The first time I met William was in 1965. I was four at that time and in total awe of his Dinky Toy collection. A whole wall full! So that must have been his first passion: cars. And later when I lived on Quadra in 1982 he helped me buy a car and taught me how to keep it running. Guiding me through the steps how to redo a whole carburetor and all kinds of other jobs on the car.
Then he taught me all kinds of carpenter skills when I helped him to build a woodshed. How to split shingles for the roof out of a piece red cedar from the beach and he explained to me gently not to stick nails in my mouth since a overdose of zinc oxide was not a good idea.
From then on I learned to respect him for his knowledge, his intelligence, his creativity, his handiness, but most of all his gentleness and humbleness.
His and my technical brains found each other whenever we spoke on the phone making me regret the distance between us since I had moved back to Holland again. But speaking to him felt always like speaking to an old college friend: picking up there we had left.
And then there was his sense of humor. One of his first castings was his door knocker: a casting of a bust of a lady with a couple of very big …. mounted on a hinge to be used as a door knocker(s).
And on our window sill we have the can of sardines by EATWELL, canned in the republic of Quadrenia. (Still to be founded.) To name a few of his creative creations, because what his mind made up, his hands could make.
British Columbia has lost a fighter for the environment trying to enlarge the awareness of the beauty of the marine life by having all his fish and seastars on display where ever he could find a place for them. This wasn’t always easy. So not only family and friends, but also the environment will miss him.
