Edward Cullen Calder

AUGUST 17, 1927 - NOVEMBER 12, 2024

Ted was born almost 100 years ago in the heydays of the Roaring 20s.

His family was well known in Edmonton, Alberta. His grandfather, Hugh Calder, had been a city councilman. Hugh’s farm, in Edmonton’s Strathcona area was named “Bonnie Doone”. Ted and his brothers spent time living on the farm in the summer with their grandparents. This rural piece of land was eventually sold and is now a bustling metropolitan area of the same name. Hugh’s purchase of industrial land in Edmonton is called “Calder“ to this day.

Ted’s father, Paul, returned to Edmonton from World War I after serving as a Sopwith Camel fighter pilot flying in the squadron commanded by Canadian Ace, Major Ray Collishaw. Paul, along with his friends, legendary Canadian aviators Wop May and Punch Dickens, were all daring bush pilots, based out of Edmonton, challenging Canada’s hostile north in their little fragile planes. Paul, and his wife Helena, lived the glamorous 20s lifestyle in a growing city where rickety cars and horse drawn milk wagons still shared the roads. Telephones were a new invention and only lucky families had a radio.

Ted was the third of four brothers. Bill, the eldest (1923), Hugh (1925) and Ted were born before the great stock market crash of 1929. The youngest son, Paul Jr. (1931) came along just as the world was entering the Great Depression.

The year Ted was born. Charles Lindberg became the first man to fly a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean catapulting Lindbergh to a national hero’s status. He returned home to a New York ticker tape parade.

After Lindberg’s son, Charles Jr. was born, a song called “Hello Young Lindy” by Bud Billings was a national hit in 1930. Ted, with his remarkable memory, could remember sitting on his Dad’s knee with his Dad singing that song to him. Ted recalled the words and could still sing it 80 years later.

Paul flew as a bush pilot, aerial surveyor, transporter of a few passengers and goods, a Canadian mail pilot and courier of medicines. He frequently risked his safety flying desperately needed medicines through frozen storms to remote native bands of people landing on snow or frozen lakes. Grandma had beaded leather goods given by thankful native mothers to Paul as a tribute for saving their children.

On January 31, 1933 disaster struck the Calder family. Paul’s aircraft had left, flying north from Yellowknife on Great Slave Lake, and was reported overdue and missing on a flight to the far North. His brave pilot friends searched for him for many days, the whole time Helena and the boys hoping that he would be found alive. His crashed and burned Fairchild aircraft was finally located at Grouard Bay, near Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, by his friend, Wop May. Paul had been killed in Canada’s merciless Arctic. A mechanical failure exacerbated by the January sub-zero temperatures and ferocious weather were blamed as the cause.

Helena was left to raise four young boys by herself in the depths of the Depression.

Food was scarce and Ted, Bill and Hugh at 6, 8 and 10 years old would hunt for grouse, partridge and rabbits with their rifles or go fishing to bring home food for the table. I have inherited Ted’s Remington .22, advertised and sold as a “boy’s rifle” - a shorter version of a full sized .22 rifle, that he used in those hunts. Boys grew quickly into men in those days.

Helena met and married Ernie Banks of Edmonton but formerly of Nottingham, England. Ernie’s wife had died and he was raising two boys, Alex and Brian, so their blended family expanded to 6 boys.

Ted always ate his meals very quickly as the first boy finished could then take more food for his plate - while the food lasted. A habit that he retained for the rest of his life.

At 12 years old, Ted ran away from home and joined the circus. At first, he was a general helper known in circus vernacular as a “roustabout”. The circus had an old lion that they charged 10 cents for people to come and see. Ted’s job was to “pull the grunt”. This was a device that had a stiff flexible plate inside a ribbed tube with a rope going through the centre of the plate and knotted on each side of the plate and out of either end of the tube. When Ted pulled the rope quickly, a sound like a loud roar would be produced, and this would encourage people outside the tent to come in and see the disappointingly sedate lion.

Ted got to know the exotic circus folk. Animal tamers and trainers, high wire and trapeze artists, the midway barkers, jugglers, clowns, musicians, tarot card readers and gypsy fortune tellers. In those days they had a “freak show” with a bearded woman, sword swallowers, midgets, very tall people, skin piercers, tattooed people and the strong man who all came into Ted’s circle.

