John died when he was almost 93 years old. He was born and raised on a farm in Utopia, Ontario. He lived through the time before and the time of - the telephone, the automobile; he saw changes in our society over nearly a hundred years of an active life. He used to take the train to school – catching it across one of the farm fields his family worked. He went to Central Collegiate (gone now) and attended the Ontario Agricultural College before it became the University of Guelph. He left the farm following a rough year during the depression and took his wife, Isabel, and their three kids to town. He secured a job on the railroad – the CNR. He had a variety of positions for the CN and eventually worked his way to engineer. He saw the transition from steam engines to diesel and lived long enough to hear about the crew-less train that ran across 1000 miles of Canadian track. He and Isabel had 7 children in all.
