Dad’s favorite things were Dixieland music, Molson ales, Marx Brothers movies and Muskoka. He loved, and was loyal to, his family: his mother and father, his sister, his wife, his children, and his grandchildren.

I learned many things from Dad. I learned how to kneel in a canoe and paddle a “J”-stroke. I learned that a good joke can stand repeated tellings. I learned to love the music of Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Jellyroll Morton and Sidney Bechet. I learned how to talk to dogs. I learned that you’re never to old to kiss your father.

I remember Dad developing fierce attachments to certain ridiculous items of clothing – odd hats, moldy sweaters, disreputable jackets – that would drive the rest of crazy. My sister remembers Mom throwing an old engineer’s hat in our cottage’s Quebec heater to get rid of it once and for all.

Dad was a man of large appetites who could nevertheless show surprising self-discipline. When I was a child I saw him quit a pack-a-day Philip Morris habit cold turkey, carrying a pack around in his pocket “in case of emergency” for a year, but never weakening. Nearly forty years later, he quit drinking the same way: full-stop, no backsliding.

Dad managed the final months of his life with grace and good cheer even as his mind became increasingly clouded. His care-givers all spoke so highly of his pleasant and co-operative personality that at first I thought they must have confused him with another patient.

Fittingly, I last spoke to Dad on Father’s Day. He was a generous, steadfast, and – I must admit – long-suffering father to me. I’ll miss him.