Peter Wolfe Case
Father, science teacher, visionary. Born on Jan. 15, 1928, in Toronto; died on July 17, 2014, in Stratford, Ont., of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, aged 86.
After the dinner dishes were cleared from the table, our father's nightly lecture would begin. Peter Case taught high-school science and needed an audience to practice his next day's lesson; his two sons and two daughters were the perfect recruits.
My brother Jamie and I, his dutiful emissaries, would spread the good word about photosynthesis – his default lecture – around the neighbourhood. Photosynthesis is an apt metaphor for him: He took light and energy and distilled them into something useful and practical. Filled with insights, opinions, ideas and solutions, his energy seemed boundless.
Learning was always at the forefront in our home; encyclopedias were placed at child level and a dictionary stand, with a step, was prominent in the dining room. Every dinner, a word was looked up and its definition recited, or a passage from the encyclopedia read in response to a question.
Born in Toronto, he was raised in Westmount and Baie d'Urfé, Que. As a teenager he explored the reaches of the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa rivers and the Great Lakes in a small sailboat. For four years, he and his best friend, Jack Richardson, set sail from Baie d'Urfé on the first day of summer vacation, returning home on Labour Day. They slept across the gunnels, cooked over open fires, and knew every coast guard along the Saint Lawrence and Lake Ontario. The two also built a "diving bell" and practised diving off Montreal's West Island. They jerry-rigged a garden hose, bicycle pump and generator as the oxygen source. Dad recalled having the lines cut by passing boats and blacking out under water, an acceptable risk to them.
In 1951, he graduated from MacDonald College, in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, with a degree in agriculture and worked halfheartedly in that industry. He eventually went through extensive testing at McGill University which determined that he was better suited for teaching. He moved the family to Stratford, Ont., in 1961 and taught science at Central Collegiate and Northwestern Secondary schools.
He was also involved in many civic activities, serving on the boards of the Perth County Children's Aid Society, Red Cross, Perth County Historical Society and Wildwood Sailing Club. A three-term city counsellor in the 1960s, he helped implement air- and noise-pollution bylaws, and drafted zoning bylaws to help make Stratford the lovely town it is today.
In his spare time he loved to renovate historic homes. We moved from updated Victorians to dilapidated ones, always repairing, renovating and subdividing the dwellings for extra income. His children became a tidy work force (and we know more about home renovation than any sane person should).
His favourite role was as a guidance counsellor: He believed in his students' talents and felt he could really make a difference. He saved one boy from a violent father by helping the boy escape to a relative's home; many years later, the boy's mother thanked Dad. Sometimes his advice was for the teenager to get the heck out of school; decades later, successful former students thanked him for their kick (in the pants, or out of school) start in life.
Dad had many facets: devoted husband and father, teacher, city counsellor, charity organizer, history buff, renovator, sailor. We miss him.
Pamela Case is Peter's daughter.