The Great Tinkerers

"Here's something that will help you identify all the bugs around here," said Archie Pennie, dropping into the back kitchen door of our cottage when we first started going up to the Gatineau Fish & Game Club in the early '80s.  He handed me a book on "bugs", which was instrumental in helping identify the wonderful little creatures I was encountering.  Until that book, I had no idea that "daddy long legs" were not spiders? 

Archie died the other day at age 98.  He was a great guy.  Acerbic, witty and direct, he pulled no punches.  Ever.  Born in Scotland in 1916, he never seemed to age, looking exactly after 20 years as he had when we had first met.  "Too much cake," I remember him laughingly calling out at one of the infamous club dinners, as he listened to a woman blabbing a tad too loudly and who appeared to be slightly "over-refreshed".  In those days many of us were after a long day on the water and in the sun.  Archie was never "over-refreshed".

"Archie grew up to be a rocket scientist, mechanical genius, quoter of Shakespeare, writer of pithy vignettes about his time as a WW2 airman, and devoted family man.  He studied explosives at Glasgow University and learned to fly with the RAF on our Prairies with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. After the war, he served with the Defence Research Board in Quebec City, Ottawa, Fort Churchill, Manitoba and Suffield, Alberta.  He spent his forty-year retirement as a clockmaker.  He never lost his prodigious memory and was inspiringly upbeat amid the loss of his eyesight and hearing. Archie was short on patience, but had a profound interest in others, neighbourly kindness, and impish charm that won hearts wherever he went."

That is what his obituary says and it's true.  

"The Great Tinkerers" of this blog also include his dear departed shop comrade David Casgrain.  David and Archie fixed -- or wrecked -- more motors on 31-Mile Lake than anyone.  Mostly they fixed them, when no local "expert" vendor could.  It was this screw or that bolt, this propeller or that gas gauge.........no matter.  With Archie and David commiserating, they forced and tinkered every errant motor into successful humming.  I can remember the late Nanette Casgrain -- an irreverant "saint" I absolutely adored -- spending an entire afternoon perched on the top of our hill, holding an extension cord in her hand while husband David frigged around with a pesky motor down on the dock.  Wisely she balanced a martini in the other.

At the time, I didn't realize what originals these wonderful men were, so pre-occupied was I with my own offspring.  An era has passed with Archie's death.  

I will remember him very fondly.