Ted recalled a particular fondness for the “mermaid girl.” This was a young woman who had her legs inside what appeared to be the scaled tail of a large fish so she appeared to be half-fish, half-human. She wore no top and her long hair was artfully arranged to protect her modesty. She sat behind a curtained fishbowl and, from the viewer side of the bowl, it would appear that she was inside the fishbowl. She would wave and smile at the crowds and move her finned tail as if she were swimming. Teenage Ted was more than happy to be her assistant and stand to one side of her and await her request for garments and help to remove her tail at the end of each show.

Ted achieved fame when he learned how to become a ventriloquist. He was given his own booth inside one of the tents where he would perform a comedy act by chatting with his dummy, Mr. Twizzle, who sat on his knee. He had become a ventriloquist circus star by 15 years of age!

Meanwhile, the Second World War was raging. Ted’s elder brothers had joined the armed forces and so he too volunteered to join up at 16 years of age. He enlisted in the Canadian Army at the Bay Street Armories in Victoria. His rank was that of a “Boy Soldier” and it was a moment of great pride when on his 17th birthday, he finally clawed his way up to the rank of Private. He served in various capacities right across Canada including being seconded as a soldier to the American army helping to build the Alaska Highway. The war ended before Ted was sent overseas.

After he was demobilized, he became a baker at St. Paul’s hospital in Vancouver. However, he developed a skin sensitivity to yeast and had to leave that trade and he moved to Edmonton.

He was working for the Edmonton Bulletin newspaper when he met Ardith Marion Ramage, who was 17 years old, at the Rainbow Ballroom. Ted was 23. It was love at first sight and after a whirlwind romance they asked Ardith’s father’s permission to get married as she was not of “legal age” and too young to make that decision herself. We still have the telegram granting them permission from “Daddy.”

They were married May 24, 1950 on Vancouver Island, where Ted had a job as a laundry delivery man. They lived in an apartment on Stannard Ave. near Beacon Hill Park in Victoria. The next year Ardith was pregnant and they moved to a slightly larger apartment on Bushby Street, still near Beacon Hill Park. Their first child, Gary Dwane (the author) was born October 27, 1951. Ardith was 18 years old and Ted was 24.

Soon after, using his experience with the Edmonton Bulletin, Ted secured a job with The Daily Colonist newspaper, a morning paper and the oldest newspaper in British Columbia. He was a circulation manager, which meant that he had to get up very early in the morning, and ensure that the paper was out and delivered to the many subscribers in those days before television.

He received housing especially available to war veterans under The Veterans Land Act and we proudly moved into our little 2-bedroom rancher home on 1.1 acres at 1359 Simon Rd., Saanich in 1953. A year later, March 9, 1954, my sister, Wendy Lee, was born. We shared a room and I would often bring Wendy into my bed as she was so warm in her flannel sleepers and our house, heated by a central sawdust burner furnace, was freezing.

A few years later, we moved around the corner to another VLA home on an acre at 4030 Braefoot Rd. This was a larger three-bedroom, basement house with an upstairs floor.

Ted tried his hand at so many things. He raised chickens which provided us with eggs and meat. If the chickens were injured, he would anesthetize them with ether and perform surgery on them in our utility room. He raised rabbits too. He made his own beer and spirits in a moonshine still - always worried about the revenue police.

He learned how to play the guitar, harmonica, clarinet and invented an instrument that he called a “pogo stick” that had a tin drum screwed to it, a tambourine, cymbals and various percussion instruments to supply the rhythm for his music. Ardith was the pogo stick player and they would musically entertain themselves with their friends who would bring their musical instruments (including playing the spoons) to evening parties fueled by moonshine.

Ted became interested (obsessed with?) in magic and mind reading. He started putting on amateur magic shows and then graduated to putting on public mind-reading exhibitions using his brother, Hugh, as one of the mind readers in his act. He recruited me to be a magician’s assistant for performances and would also use me as a mind reader when he was at parties. He would call me by telephone, (an 11-year-old kid), and my name was “The Wizard.” We would astound his friends when he was miles away by having The Wizard tell them what card they were holding in their hand or read their minds and tell them what they were thinking.

