Roderic McDonald Obituary

Rembering Rory

Dear Ann,

My wife, Heather, and I were so sorry to hear from Bob Sexsmith of Rory's death and send you and William our sincere condolences.

It is interesting that the day before he died, I was having lunch with John (Salts) Dalton, Bob (Leader) Sexsmith and Steve (Yipper) Taylor enjoying some pizza at the Pop-Up restaurant on Cypress Bowl Road (photo attached). The topic of Rory came up when recalling our first overnight hiking adventure in the early 1950s to a location where none of us had ever been before. Steve was not with us during those years when he lived in Comox. Our destination was to Dick Lake on the southwest slope of Black Mountain in West Vancouver, which is now more commonly referred to as Eagle Lake even though its official geographic name is Dick Lake. My recollection is that Rory was very keen to undertake this adventure and we looked up to him because he had become a Queen's Scout, so we assumed he would be very knowledgeable about overnight camping. There was no trail, so we had to bushwhack our way to the lake and Rory struggled with this hike because of his very heavy backpack which included a large axe and a heavy metal cooking grate. We didn't take any tent or polythene tarps to cover us, so just slept on a groundsheet out in the open. This was the occasion when George (Oz) Sexsmith woke up beside me in the middle of the night to tell me that he had heard the "half signal". I knew he was probably dreaming, so I told  him to go back to sleep. All in all, this was a successful first outing, which set the stage for more adventuresome hikes throughout our teenage years and I think that Rory, through his enthusiasm, deserves some credit for getting us started on these continuing overnight hiking adventures.
We made several hikes to the Lions. In the summer of 1954, after boating in a small car-top boat from Horseshoe Bay to Lions Bay, we made our first hike there following a tree-blazed route and climbed the West Lion. Next summer, on the Labour Day weekend, we decided to hike all the way to the Lions from West Vancouver hiking up the trail to the Westlake Ski Lodge on Hollyburn Ridge which started from the top of 15th Street, which we called "Zephyr Street". At that time, there was no such street nor Upper Levels Highway, but we felt that we were far enough up the slope of Hollyburn Ridge that, had West Vancouver continued to develop and name it streets alphabetically, then Zephyr Street would be an appropriate name for this location. We hiked up past Westlake Ski Lodge to Cypress Bowl and around the sides Hollyburn and Strachan Mountains. There was no trail from there to the Lions, so we decided to stay on the ridges hiking up and down each side of St Mark´s Summit and Unnecessary Mountain to finally reach and climb to the peak of the West Lion. Rory found this hike very challenging and complained a lot about having to go up and down these slopes before getting to the Lions. It was in the previous year, that the BC Lions football team came into being with the slogan: "The Lions Roar in 54". We had brought with us one of the small "Keep of the Grass" signs taken from a Lions´ game at Empire Stadium and planted it on the peak of the West Lion. For the return trip, Rory decided not to hike back along the ridges with us, but to take a more direct route which he called a shortcut along the lower elevations of the two mountains and he said that he would wait for us in the valley between Strachan Mountain and St Mark´s Summit. Well, it didn´t work out that way and we had to wait for quite a while for Rory to arrive exhausted after bushwhacking his way around the sides of the two mountains. This was a learning experience, which caused us to name such shortcuts, which aren´t short at all, "Kycuts" taking the name "Ky" from Rory´s second name "Kyle".

We did not live in the Lower Mainland during my career as a meteorologist, so didn´t see much of Rory during those years. However, when we lived in the Black Forest in Germany during the late 1960s, we were pleased to receive a visit from Rory to our home in Seelbach in the Spring of 1968. He agreed when I asked him if he would take home a special bottle of German white wine and present it to my brother, Reg on the occasion of his marriage to his bride Sharon.

In September of 2003, a few of us decided to hike to the Lions from Lions Bay to commemorate our first hike from Lions Bay nearly 30 years ago in 1954. We invited Rory and he joined Oz Sexsmith, Court Brousson, myself and our dog, Bijou, for the hike at the end of September. The weather was so beautiful that we decided to spend another night camped beside a small pond near the base of the West Lion (photo attached). Also attached are three more photos of us taken during that memorable trip.

Rory was not only a good friend and backpacking companion, but he also helped us as a lawyer on several occasions, including preparing legal documents for the purchase of our property on Gambier Island in September 1996 and the purchase of our current home that we moved into in December of 2000. His family´s home on Fulton Avenue, where he lived for many years before moving to Lethbridge, was less than one block from our current home on Esquimalt Avenue. So, I got to see and talk to him numerous times in the neighbourhood.

We have many wonderful memories of times spent with Rory and he will be missed by Heather and I and all of our friends who knew him.

Best regards, Peter. Scholefield