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Hello Bill, happy 80th!
I’m attaching some photos taken during my last stay (2019) at the The Last Straw, Calder’s Dock; it was such a paradise.
One of my fondest memories of visiting you & Sharon, was the circle jam we did in your living room back in 2017. (photos included)
You & Sharon have been an inspiration to me over the last decade or so, true friends through the years. Not just our visits together, but even allowing me to ‘house-sit’ at your beautiful retreat when you were away. Thank-you for trusting me, and never judging my choices, even during the turbulent times of my life.
I can’t even begin to describe the help and kindness you & Sharon have given me through the years.
Also including a photo of the sign you made for “Rosza’s Tree”… after one of our many visits up to Calder’s Dock! Walking those trails will always stay in my mind.
And lastly, I’m including –from Oct 2022– the gas station photo you took of me putting $300 worth of gas into Big Bertha last October, during her final, memorable retrieval from Manitoba! Boy o boy, what a trip that was.
Anyway, happy 80 Bill!
Marlena
Just over 40 years ago when I was sent on an interview for a position at CMHA (The Canadian Mental Health Association) I thought I was applying at Central Mortgage and Housing!! Boy was I in for a surprise. During the meeting with Bill he briefly excused himself from the interview to take a phone call from one of his children. When he returned I assured him I had absolutely no experience in the Mental Health field and I had no illusions that I would be suitable for the position. I was exactly what he wanted. Surprisingly I was offered the position and accepted it primarily because Bill took the call from his child and I believed that my family commitments would be respected at CMHA (and the promise of a private office didn’t hurt).
It was one of the best decisions that I ever made. Bill was my boss, my teacher, my mentor and my friend. He provided me with opportunities for personal and professional growth and development. He taught me to respect staff and volunteers alike, to work with a Board of Directors and above all to focus on the mission of the organization and the people we serve. In addition he taught me the importance of openness and integrity. “Just imagine how this might look on the front page of the paper”
How lucky I was to have spent ten years working with Bill and benefiting from the “Bill Martin School of Management”!!!!!!! What an awesome human being and role model.
Just over 40 years ago when I was sent on an interview for a position at CMHA (The Canadian Mental Health Association) I thought I was applying at Central Mortgage and Housing!! Boy was I in for a surprise. During the meeting with Bill he briefly excused himself from the interview to take a phone call from one of his children. When he returned I assured him I had absolutely no experience in the Mental Health field and I had no illusions that I would be suitable for the position. I was exactly what he wanted. Surprisingly I was offered the position and accepted it primarily because Bill took the call from his child and I believed that my family commitments would be respected at CMHA (and the promise of a private office didn’t hurt).
It was one of the best decisions that I ever made. Bill was my boss, my teacher, my mentor and my friend. He provided me with opportunities for personal and professional growth and development. He taught me to respect staff and volunteers alike, to work with a Board of Directors and above all to focus on the mission of the organization and the people we serve. In addition he taught me the importance of openness and integrity. “Just imagine how this might look on the front page of the paper”
How lucky I was to have spent ten years working with Bill and benefiting from the “Bill Martin School of Management”!!!!!!! What an awesome human being and roll model.
Three stories for Bill.
It was the early 90s. I had met Bill at a Martin reunion when I visited Alberta and my Grandma Ella the summer before I left home for University. I’m sure he’d met me before, but that was the first time I felt I had really met him. We had a conversation about family history, and how people choose to tell it – what they include and exclude, focus on and blur, and how that can leave you with false impressions that facts – when found or proven – can profoundly shake. That conversation and the stories Bill told – really shaped my mind and interests.
Bill is full of facts and hypotheses and time to listen. I’m pretty sure it was Bill who told me about Great Grandma Martin wanting to be buried with the family Bible, that held all the history of births and marriages and deaths. Bill did she succeed, though a fading photocopy was first secured thereby foiling the point if not the fact of that wish? And were you somewhat central to that photocopying solution?
That is my first story.
A few years later I stopped and stayed a night at Bill and Sharon’s home in DuFresne on a cross-country trip. The hot tub outside the kitchen and family habit of gathering there after supper, and again over morning coffee, was a revelation in civilization for me. And sitting in that hot tub after a lovely meal (that actually included fresh vegetables – a rarity at many of the farming Martin homes I’d visited that trip) the most spectacular northern lights I had yet seen glimmered into sight then danced right around the rim of the horizon. Electric blue on velvet prairie black. They called our wet bodies beyond the hot tub, onto the grass and right around the dark yard looking up in awe.
