Harry Basil (Basso / Teddy) Menzies. b September 12, 1929; d. July 23, 2024.

Comments presented at August 17, 2024 Memorial Service on Bowen Island.

Harry Basil Menzies, born of a Scottish-Canadian father (whose family arrived in southern Ontario in the early 1800s) and a Tsimshian mother (whose family is rooted in this land since time immemorial). 

Harry & Elizabeth Menzies

Eleven years ago, we stood in this place to say goodbye to Shirley, our mother and Basso’s wife. Shirley and Basso were together for 52 years. I was with my father on the day Mom passed. We sat together with her. Then he said he was going home. In the parking lot we hugged, he held back his tears, and then got into his car to return to Bowen. I followed him on the next ferry.

 

I’ve spent many hours in my father’s company: as a child in the front seat of his car on the way to the boat, as a youth and adult in the wheelhouse of his boat travelling the coast, and as an older man sitting with him at his kitchen table. Then finally sitting with him as he left this world. Often, he would talk about his life -mostly about his work as a commercial fisherman, but occasionally about his youth and his family. Some of his stories had a clear arc, others were fragments that only made sense with a lifetime of listening to him. I will miss these moments with him.

 

 

Dad was born at home in Prince Rupert. My sisters and I grew up in that same house. My memories of our childhood home is interwoven with his stories and photos of my father’s own childhood there.

Sister 'Babe,' Dad, mother Elizabeth.

On thing my father liked to do was talk with people. He would learn about them and share stories of his own life all at the same time.

 

Dad’s life was defined by fishing. Not only did he work on the water, but he also took us all on holidays on the boat. We would fish, set crab traps, and explore coves and creeks all around the coast. When he and mom found themselves with grandchildren they took those children on the boat as well. Other grandparents take the kids to Disneyland, my parents took the grandkids jigging for rock cod.

 

During the 1930s depression my father’s family supplemented their meagre income with venison, seafood, and wild plants and berries. One of my favourites of Dad’s stories involved him and a cousin fishing salmon in McNicol Creek. They stood up to their chests in the creek holding a gillnet. Their two fathers rowed back and forth picking the salmon out of the net. “It was cold,” Dad would say. Relief came when his mother and aunt came rowing down the channel yelling at the men to take the boys out of the water.  

 

Dad and I spent a lot of time talking about family, who they are and how we were related. These stories were often framed by events – like his childhood gillnetting earlier mentioned which is story about Uncle Lee, cousin Vic, and Aunt Nettie in addition to fishing. 

Shirley and Basso Menzies.

My first remembered version of this story began in another story about Dad having been invited to beach seine at his grandfather’s fishing camp in Lowe Inlet. While an anthropologist like me might create an abstract chart connecting people, Dad told family as stories, moments, and events that explained the importance of the connections.

 

Another of Dad’s favourite stories dates to when he was second engineer on the Cape Perry in 1950.  They were collecting fish a couple of hundred miles south of Prince Rupert. An American bomber had crashed. Dad delighted in telling the story of rescuing the flight crew in the middle of a cold and windy night. Dad was interviewed by CBC radio when he was 87. They spun together a feature with modest editing. In another life Dad may well have been a radio commentator.

 

What made Dad’s radio story so powerful is its authenticity. He talked with the radio host the same way he would speak to any of us here. He draws us in, includes us, makes us feel valued. This was a strength of his, to be able to connect with all kinds of people.

 

I will miss my father. I know that you will also miss him in your own way.  On behalf of my sisters and our families, thank you for being with us as we remember Harry Basil Menzies. 

Dad on the wheel, FV Miss Georgina.

A memorial reception will be held in the First United Church Hall, Prince Rupert at 2pm on Saturday September 28, 2024.