really hard time keeping up with him!

            The last time I saw Bill was at this year’s Canada Day, July 1st, Stouffville Strawberry Festival. We were out on the road distributing ‘Upcoming Hikes’ leaflets to the thousands of passers-by in front of the ORTA booth. We were maybe a dozen meters apart. All of a sudden I saw Bill approach me with a young guy beside him. Bill introduced him as a participant in the just past June Adventure Relay and Bill excited said “Frank, he loved our lights!”. Then the guy beside Bill told me the whole story. He was a first-time Adventure Relay racer and with one of the new teams (but for some reason he couldn’t recall his team’s name). Anyway, he actually ran the last leg from Sheppard’s Bush to the Finish Line at Seneca after dark. He said he was worried about the approaching darkness and then saw that from Bathurst all the way to the end the signs all had what he called “blinkees” i.e. our flashing lights. “I Ioved those blinkees” he said, “They saved me from getting lost”. Then he got really excited when he found out that Bill and I were the ones who added “the blinkees”, and he thanked us profusely. After he left, Bill and I had a good laugh about this and resolved that thenceforward we would call our flashing lights “the blinkees”. I can still see Bill’s wide smile and hear his laugh at this.