Lawrence Christopher Bonnycastle

BONNYCASTLE, Lawrence Christopher
Quietly, at home, on Friday, October 9, 1998. Born in Russell, Manitoba on November 19, 1907. Survived by his loving wife Mary (nee Andrews); sons John C., Michael K. and Stephen R; grandchildren Geoffrey, Anne, Kate and Ian; Adam and Will; Andrew, Heather, Jennifer, Megan, Charlie and Amy and one great-grandson, David Lawrence Powell. Funeral arrangements to be announced. Please omit flowers.¹

Lives Lived
LAWRENCE CHRISTOPHER BONNYCASTLE
Friday, April 30, 1999
Stephen Bonnycastle

Rhodes scholar, businessman, athlete.
Born in Russell, Man., on Nov. 19, 1907;
died of A.L.S. (Lou Gehrig's disease)
in Toronto on Oct. 9, 1998, aged 90.

Larry Bonnycastle died after a life of many successes, both public and private. I didn't realize until I was in my 30s that his characteristic modesty was partly due to his sense that his accomplishments did not match what he expected of himself, or perhaps what he believed his parents expected of him.

His career in business began in London, Ont., where he worked for Northern Life and passed his actuarial exams. He later became the treasurer of John Labatt Ltd. In 1949, he moved to Toronto to become the general manager of the National Life Assurance Co. For the last 30 years of his working life, he was with Canadian Corporate Management, first as its managing director and later as president. My father also served in many volunteer positions.

Although I was impressed by his public achievements, my affection for him is rooted in other areas, where I could see what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called "the buoyant child surviving in the man." I think much of the glory of my father appeared in his athletic life. I confess I loved watching him play (and win) tennis matches. His body and spirit seemed one, and he moved with effortless style. He was also an accomplished hockey player.

My father's buoyant side appears in another story from his youth. At 14, he was sent from Manitoba to Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ont. He and a friend arrived by train in Port Arthur, where they were to take the lake steamer to Toronto. They had an hour to spare, and there was a pool hall nearby. Now my father liked playing pool, and so he seized the opportunity. They played a game, and then headed for the harbour to catch the laker, only to see it receding from the shore. Larry had never travelled to Ontario before, and he hadn't learned that when a Westerner comes east, he always has something taken away from him. In this case it was one hour of his life; they had crossed into a new time zone. But someone advised them that in a fast taxi, they could catch the laker at Fort William -- and they did.

I don't know what pleases me so much about this story. It seems magical, almost poetic, to take an hour that doesn't exist, fill it with a game of pool, and still make the boat. We know very little about what happens after death, "the undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns" as Hamlet says. But I like thinking if there is a boat to be caught, my father made it.

The last five years of his life were ruled by a motor neuron disease that gradually destroyed his ability to control his muscles. During his last year he could not speak at all, but the final message I received from him, some months before he died, had a mysterious and endearing quality. We had tried various ways of enabling him to spell words -- keyboards, hand signals and so on -- but they were too frustrating. Then we tried a simple piece of cardboard, with 26 squares, each with one letter in it. This seemed to appeal to him. His face lit up with a smile and a twinkle came into his eyes as he spelled out, five or six times, a single word: R-H-O-D-E-S.

What did this mean? My father studied mathematics and Greek at the University of Manitoba. He then won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, where he studied jurisprudence and played hockey. I bet he played some pool, too.

I think winning the Rhodes scholarship made him feel he had succeeded; his doubts were banished, he knew that his parents and friends would be delighted. That is what the twinkle in his eye meant, as he spelled out, 70 years later, the word "Rhodes." That, too, was the glory of my father. For a few minutes he relived that feeling of triumph, before he slipped into the darkness; and I lived it with him, for the last time.

Stephen Bonnycastle teaches English literature at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is spending this year on sabbatical in Arles, France.⁸