Ted became involved with the professional magicians “Magic Circle” and was privy to the latest and most complex magic tricks. He has been to a special theatre in the US, hidden behind a curtain in the back of a magic shop and reserved for Magic Circle “members of the craft”. Professional magicians are on stage performing new tricks and illusions that they have invented. The audience is made up of their peer magicians who offer advice and critique the effects in order to hone and refine the presentation. There were always an assortment of trick parts and partially constructed tricks and illusions around the house. We regularly received mail from a man in San Francisco called “The Bat”.

Ted was an endless fountain of ideas and interests – a true lateral thinker. He tried his hand at selling chicken’s feet to communist China during the McCarthy era, but our mail was being opened and the police were following us around so he had to abandon that effort.

He started a semi successful business making bolo ties out of Chinese mung beans (that look like miniature buffalo heads). All of us worked for hours gluing the plastic guides on the mung beans that were stored in the basement. He sold them to retailers around Victoria.

Ted became interested in mesmerizing and is the founding president of the Victoria Hypnosis Society. I would come home from school and there would be up to a half a dozen people all sitting hypnotized in our living room. He hypnotized people to stop smoking, lose weight and diminish irrational and debilitating fears. A woman approached Ted whose son had a disfiguring case of facial acne. Dad judged that his acne was caused by a nervous personality of high stress and anxiety. The young man was hypnotized to relax and he returned for a number of ongoing hypnotic treatments. His acne cleared up and he was cured!

He was also interested in spiritualism and contacting the dead and attended spiritualist meetings. He told us about attending a party in Victoria hosted by a psychiatrist/spiritualist. The host greeted his guests while laying in an upright coffin.

Books around the house ranged from occultist Aleister Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice through basic surgery manuals to Malz’ Psycho-Cybernetics. He was not an ageist and I was permitted as a young teen to be part of fascinating conversations and concepts.

He was captivated by anything that was different or unusual. A Tibetan Buddhist monk, on an around the world pilgrimage, was wandering the streets of Victoria in a saffron robe and sandals having walked off of a ship in harbour at about six in the morning. The man didn’t speak a word of English. Ted picked him up and brought him home and I remember sitting at the table with the shaved head, Sharmin Dhal, chatting away to me in Tibetan while I ate my breakfast cereal before going to school.

One afternoon Ted arrived home from work with a large cardboard box and put it in the middle of the living room. Loud thumping was coming from the box and mom was highly agitated about what was inside. He had somehow managed to catch a crow, luring it with the foil paper from a cigarette package. The lid of the box popped open and the crow flew out soiling mom’s new broadloom carpet. It was quite a scene with the crow flying around the living room and all of us trying to catch it while it pecked and scratched us.

Meanwhile, Ted had migrated to studying medieval illusionists. He built a contraption that he called The Magic Castle. It had sheets of vertical glass inside it, set at oblique angles to each other with lights strategically located to be dimmed or brightened by a rheostat. When you looked through the front doors of it, he could make objects appear before your eyes, or disappear simply by increasing or decreasing the level of light. He had taken the concept from medieval drawings. Our own Leonardo da Vinci living in our home.

In 1961 their youngest child, Sharon Ardith, July 29, 1961, was born completing our family.

A year later the Cuban missile crisis erupted. Ted was a survivalist. He went exploring and found caves on Vancouver Island where our family would survive after the rest of the world was incinerated. He loaded up our Volkswagen Beetle with cans of sardines, Spam, guns, ammunition, water, matches, rope, sleeping bags, and all kinds of miscellaneous equipment. When the sirens went off, we were to run from the school towards home and he would be driving towards us to pick us up and take us to our new cave dwelling. Thank goodness it never came to that.

There are legends of lost Spanish treasure on Vancouver Island, and Ted spent some time searching for that. One day, he was with a friend on a remote Vancouver Island logging road. They came around a corner just as the sun was setting and illuminating a cliff face turning the whole thing into a sheet of gold. They jumped out of the Volkswagen and started picking up huge nuggets and loading them into the car. He friend was overwhelmed with gold fever and Dad recalls saying, “No, no Frank. We’ve got to put one down before we can pick another one up.” They came home highly excited and it was quite a let down when the whole works turned out to be iron pyrite – fool’s gold.

