Obituary of Ralph Gillies Parker

Adventures of a Homebody This is the story of Ralph Gillies Parker. If someone had told Ralph that he was a homebody, his immediate response would have been a smirk accompanied by "oh bullshit" ...or maybe it might have been "well, I like my home, what the hell difference does it make?" with a laugh or two. One way or another, Ralph was an interesting man with a great deal of interesting stories to tell and life experiences to talk about...these are the adventures of a homebody. On April 29, 1934, life changed forever for Gillies and Marian Parker. Their first son, Ralph, was born. He didn't give his mom too much trouble and they were as proud as they could be - so much so that Gillies even wrote a letter to his grandparents to tell them of the little boy's arrival. The next few years proceeded as usual and Ralph was no doubt a continuous joy to his parents, and grandparents, learning from them and teaching them with the adventures that a small boy no doubt gets into! Ralph was quite close to his grandparents and at four years old his grandfather started him on a lifelong hobby that through the years morphed in to a collection, a career, and a business. He gave little Ralph his first rifle - that particular rifle is still in the collection. Ralph learned to shoot, hunt, care for and fix rifles at his father and grandfather's side and spent his entire life doing those things. As life went on, Ralph's parents had two other children; a brother, Beverly, and a sister, Lynn. They were quite a bit younger than Ralph but nonetheless he treasured them and through his years enjoyed visiting them and spending time with them very much - even if there was an occasional feud! Home was an important place to Ralph; he told his granddaughter Jennifer one time that he had been left with an aunt and uncle around six years old. He couldn't recall why he had been left with them, and though he was no doubt in good care, he remembers very much feeling lonely for his home and his parents. Home for Ralph became a refuge where he felt protected against loneliness. Despite his penchant for being home, adventures abounded. Ralphs childhood was filled with fishing in the Saugeen River with his many cousins and friends including Jim Rowley, Rusty Stevenson and Charly Cotrill. Though all families were quite poor in that particular time, Ralph only remembered a childhood filled with fun and playing and hunting and fishing and adventure - but not too wild of adventures, he was already a homebody. At sixteen years old, it became time for Ralph to seek employment and he ultimately went to work as a fur buyer for the Hudson's Bay Company in Toronto, which was a long ways from home, really! There he met lifelong friends and boarded with a couple, Mrs. And Mrs. Robert Murdoch, who helped him buy his very first car, a Model T Ford...how he loved that car! A young man, proud to have something of his own, that he worked for and earned, Ralph told the story of his car many, many years later. If Ralph thought that Toronto had been a great adventure, he surely would have been overwhelmed and, being a homebody, somewhat skeptical, of the next posts that the Hudson's Bay Company had for him. They wanted him to move clear across the country to a small town in British Columbia called "Dawson Creek" - but before that, he was to go to Uranium City in Saskatchewan. Whatever he may or may not have felt, Ralph set off. In Uranium City, Ralph met a man named Bob Gillstrom. They became lifelong friends during that journey and Ralph spoke frequently about the adventures he had with "Gillstrom", including retrieving a 1949 Chevy 2 Ton from Ontario; they drove it clear across the country to Moberly Lake together on one of Ralph's many adventures - even if some of them were undertaken reluctantly! In Dawson Creek, lady luck smiled on Ralph and he met Rose Marie Borle, whom everyone affectionately knew as Buddy. He was enamored and ultimately started the adventure of marriage with Buddy. About the time that he was to get married, the Hudson's Bay Company was preparing to post him to Fort Churchill, Manitoba and then to Edmonton. He politely suggested a post closer to home would be more suitable, due to his impending matrimony. When the company advised him that they didn't have any plans for him to get married in the near future heshall we say...declined... their next adventure! After all, what would be a better plan for a homebody than to get after it and make a home? He parted ways with the Hudson's Bay Company and married Buddy in 1954 as planned. They lived and worked in Dawson Creek for a year or so and then the next opportunity for adventure presented itself; they moved to Moberly Lake to start a business with a good friend and mentor, Mr. Jim Fahey. Moberly Lake was fairly rustic at the time, and one didn't need to go far to find adventure... getting water and staying warm was sometimes as much adventure as a guy could handle! Through the years Ralph and Buddy were accepted and adopted by all of the folks around the lake and became an integral part of the community. Sometimes their adventures involved being the only people who could get neighbors and friends down the goat trail cleverly disguised as a road to Chetwynd or Dawson Creek to seek medical attention and they often carried the mail and were the source of groceries and general merchandise, which they often retrieved from Dawson Creek at some peril, given the condition of the goat trail...I mean- road - at the time! Nevertheless, Ralph and Buddy and their business flourished and ultimately became theirs entirely when they bought out Mr. Fahey and renamed the business Parkers Trading Post. In 1957, Ralph and Buddy's fortunes multiplied infinitely with the birth of their first child, a son they proudly named Rory Gillies Parker, and then the fortunes of all three multiplied again in 1960 with the birth of their second son, Robert Murdoch Parker, whom they named after Ralphs boarder family in Toronto. Some people might think that life adventures end with the birth of children and the endless responsibilities that come with them - for Ralph nothing could have been further from the truth. Parenting for him and Buddy was one of life's very best adventures. Their children were also life's greatest treasures and they reveled in their precious boys. They taught them to hunt, fish, and be self-sufficient. They encouraged humor, and humility and a sense of adventure... they loved to go on holidays with their boys and took them various places including Edmonton to visit Buddy's family as well as several trips to Ontario to see Ralph's family and in to the States just for a look around including a survey of some of the world's most famous gun