October 17, 2024, Beechwood

Neil Collishaw, 1946-2024

Rachel, Kevin, Mary Ann and Laura

We thought it fitting to start with Dad’s own words. In 1997, at my wedding, Dad gave a speech to both welcome Craig to the Collishaw family and to honour his own father, Ted Collishaw, who had passed away the day before. Here is what he said about families:

Families that work well transmit norms and values from generation to generation, thereby making themselves immortal. Our family succeeds outstandingly well at its fundamental purpose. All of us, as individuals, are mortal beings. The life of every individual will end, but strong families can live forever. The continued functioning of societies, economies, nations, and, ultimately, the whole world depends on families that are strong, mutually supportive and that survive through succeeding generations.

Like he did that day, I will now illustrate what I mean. I will tell you about some of Dad’s norms and values that he transmitted to us. He shared these with us every day through his words, but especially through his actions.

#1 – Be generous

• He made our lunches every day before going to work himself. This was no small feat for four kids plus himself. We were sometimes unlucky to get a veggie paté sandwich with sprouts instead of peanut butter and jam, but there were always carrots, other healthy snacks and enough love to sustain us to the end of the day.
• When my own kids were small, he flooded the back patio and made a skating rink for them, and invited all the neighbourhood kids too. He was always generous with kids and was Santa Claus on many occasions or Père Noël in France.
• One of his favourite holidays was Hallowe’en, where he got to admire all of the neighbourhood kids on in their costumes and express his generosity with sesame snaps and boxes of raisins as they left the front porch. 
• The front porch was one of the places where he could be the most generous. Where neighbours were always welcome. Earlier this month he wrote a five-page letter to the new owners of the house on Caroline. Here are his instructions for using the front porch:

In the warmer months, the front porch is a favourite gathering place for neighbourhood get-togethers. Just sit out there and the neighbours will show up. Often they bring their own drinks. The view to the north is amazing. Sit down and look north to see all the way down all the neighbours’ porches.

#2 – Choose a worthy goal (or practice grim determination)

• Once he had set his mind on a goal, he got to it and kept going till it was done. As we have already heard, this was particularly irksome to big tobacco.
• Mary Ann: I remember walking past a billboard with a cigarette ad on it. He said to me that one day, a warning would take up half the billboard, and that someday, that billboard wouldn’t be there at all. I couldn’t even imagine such a world, but he stayed focused on that goal, and went well beyond it too.

#3 – Share your wisdom

• His passion for public health led him to become wise in the ways of big tobacco. The number of tobacco industry documents in our house grew over the years as he amassed more and more wisdom.
• But what is wisdom if it’s not shared? We often got to hear the play-by-play of the tobacco wars, whether he was proposing advertising bans and bigger warnings, legal battles with the tobacco companies, advising on public health policy in Mongolia (and everywhere), working with Heather Crowe on workplace protections or sounding the alarm about vaping and nicotine addiction. And we were always proud when we heard him in the media, sharing his wisdom with the world.
• Closer to home, he was always willing to explain world events to us, whether tobacco-related or not, usually using dinner table props. I have a particularly vivid memory of him explaining Canada’s place in the cold war and the Distant Early Warning line using spoons, plates and cups.

#4 – Enjoy the outdoors and stay active

• We spent every weekend and several weeks in the summer at the cottage on Farren Lake. He helped us to identifying plants, trees and birds – is it a downy woodpecker, a hairy woodpecker or a yellow-bellied sapsucker? Dad would know.
• He was an avid swimmer. Almost every day at the cottage, he swam across the lake and back. As a kid, this seemed like a superhuman feat to me, but as I got older I joined him. He slowed down as he got older, but kept going, enjoying his time with the fishes and the turtles and the chats with the neighbours across the lake.
  • He only had a short time to enjoy the pool at the new condo, but every time he said he felt like a millionaire, swimming in his own 25 metre pool.
• He loved his cycling commute, whether short or long, uphill or down, and planned his outfits and equipment carefully no matter the distance. As a family, we would cycle to the Ottawa River: to Remic Rapids, Westboro Beach and even Brittania. As our family grew, we got more bike seats and more bikes and enjoyed the outdoors together.
• Kevin: In his bike club in France, Dad always admired the old guys who were not just still active, but still going faster than him! I went on lots of club rides with him, including one 200 km long around Lake Geneva in one day. A long ride for me in my twenties, but even more impressive for a guy pushing fifty.
• Laura: On a cycling trip in the Ardèche, he suffered a major crash. Of the club members, he was the only one wearing a helmet. Once he had recovered from the major injuries, he and his helmet did a few talks through WHO and CERN about the importance of bike safety. 

• He started taking us cross-country skiing at a young age. Sometimes we didn’t go very far, but he encouraged us to keep going, even when there was some significant flopping in the snow. He also encouraged us to take time to feed the chickadees, to see the browse line that showed where the deer had been, and to marvel at the quiet winter beauty of the woods.
  • Kevin: Without Dad, I might not have learned to ski and my life would have been very different. I would not have become a ski instructor.

• He taught us to canoe at the cottage, whether to Turtle Island to quietly sneak up on as many turtles as possible, or all the way to Third Island, to have a picnic and jump off the rock into the deep water, or even on a full day trip on the Tay, he loved being on the water together with us.
  • I took Dad on multi-day trips to enjoy nature together. On one particularly early spring trip, about a decade ago, he loved to tell the story of how it snowed in May, which was great because it kept the blackflies down!

If we are going to live by his example, his values and norms, and ensure our family’s immortality. We need to remember to:

–          Check your sources and lean on the experts

–          Stay open to learning at any age

–          Do the right thing, and if possible, do it the right way

–          Stand with your family in love, and pride