Raff's Eulogy "Words for an Old Friend—Remembering Kirk Wipper"

KAWW and Neil Broadfoot kibbitzing on the porch of the Canadian Canoe Museum on July 15, 2008

Keene United Church, March 26, 2011

James Raffan

If you are in this church, then you would know that when you head North—in a ship or a plane, in a canoe or on snowshoes or, I daresay, in a 1971 Chevy pickup truck with bald tires and bankrupt brakes and a jumble of historical canoes on top … when you head North, you eventually cross a line of magnetic uncertainty, a place where the compass needle tends to spin erratically.  That’s a little like how I have felt since last at 11:40 p.m. last Friday night when the Wipper’s friend and lawyer, Don White, called to say that Kirk had died.  Navigation since then has been difficult because one of the principal forces that trued my personal compass is gone.   You may feel similarly adrift.

In this uncertain space, my mind has wandered.  At one point, I thought it might be appropriate to stand up here and begin by explaining that there are things I have been dying to say about Kirk Wipper.  And then, thought I might congratulate Kirk for planning to be cremated, making this church a no coffin zone, so that people would be able to hear properly on the recording of the proceedings.  But then I thought that that kind of verbal tomfoolery might engage the lawyers in the house who might ask that I decease and desist from such silliness.  Happily, those thoughts passed, and I decided not to say anything of the kind, and to begin these reflections on Kirk’s life in a more respectful, less punny way.

We are saying goodbye this morning to a man who changed the world.  If you look at the tributes to Kirk that are pouring in to his website (www.kirkwipper.ca), into the museum website (www.canoemuseum.ca) and to the sites of other organizations to which Kirk was affiliated, you will see how this remarkable Canadian was loved and appreciated by people in many different sectors, but you will also see that he, indeed, changed the world for the better and that he did this one person at a time.  (As an aside, it is ironic that in the maelstrom of telephone and email traffic that followed his death, many people called to say they’d noticed the funeral was for friends and family.  “I met Kirk once back in 1975, or he was my teacher a long time ago,” they would say, “but I considered him a friend.  May I come?”)  Kirk Wipper’s legacy is attached to canoes, that is for sure, but his legacy is also connected to people.  I count myself among them.  I count myself lucky.

Were it not for Kirk Wipper, I might still have a real job!  Were it not for Kirk Wipper, I might have been sitting fat (fatter?) and happy (but not happier) in the professoriate with a six-figure salary and healthy pension waiting in the wings.  Instead, rich in spirit, I am taking my turn as helmsman with a stellar brigade of friends and companions on the ultimate canoe journey, in a vessel that had brought us all together called The Canadian Canoe Museum. 

And what a crew!   Look at you.  There is Jim Stewart and the hard-working Board of Directors.  There is John Summers and the superlative museum staff.  And then there is the world’s most committed corps of members, friends, and volunteers who power the dream forward.  A crew that reaches across Canada and around the world.  And what do we have in common, what keeps us together in common purpose?  Kirk Wipper.

I am here because Kirk asked me to lend a hand.  I am here because I believe that the work we are doing at The Canadian Canoe Museum is worthwhile.  I am here because fifty-two years ago, in the summer I turned five years old, I met a man who shaped my life.  I met a mentor.  I met a friend called Kirk.

I met Kirk through my dad, who had skills that Kirk needed at Camp Kandalore.  They were both Navy veterans, having served during the Second World War.  They would sit together and tell stories of their experiences on the high seas.  They would laugh lustily, as sailors do (when my mother and Margaret were out of earshot).  And, as I have thought about Kirk in these days following his death, that sailor motif has persisted.  And I have thought of Kirk’s love of the romantic poets, Alfred Lord Tennyson in particular, and his poem, Ulysses.  It’s the one that begins “It little profits an idle king …” and ends with that familiar refrain that became the motto of Outward Bound (and, I gather, the upcoming Olympics Games in London in 2012), “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” 

If these words don’t ring a familiar chord to you, suffice it to know that Ulysses is a poem about an old sailor sitting at the hearth recounting his life, recounting (to younger sailors?) the lessons he has learned in a life at sea.

The lines of Ulysses that most remind me of Kirk are buried in the middle of the poem.  “All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move …” This was the essence of Kirk. 

Kirk took you to his arch and invited you to view the world through it.  It was an arch that was created by his own philosophies but also mixed into the mortar of that structure were the writings of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Longfellow, William Henry Drummond and Pauline Johnson—snippets of most of whom he could recite by heart—the journals of travelers like Samuel de Champlain and David Thompson, and the teachings of Henry David Thoreau, John Dewey, John Muir, Annie Dillard, Kurt Hahn, Robert Baden Powell, Ernest Thompson Seton, Grey Owl and the like. 