My final story – when I launched my podcast last year, Bill listened and let me know. Not just that he’d listened but how it touched him, what it got him thinking. And he starting sending me wee emails with things he thought might interest me, many of which proved further fodder for the show. His attention, frank honesty and consistent generosity was and continues to be such a gift. And after the first season he asked me to write a whole song for it – I had been just making up segues and ditties to knit the words and conversations, and he very kindly asked me to finish one already. That request hit me like a mallet on a quiet bell. Second season I wrote a song a week, one for each episode. Composing and singing and flexing those rusty muscles weekly, owning a new era as a songwriter – what a gift. Speaking into the internet is speaking with the hope that you will be found and heard and your efforts appreciated, with no guarantee you’ll ever know. Bill let me know. Thank you Bill.
I can recall the day Sharon introduced me to Bill many decades ago. I was intuitively drawn to Bill’s energy, kindness, and generous spirit. Bill has generously extended his friendship and support to me in so many ways – especially during difficult and challenging times.
I wish Bill a very happy 80th birthday and remember laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever.
a poem for bill
in the style of bill
my life is not
a fistful of candles
flickering brightly on a cake
i am their glow
pushing back the shadows
the warmth they radiate
my life is not
a smear of icing
a fondant rose
sugary brief
i am the wish
the dense layers
rich complex
my life is
the promise of knife
of slice
of smiles
of sharing
puff
vanilla
I am sure you all know Bill was robbed! Did you know he wrote a short story about it?
While living in a separate province my Dad has managed and maintained a close relationship with all my boys (well facilitated by Sharon!). He does, however, shower them with poetry that is usually not read!
Just some younger pictures of the wonderful and beautiful Bill!!!
I have a way-back story. We were living at Gwynne, so i would have been less than 6, and Bill is 6 months older than me. The details are a bit sketchy, but the theme is quite clear in my mind. We had an outhouse. The ‘big kids’ (that would be some mix of Wayne, Lawrence, and Doug) locked us in. We covered the hole with something and planned to stand on the bench to hoist one of us, i think me, up through the ventilation window, but in the execution of the plan a foot slipped and went through whatever the covering of the hole was and landed in shit. The story ended with great unhappiness on the part of almost everybody, as i recall. There are many glitches in my recollection of the story – it’s unlikely that the outhouse content would have been at a level where a little leg would have come in contact; we were pretty pristine about the condition of the outhouse. And I think the ventilation window would have been too small for even a 6-year-old me, and likely covered by page wire or some such. But that may not have deterred the plan.
You know what it reminds me of? In the movie about the slum kid from Bombay who became an unexpected winner in a Jeopardy show — i’ve forgotten the name; it won lots of recognition – there is an incident about him being locked in the public privy which prevented him from attending some event he was passionate about (and informed an answer to the Jeopardy question) so he jumped down the hole. Our episode was much less dramatic.
There are other happier memories from childhood visits; i think Vernon’s family visited many if not most summers. And i recall a family reunion in hmmm the lake in northern Sask that is saline. I was going into grade 7 i think (although that’s a bit unlikely because that’s the summer we renovated the house so i doubt we’d have been taking even a weekend away, but maybe, or maybe grade 6). In any case, i had just acquired glasses, after at least one year of preferring to borrow Maurice Thompson’s glasses (he sat ahead of me in class) in order to read what was on the blackboard. The delay was because I was pretty sure I would reap the benefits of teasing Doug about being ‘four eyes’ and all the other things we called people with glasses, and glasses were definitely not a beauty item for girls at that time. In any case, we kids went swimming in the section of the lake that was fenced off as a pool. I jumped in and my glasses went swimming, Bill was almost certainly among the helpers trying to find the glasses but they were never to be found (grassy bottom, high flotation) but i don’t actually recall him because I only had eyes for Lawrence that summer. We five (Wayne, Lawrence, Bill, Doug and I, as I recall) went golfing, the epitome of adult sophistication. I probably got to carry the golf clubs. Mom was very unhappy about the lost glasses — they were a big ticket item.
okay, that’s not so much about Bill as about me.
oh, one more. I was in Toronto doing my MSW so summer of ’67, Expo in Montreal, Bill and his buddy were going to Europe (by working boat?), slept on the floor of my bachelor apartment en route through, and talked me into going with them to Montreal for the weekend, provisional on my wearing a short skirt to attract rides — we were hitch-hiking, which was common in those days. Our last pick-up was a guy from Cornwall in a nice car and he waited while Bill and his buddy knocked on the door of the place where they had reserved accommodations. The house owner denied any such arrangement — not an unusual situation when Montreal was bursting at the seams with visitors and we were probably arriving quite late and there were contenders for the space. So the nice Cornwall guy proposed that we drive back with him to Cornwall and sleep at his place. It seemed like a generous offer and there weren’t a lot of alternatives, so that’s what we did. I got to sleep on a couch, the guys may have been on the floor, but in any case in the middle of the night the nice Cornwall guy decided he would pay me a nocturnal visit. But I squawked and Bill and his buddy came to my rescue like true gentlemen. What happened next? No recall about details but we did get to Expo. Briefly. Did I hitchhike back to Toronto? Not that i recall.
