Fred Caudle

There has been an avalanche of happy memories that has come flooding back to me and to many of you, I know, over these past few days. One wonders where to begin a recollection.

Let's begin at Caudle's bakery!

For those of you old enough to remember – can't you still smell the fetching aroma of Caudle's Bakery? Some people called their product the best bread in Christendom!

And it always seemed to me that the customers at the counter were being served by the best looking girls in town! I always wondered if it was Fred or Percy that did the hiring!

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When the bakery closed, and Fred made the career change to the RCMP, it was a perfect fit. His belief in upholding the law, of serving his country, his fundamental sense of integrity and justice, the uniform, the motto “Maintain the Right”......

These were all important to Fred, and his service to the Mounted Police proved it.

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I first got to know Fred well in the Ski Patrol. In 1962, Fred joined Ron Day and Cynthia Drope in founding the Nova Scotia Zone of the Canadian Ski Patrol System.

As Zone Training Officer, Fred has trained hundreds of these Good Samaritans, whose job it is to promote safety and evacuate the injured off the hill. That's an unbroken record of 45 years!

This summer, 2007, marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Scouting by Baden Powell in 1907. Canada celebrates this event with a jamboree at Camp Tamaracouta, north of Montreal.

Twenty-nine Scouts, Venturers and leaders from 2nd Truro will attend, and join about 7,000 others from across the country.

Fred and I did Scouting together for over forty years. There is a magic chemistry when you put Fred Caudle in front of a group of 13 yr olds! Whether it was first aid, fly-tying, rope work, survival skills, cooking on hot rocks or in reflector ovens, or teaching canoeing skills, Fred knew his stuff, and could put it across.

The fertility of his imagination was best illustrated in an annual event we did each fall that was called Operation Alert – a competition open to teams of Scouts and Venturers across the province, and held at the provincial camp near Elderbank.

We ran projects at Alert for almost forty years. Our ideas almost always came from Fred. He thought them up, and he made them happen. Listen to some of the themes:
- the space capsule
- the Zulu wars
- Viking ships
- zip-wires and rope monkey bridges
- a gun run
- high ropes challenges
- the nuclear reactor

The kids loved it, and some would arrive at our project site at five in the morning, to try out Fred's challenge!

And the summer trips.... Pollett's Cove, St. Paul Island, Gros Morne and L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland... we did all those multiple times. And Baxter State Park in Maine .... it was on the very summit of mile-high Mount Katadhin, which is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, where I read a letter to Fred from Scouts Canada's National Commissioner, advising Fred that he was to receive the Medal of Merit for exemplary service to Scouting.

Then there were the Jamborees... in Kananaskis, Alberta, in Ontario, and in PEI, where we went over each time by chartered fishing boat. Great experiences with tens of thousands of like-minded youth and leaders, celebrating the thrill of Canada's great outdoors.

In Fred's world there was always adventure for our youth. Is it any wonder that 11 out of the 12 men who have walked on the moon, had once been Scouts!

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Fred and I enjoyed three expeditions to the High Arctic , the first two with adult Scouting friends, the third, just the two of us. Fred had great respect for the Inuit people. I think in part because they had managed to survive in a hostile climate for thousands of years, dependent solely on the animals around them, a thousand kilometres from the nearest tree. The great inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller, once said that two of the finest designs the world has seen were the igloo and the Inuit kayak... and they're both bio-degradable!

Fred must have been pleased when, just two weeks ago, the CBC selected the igloo as one of Canada's Seven Wonders!

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Fred's amazing spectrum of interests gave life to many other organizations locally:
- the model railroaders
- St. John Ambulance
- the model airplane group
- the Ham Radio Club

I can hear him still..... “CQ, CQ.... this is VE1 AKF, Victor Easy One Alpha Kilo Foxtrot... CQ, CQ VE1 AKF.

There are lots of people out there who knew AKF, but had never met Fred in person!

It was a joy to watch Fred handle a canoe! On flat water he had a strong and silent J-stroke that propelled his canoe straight as a die; in fast water there was no lurking threat he couldn't handle.

This morning's issue of the Globe and Mail newspaper, in a column by Roy MacGregor who writes regularly on page 2, has an item MacGregor has written on the canoe, and its role in Canada. He writes:

“It is the only mode of transportation that serves as a hat while you're walking through the rain. The only vehicle that can be turned, literally, into shelter for the night.”

I have seen Fred Caudle use his canoe in both those ways!

Since the CBC also chose the canoe as one of Canada's Seven wonders. Fred must have figured they were reading his mind!

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As busy as Fred was in his many endeavours. There was always time for family. Fred's love for Pat, and pride in his family, was self-evident. He was proud of Gayle's and Glenn's service among Nova Scotia's health professions, and of Cathy's service in the Mounted Police.

Years ago, when Cathy won the Canadian Women's Curling Championship (what today is the Tournament of Hearts), I loved to tease Fred by saying that Pat must have been a terrific athlete!

Here in this place, Fred and Pat raised their family, served their fellow members of our congregation, and demonstrated their faith in God.

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The spot where Fred and I were hiking last Wednesday could easily be described by that expression you sometimes hear, “A Cathedral in the Pines.” It's a place of majestic conifers rising in the high overstory, that also looks across Chignecto Bay to the New Brunswick shoreline, near Fundy National Park. With our Scouts and Venturers, we had camped, hiked, kayaked and rock-climbed over there at Fundy, just a few years ago.

But if I had said “Cathedral in the Pines” to Fred that day, he would have corrected me, and said, “Rod, those trees aren't pines; those are red spruce, and that's Nova Scotia's official provincial tree.”

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As I look around this gathering this afternoon and note the many people whose lives Fred touched and influenced, and taught,.... and I say this especially to our youth, and to you who once were our youth.... I am reminded of something I've seen in the great cathedral of St. Paul's, in London.

Down in the crypt, amongst the ornate tombs of Britain's great heros, there is a plaque that commemorates the architect of that magnificent building, Sir Christopher Wren. It is a simple marble slab, on which there is an inscription written in Latin: “Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice”

Your Latin may be a bit rusty, like mine, so I'll translate that for you .... the inscription says “Reader, if you're seeking his monument, look around you.”

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At 2nd Truro, we always closed our Scout campfires with the singing of TAPS.
I can hear the sweet sounds of Fred's harmonica, accompanying the words:
Day is done; gone the sun;
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well;
Safely rest;
God is nigh.

Quite often, if we were canoe-tripping on a stretch of river where white-water rapids or standing waves threatened, Fred would say, “I'll go first, to check for any dangers.”

Fred has gone ahead now, perhaps to check out the dangers...

Safely rest, Fred.

God is nigh.

We'll catch up to you a little further downstream.