In 1966 he was offered a position at the Vancouver Province newspaper as a circulation manager and he moved his family to Lynn Valley in North Vancouver. In 1974 he transferred into the hurley burley of the promotion department. He was instrumental in working with the publisher to change the format of the newspaper from the traditional broad sheet to the modern-day tabloid. Always an endless source of amazing concepts, the board room team would marvel and ask him, “Ted, how do you come up with these ideas?!”

In 1985, when the Sun and Province papers came under the umbrella of Southam, Ted was appointed Promotions and Community Relations Manager, responsible for both papers. He became involved with charitable foundations – the Province Empty Stocking Fund and the Sun’s

Children Fund as well as the Sun Run and winter Polar Bear Swim.

A man, who was a street person came into Ted’s office at the newspaper. His name was Joe Friedlander. He was a man, known as Harmonica Joe, who eked a living playing his harmonica on street corners of Vancouver and he became one of Ted’s broad circle of musicians, free thinkers, magicians, mesmerizers, spiritualists, business associates, friends and family. Joe had come to give as much as he could of his scant earnings to the Children’s Empty Stocking Fund. Joe was featured in the Province newspaper and Ted promised Joe that he would come and spend Christmas with him. Dad picked me up and we went to the Harbour Light Mission on Vancouver’s downtown East Side. We enjoyed a Christmas lunch of ketchup on toast which the men there called pizza and ate with great thanks. They received gifts of mismatched gloves, socks, Bibles and were thrilled with them. We participated in a candlelight Christmas celebration singing hymns with some of Vancouver’s most unfortunate men but each was truly thankful for what little he had. It was one of the most memorable Christmas celebrations that I can recall but it was just an additional experience for Ted who met amazing and alternate people on a regular basis.

Ted drove up Mt. Seymour seeking a particularly tiny, aged, weathered and marginal tree, barely surviving near the snow line. He brought it home and wired its gnarled branches, clipping them occasionally, thereby creating his own bonsai tree which lived happily in our home in it’s flat bowl with roots artistically exposed over a staged rock before disappearing into the earth. Bonsai Master another skill achieved.

After a long and rewarding career in the newspaper industry, Ted reluctantly retired in 1991.

He loved spending time with his family and many friends and utilized many years reading and learning. Always a great conversationalist, historian, Ted enjoyed sharing his understanding and knowledge with all. He spoke fondly of the founder of the Victoria Colonist newspaper Amor de Cosmos. De Comos was originally Bill Smith but he had renamed himself before arriving in Victoria. Ted translated Amor’s name as “lover of the universe” and I had the impression that Ted was sorry that name had already been taken. (de Cosmos was the second premier of BC and a MP.)

When I was very young, I recall that Ted attended a funeral and heard people expressing regret that they hadn’t said kind things to the departed. He heard a great deal of “I should have said this” or “I could have done that.” This unfinished business and associated sorrow had a great impact on him. He said at the time, “Never, never wait. Tell people that you love them before it’s too late and tell them all the time.”

Dad always did that. Just out of nowhere, at any given moment he would exclaim, “Love you guys!” He loved all of us, he loved his friends, he loved the world, he loved and explored life and, most of all, he loved his wife, Ardith. We knew it by all of his actions and words.

He didn’t just exist but he lived each moment and drank deeply from the well of life. It was exhilarating to be near him.

Most of all, we loved him too and from family to friends to acquaintances, we are all better for having known him.

For his last few years, he lived at Maple Ridge Seniors Village. He was in the extended care ward but Ardith lived on the same floor as him in an assisted living suite. She could visit him daily which was his greatest joy. When she would walk in the room his eyes would light up and he would say, “You’re so beautiful.” He was never happier than when she was by his side.

Sincere thanks are extended to Ted’s caring workers at the Seniors Village.

Ted passed peacefully in his sleep November 12, 2024 at 97 years of age at Ridge Meadows Hospital.

Ted is survived by his loving wife, Ardith.

His son Gary (Patti). Children Haley and Victoria.

Predeceased by his daughter Wendy (Rick). Children Michelle, Robert, Kimberley

His daughter Sharon (Barry). Children Cody, Jessie and Wyatt.

Ted and Ardith have 14 great-grandchildren.