December 4, 1925 – December 18, 2015
Husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather, sailor, hunter, golfer and the best damn grader operator anywhere has left for greener pastures where every shot is a hole in one and every meal has Yorkshire Pudding and key lime pie.
Dad was born in Parksville and, although he travelled far, his heart was always on the Island. After time in the logging industry, he joined the war effort and sailed with the Atlantic convoys during WW II on HMCS Prince Rupert. After the war’s end, he joined the Surfacing Branch of what was to become the Ministry of Highways and laid a lot of the first blacktop in the Okanagan, Princeton and Cariboo areas. He met Mom while in Vernon and they got married in Parksville in 1951. Dad started looking for a job where he wouldn’t be away from home so much. They ended up in Quesnel where Dad was a foreman for Highways for many years. In 1964, Dad took a giant risk, quit Highways, bought his first grader and embarked on another adventure, building and maintaining logging roads and plowing snow. Another grader followed and Peter J Shaw Ltd. eventually had 2 graders, a loader and a truck plow. The opportunity to return to the Island came in 1975 and Dad sold off all the equipment except for the one grader and moved everyone to Campbell River. There followed many years of grading roads and plowing snow, mainly from Gold River to Head Bay but other places as well. Dad eventually sold the grader and retired but it didn’t stick and he went back to work running grader for various outfits, including Holbrook Dyson Logging and Onion Lake Logging before really retiring in February 1989.
Mom and Dad moved from South McCarthy to the place in Shelter Bay in 1984, where they spent many years; Mom digging in the garden and Dad golfing at Stories Creek or out fishing in the Topper III. While it was an idyllic life, it didn’t stop them from running away to Yuma in the winter or to Cranbrook for hunting with his sons. When the stairs became too much, Mom and Dad moved to the Forde House in Willow Point in 2013 and then to Berwick in 2015.
He leaves behind his wife Mary; children Ed (Linda), John, Peter (Tina), Paul and Cilka (Mark), many grandchildren and great-grandkids.
A Celebration of Life will be held at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 137 in Campbell River on Saturday May 21, 2016 from 1 to 4 pm.
Flowers gratefully declined. A donation in Peter’s memory made to Campbell River and District Adult Care Society, 12 –142 Larwood Road, Campbell River, BC, V9W 1S2, 250- 923-0991, cradult@telus.net, www.cradultcare.com, would be greatly appreciated.