I only saw my Dad’s brother a few times

when I was young in the late ’50s and he was in Winnipeg still, training to go into the navy. I just noticed online that he passed away in Halifax in his 80s and had been a career navy man. He also had many kids and grandkids and was to be buried at sea. Here is a memory of him I wrote in the guestbook:

One memory of ‘Pudge’ via his nephew: He was in Winnipeg in the late ’50s and came over to spend some time with m at our house. We played some games and I may have showed him my school down the street from the outside. After supper, he suddenly remembered he had to return a book to the old William Ave. library on a dark fall evening (leaves blowing around). He asked me (about 8-9) to come along with him in a taxi.

It was my first time there and I had never seen so many books. He talked to me about the library, books, and reading, and I never forgot that special close one-time experience. (Years later, I would become an inveterate reader, book fan, and high-school English author and edit/write many books for senior-high English. My grown-up son works in a university library, so maybe the ‘library’ and ‘books’ stuck.)