Remembering Terry Symington

He was a wisecracker and a storyteller, he breathed life into every room, and he will be sorely missed.

Allow me this personal post. You don’t need to read it. But I do need to write it.

My wife Amy and I have been together for almost 20 years. Her family is my family.

We just lost my father-in-law Terry Symington to cancer. I loved him.

Terry took family seriously. There was nothing more important to him. He would have done anything for Sharon or for Carolyn or for his kids. Not only Amy and Jeremy, but I include myself and Jer’s wife Sarah when I say his kids. He was so proud of all of us and we felt it. He was known to say, jokingly and lovingly: “pretty proud of you.”

He is part of a legacy of Symington farmers and he took that seriously too. He adorned the big barn with “Gala Bank Farm, Est 1834.” He loved being out on the tractor and I know it meant a lot to him to have kept the family tradition going.

He also took his community seriously. Whether it was the Wyoming Lions Club (I joined the Beaches Lions because of him) or his church, he loved being around people.

And people loved being around him even more.

Terry was generous and honest. That goes a long way. He also had a sense of humour that went even further.

He touched many lives and many people will have stories about him. Most of those stories will remember his ability to create laughter.

He was a wisecracker and a storyteller. He breathed life into every room. He put people at ease and made them feel welcome, or in my case like family. And he could get a smile (or a rise sometimes) out of anyone.

Alongside his sense of humour, he had his sayings. There were lessons in them too, even as he purposely downplayed the wisdom.

For me, Terry didn’t impart most of his lessons with any explicit teaching. He had real character, and he imparted his greatest lessons by living a life of decency, kindness, loyalty, love, and humour.

I’m going to miss fries under the bridge with him.

I’m going to miss watching baseball and hockey with him. He was a hell of a ballplayer (and has the fastpitch trophies to prove it).

I’m going to miss talking politics (as he’s glued to CNN) with him. He and Carolyn were a huge support when I first started out. They knocked doors until the very end of election night in 2015. When he saw the results, Terry joked that if he’d known it was going to turn out like that, he’d have saved his knees and stayed in Camlachie.

I’m going to miss asking him questions about farming.

On one of my first trips to Camlachie, taking the train to Wyoming, I chatted with another passenger and learned about the differences between till and no-till farming. When I got to the farm, I tried to talk about my newfound knowledge and Terry patiently put up with it all.

I’m going to miss his stories. About the ball team (his nickname was Big Dog), his time at Imperial Oil, growing up on the farm, going to school in a single classroom, adventures with Amy’s mom Sharon, and adventures with his second wife Carolyn, who he thankfully found after he lost Sharon to cancer 15 years ago.

I’m going to miss Symington Christmases with him, the jokes and the howling laughter, even if Terry was edged out of our more serious crokinole matches.

I’m going to miss his visits to Toronto. His complaining about Toronto traffic, gardening with Amy, the occasional handholding and skipping across a busy downtown street, and his willingness to help with whatever we might need.

When he moved Amy into her first Toronto apartment, he drove a 26 foot truck in from Kingston (no other truck was available) and we got there so early that pretty well nothing was open. We had breakfast at the True Love Cafe, watched a cop bust someone across the street, and I assured him it would all be okay.

I wish there were more visits to come, and that he could watch Mack and Crawford grow up more, see them play baseball or soccer, and draw with them endlessly.

I loved watching them draw together. Terry was also an artist. Of course, he always downplayed this too. But he was a proper folk artist, self-taught with an incredible ability to capture the beauty of the land around him.

I grew up in the city. But I love the country in no small part because I loved Terry as a father and because the country was his home.

I’m going to miss him.

My heart breaks for my wife and Jeremy, who have now lost both of their parents to cancer sooner than anyone should. My heart breaks for Carolyn, for his brother Brian and sister Gayle, for our whole family.

He breathed life into every room and he leaves us with a huge hole.