collections. For a homebody, when your family is with you, I guess just about anywhere can be home. The favorite place of all, though, was home at the trading post, and the favorite adventures were the ones that happened there hunting and fishing with the boys and enjoying the travellers that stopped by the trading post. One of the favorite memories was of a traveller who stopped by the store one day with a flat tire on their boat trailer. The gentleman had a dog and a monkey in tow - the monkey, naturally, was of great interest to everyone at the trading post! Ralph also had a dog at the time and the dogs didn't think much of each other. As they prepared to square off, the monkey, understandably, got really scared and scampered up on to Ralph's shoulder, Ralph being the closest tall spot to get away from the dogs. The monkey wrapped his arm around Ralph's head and his tail around Ralph's neck and proceeded to tell off the dogs as best he could - but the dogs still got the best of him and literally scared the pee out of him...and right down Ralphs shoulder! The monkey was considerably less popular after that. After some time in the trading business, Ralph and Buddy sold the trading post and opened "Parkers Gun Shop" in about 1979 - remember the four year old who got his first gun? The love affair never ended. Parkers Gun Shop became as well known as the trading post had been as a place to have a good cup of coffee, enjoy good company, sell fur and get your gun fixed up...or buy a new one if you needed it... or perhaps even if you didn't, because who ever heard a more ridiculous statement than too many guns'?? At one point, Ralph's collection numbered in excess of 250 firearms and included specimens that now are impossible to find and even prohibited. Such guns as a Thompson sub-machine gun, a coach gun' or blunderbuss' and numerous short revolvers could be seen in Parkers gun shop and people came from near and far to visit and trade. Even if Ralph wasn't off having his own adventures he loved listening to the tales of other people's adventures and for him that was pretty well as good as going himself. 1979 was a challenging year in the Parker household. Tragedy struck at the beginning of the year when Ralph and Buddy's second son, Robert, was killed in a terrible skidooing accident. Loss, and learning to live again without your loved one, is an adventure nobody wants, and though Ralph went on to have many more adventures and have much joy in life, one never really recovers from the loss of a child. Distraction from loss abounded though, Rory had married a lovely girl, Ann, whom Ralph and Buddy loved as a daughter, and together they had four children: Jennifer, Susan, Brayden, and Tiffany, who brought endless adventures and joy to both their own parents, and to Ralph and Buddy. One of his first adventures as a grandparent was to try to teach his eldest granddaughter Jennifer, at the time a babe in arms, to say "bullshit" - you may have noticed that was a favorite word for Ralph! Needless to say his instruction of the infant girl was met with gasps of disbelief and jabs in the arm from Ann and Buddy and gales of laughter from Ralph and Rory and anyone else that knew Ralph's dry sense of humor. Ralph had good times with all of his grandkids and they all have fond memories. Sue, following Parker lines closely, was somewhat headstrong and in a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's house had refused to eat her vegetables. Ralph tried to encourage her by telling her "Susan, it's green!" She promptly replied "Grandpa, it's gross!" in exactly the same sing song tone and that was the end of that. Brayden and Tiffany were visiting at Moberly one time and Ralph had noticed a garter snake in Buddy's garden - he pointed it out and Brayden promptly caught the snake and he and Tiffany hurried in to the house to show Grandma. That was deeply unpopular and met with the end of a corn broom and cries of "GET THAT SNAKE OUT OF MY HOUSE!" and once again, Ralph was getting jabs in the arm! All of the kids, and probably many of the people who have come today to celebrate Ralph's life have fond memories of the New Year's Eve parties that became tradition at the Gun Shop - particularly the Chicken Dance, which was absolutely played every year and all of the grandkids, especially Brayden, are still expert at performing! Ralph reveled in teaching the grandkids about hunting and fishing, shooting, and general life lessons, with his pride and joy, Rory, by his side. The kids often enjoyed riding in the wheelbarrow with Grandpa at the helm or riding the old tractor around the yard - which inevitably got him told off (again) by Buddy for making holes in her lawn with the wheels! Time passed, as it will do, and more children were added to the family - great-grandchildren for Buddy and Ralph, and they enjoyed their great-grandkids as much as they enjoyed their children and grandchildren. Ralph loved to find things for his "little jaspers" to have, and took great joy in watching them play with their treasures. He particularly loved when his eldest great-grandson Spencer sat with him one day in deep discussion. In his little boy way he was trying to sort out various family members and as Rory was his grandpa he decided Ralph should have a different name. He decided on "Grandfather" and after asking Ralph's permission to call him so Ralph affectionately became Grandfather for the whole clan, but especially the great-grandkids. By the time the grandchildren were teenagers, Ralph really was becoming a homebody, hesitant to leave home for any length of time and the grandkids took delight in teasing him as they got a bit older about his couch being lonely or needing to give his dog an ice cream cone - whether or not he had a dog at the time! He bore the teasing with grace, giggling a little and reminding the kids that they could come to him for a visit too, which of course they did. There were a few adventures away from home though; trips to Edmonton, Ontario, Mexico, Alaska and an Alaskan cruise among them, but as always Ralph's favorite adventures were visits to or from Rory and Ann or the grandkids and the opportunities to fish, hunt, or burn wieners together at Moberly or Boucher Lake or where ever they found themselves. Ralph was many things to many people; a fur buyer, a salesman, a business owner, a gun collector, a gunsmith, a mentor, a teacher and a friend, but most of all he was a consummate family man, father, grandpa and grandfather, an adventurer and a homebody. Service 1:00 pm Thursday, February 4, 2016 Chetwynd Fellowship Baptist Church 4817 53rd Street CHETWYND, British Columbia, Canada V0C 1J0 Interment Tuscoola Mountain Cemetery Hwy 97 CHETWYND, British Columbia, Canada V0C 1J0