Kirk invited you to look through that arch, which was his, but his genius as an educator, as a mentor, was that he invited his students to look out on that horizon “whose margin fades for ever, and for ever” he stood beside you and invited you to dream with him.  He was not impelling you into his dream.  He was not pushing you toward that horizon.  He was not cajoling you, or dragging you toward that margin.  He was inviting you to set sail on your own voyage of discovery.  He could tell you about some of the skills you would need to navigate and to succeed.  And he would tell you that he could probably help you learn some of those skills.  He would tell you that he had the ultimate confidence that you could and would succeed.  He might take your hand and show you how to haul the main sheet but he would make it clear that it was your hand that had to be on the tiller.

Who was this enigmatic man born in the Interlake Region of Manitoba?  Who was Kirk Wipper?  Why was he so influential?  Why were people drawn to him?

He was charismatic.  He was compelling.  He loved the limelight. 

He was genuine.  He was generous … occasionally to a fault.

He was fiercely intelligent.  Kirk always said it was our obligation “to know, to care, to act.”  People in recreation might hear echoes of  the “body, mind, spirit” trifecta of the YM/YWCA, which was surely a part of who and what Kirk was.  For those of us in education, we would hear in this the refrain of Benjamin Bloom and his taxonomy of cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning domains.  Kirk knew about that too. 

But his most compelling theory of education was that which was embodied in the man himself—he knew with his head, he knew with his hands, he knew with his body, he knew with his heart, he knew with his soul.  And all of that was wrapped up in action that engaged the world and its inhabitants with fully integrated knowledge, with openness, fairness, curiosity and a sense of fun.

He was kind.  He was thoughtful.  He was committed.

He was loyal.  He had a sense of duty to humanity.  He always sought the highest good.  And, I think, when Kirk was damned or misunderstood—and believe me there were times when Kirk exasperated people—I suspect that maybe what was not fully understood about his nature at these times was that Kirk, in his mind, was often seeking a higher good that maybe the rest of us couldn’t see or fully appreciate.

Kirk was a trickster, with an inalienable sense of fun.  He had a wicked, irrepressible and occasionally politically incorrect sense of humour.

But all this was wrapped up into a dream—a dream wrapped up in a humble vessel without decks.    The canoe was to Kirk a work of art.  It was—it is—beautiful.  And part of that beauty is that it was made first of natural materials by indigenous hands.  Kirk loved the fact that in its beauty and functionality the canoe connects people to the Canadian landscape.    The canoe was a way to physical fitness and to understanding.  Quoting Thoreau, he would say, “In wildness is the salvation of the world.”  The canoe connected us to the wilderness.  But most importantly, the canoe connected people to each other, Aboriginal—First Nation, Métis, Inuit—French and English.  To preserve the canoe was to remember and celebrate Canada itself.  Kirk knew that the canoe was about the Canada of yesterday and today but also about the Canada of tomorrow.  Kirk’s dream was about “pulling together,” for now, for always.

Kirk’s legacy lives in all of us.  But it also lives in The Canadian Canoe Museum.  As the initial shock of his passing fades and is replaced by a dull ache and sadness, I realize that much of what he stood for is there in the museum’s collection of 600+ canoes, kayaks and self-propelled vessels that he so loved—that unique portrait of Canada that is The Canadian Canoe Museum.  I have realized that just knowing this collection is there and that it is being looked after and its stories communicated to Canadians—knowing this trues my compass.

Thinking of the museum, I must turn to Ann, Joanna, David, Doug, the children and grandchildren in Kirk’s immediate family.  We have created a memorial to Kirk—built around the first canoe in the Kanawa Collection, the Payne Brothers basswood dugout—with paddle and a book of condolences on the Grand Portage at the museum to create a temporary place for people to come to remember him.  And we are in the very early stages of planning a permanent tribute and memorial to Kirk inside the museum that will tell his story in the context of the story—would it be fair to call it the richly checkered story—of the museum and its historical arc where people can come to share Kirk stories.  But I want to say that whether it is to visit that exhibit or the museum as a whole, you are welcome.  We will welcome you whenever you might like to come.  We can probably arrange a special family discount.

Kirk’s dream, his force, lives in all of us.  As my inner compass has settled down a bit after the seismic shock that sent it spinning last Friday, I have realized that I am surrounded by lines of commitment, of belief, of dedication, of vision of everyone whose life he touched.  What I need now to do is let go and trust that together, in his memory, we can keep the dream alive, moving toward that horizon whose margin fades … (I suspect if we look very carefully that we may in the future, from time to time, see a familiar silhouette in a bark canoe paddling out near that horizon—I don’t think he’ll be that far away) 

I have realized in Kirk’s passing that the power of the whole is bigger than the power of any one of us.  Together we can carry on.   Together we will carry on.

To end, I come back to Tennyson and Ulysses last instruction that closes this epic poem:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Goodbye my friend. 

And thank you.

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James Raffan is Executive Director of The Canadian Canoe Museum.