As the much littler brother of Vic's wife Doris, my strongest first memory of Vic is when he and Doris visited my family in Calgary in the late '50s, early 60s, and Vic ate 6 cobs of corn. As a relatively young person, this struck me as a very interesting and extraordinary thing to do. From that point on, Vic was always a rock star to me. Fast forward to the early '70s when I was attending university in eastern Canada, and I would visit Doris and Vic in Pointe Claire outside Montreal. These were wonderful, relaxing weekends away from the stress of university life, punctuated by frequent trips to The Forum, Parc Jarry and the Place des Arts. Once in the '80s, Doris and Vic visited me, my wife and our children in northern Virginia, when Vic was on his way to a business meeting in New York. Vic spent most of the visit installing shutters in our kitchen, during a major snow storm that threatened his trip on to New York. Vic made it to New York but none of the other meeting participants did, and the meeting was cancelled. Vic traveled back to Montreal directly from New York and Doris went home from Virginia. You'd think this would have been a stressful time, doing someone else's home improvements while on vacation, worrying about a snow storm that was threatening the main purpose of the trip. But as always around Vic, it was pure relaxation and calm. Another 20 years in the future, as I neared retirement, Vic put on a major campaign for me to take up golf. I eventually did and enjoyed many happy moments with Vic on the La Cité golf course in Hawkesbury, with the added bonus that I had the opportunity to meet the many wonderful people he played golf with there. Vic always struck me as bigger than life. But so quiet. A friendly bear of a man. He was the senior manager on many iconic construction projects in Canada, and many major projects around the world. He had much wisdom and many stories. But you'd never benefit from this wisdom or hear these stories in a large crowded room, with Vic holding forth in a loud voice as the center of attention he could have been. No. If you were lucky, you'd benefit from his experience sitting quietly in a small room, over coffee at Tim Horton's, or in a golf cart rolling up the 6th fairway at La Cité into a stiff north wind in late fall. These are the memories I have of my brother-in-law, mon beau frère. I miss him and always will.
