Saturday, May 16, 2020
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I first met ‘Papi’ Pat Halpin in 1986 in the Llanos of Venezuela where I was studying birds for my Ph.D. He was coming to visit his daughter Yvette who was a research assistant at the same research base. I vividly recall the shock in his face (and his wife Stella’s) - at my initial appearance coming back from my fieldwork (filthy and bot-fly ridden)! Subsequently, we went on an adventure to the Andes, where we were subjected to a lockdown and some more wild escapades on the coast of northern Venezuela where Pat climbed coconut trees and sang around the beach camp fire with local people (a story he jokingly repeated many times!).
Pat spoke at our wedding in 1988 and he facilitated our move to Canada from the UK by being a co-sponsor for my landed immigrant application. Without his help I would never have been able to settle in Canada and establish myself as a freelance research consultant. We went on several trips together (including an unconventional ‘family’ honeymoon including sisters Hélène and Michelle in the south of England - visions of Stonehenge and Dorset shores - and long drives to see his daughter Monique, husband Dan and the boys in North Carolina).
In 1989-1990 we stayed with Pat and Stella for 6 months - forever etched in my mind are fond memories of drives to Montréal in Pat’s old blue buick (him eating peanuts along the way) and visits to his picturesque and wonderful sugar bush in the Laurentian mountains. I’ll never forget how he could suddenly pull the car over while on a trip, crank the driving wheel to give himself more space, and fall instantly to sleep. Then there were the pancakes which he loved to adorn with more maple syrup than crepes! And those scary false teeth that he kept in a jar by the bed - that came alive at night I used to joke.
Above all I’m eternally grateful for Pat’s hospitality and kindness to our small family. I know he was and is still an icon and his generosity and philanthropic spirit knew no bounds. A proud, yet humble man, only in later years did I realize, through my children (his grandchildren Geneviève and Samuel) just how much Papi did for other people and his many unconditional acts of great kindness. Always thinking of others, despite his own health struggles, he helped build schools in Mexico, organize marches for the kidney foundation, collate charitable clothes donations for the poor and somehow find time to run marathons and lend a listening ear to comrades at La Résidence in Hull.
It has been an honour to see him in many recent years on family celebrations and last spring (2019) he held his little newborn great-grandson baby Teddy in his arms. And this past Christmas he bought me a card wishing me absolute joy - in it he said ‘Wishing you many new sightings’, a reference to my love of birds. We found the card yesterday - insistently staying at the top of the pile - it was as if he was sending me a sign. Like the birds, Papi is with us everywhere; in the wild wailing cries of the loon, in the red-golden maple leaves rustling at our feet along the lakeshores of the Gatineau hills, in the wild November winds and lashing rain, in winter’s first soft flutter of snowflakes, and in the crashing waves lapping on a distant Atlantic shore. Like the sunset and the waxing and waning moon he is always with us and his entire family and will be forevermore.
David Anthony Kirk
