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Obituaries |
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James Roderick Miles TAIT |
was born on October 23, 1928 |
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Rod Tait passed away peacefully in the arms of his loving wife,
Elrid, in their home in Haines Junction, after a full day of
farming. Rod war a farmer  known for hiss fields of hay, oats,
potatoes and vegetable gardens. He was also a collector of
antique tractors. Rod and Elrid first came to Haines Junction 43
years ago when Rod took on the job as foreman for the
Experimental Farm at mile 1016.
Rod was born and raised in Alberta and had a farm at Lyalta,
near Calgary. He met Elrid in 1948 and was taken by her zest for
life and love of children. They married in 1953, settled on a
farm at Westward Ho and were blessed with five children:
Holly, Vickie, Jamie, Jocelyn and Russel.
The family moved to Haines Junction in 1964. When the
experimental farm closed down in 1976, they chose to remain in
the Yukon and raise their family. They enjoyed the community and
their home was always open to sports teams, girl guides,
sledding students and many friends.
In 1996, Rod and Elrid were honoured to be "Mr. and Mrs. Yukon".
In 2000 Rod was recognized as "Farmer of the Year" by the Yukon
Agricultural Association. He employed many teenagers over the
years in his fields near Haines Junction and passed on his love
of the land.
Rod was a man of wisdom and loved to read. Rod was an honourable
man full of honesty and integrity.
His most important passion was his family. "Grandfather" was
very proud of each of his 12 grandchildren. He will be dearly
missed.
James Roderick Myles Tait was "a two-dollup man."
That's a reference to oatmeal.
But it runs a little deeper.
Tait's son Russel is a shop teacher, who takes his students on
snowmobile trips to Haines Junction.
The kids always spend a
night on the floor of the family farm.
After his dad passed
away earlier this month, Russel got an e-mail from one of these
former students, who's now in his 20s.
The student remembered
Roderick, whom most people called "Rod", holding a sticky spoon
of oatmeal over his bowl and asking, "Are you a one- or two-dollup
man?"
The boy realized the question alluded to more than
just how much oatmeal he could manage.
"To this day, I'm a
two-dollup man," wrote the former student.
Rod
died in his wife's arms on October 15th. He was 79.
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The Haines Junction farmer had been out all day helping a
neighbour bring in the hay. |
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Before dinner Rod turned a few rows in his garden then came and
sat at the dining room table where he collapsed in his wife's
loving arms. |
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He died doing what
he loved and with who he loved, said Russel. |
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Farming and family
were Rod's life. |
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Although he didn't
always know it. |
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Rod, who grew up on
an Alberta farm, had dreams of law school. |
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But his hand were way to big to get into anyone's pockets, joked
family friend Wolf Riedl during his eulogy on Saturday. |
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Rod's law-school dreams were dashed when his father died
prematurely. He was forced to quit school in Grade 12 and take
over the family farm. |
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By the time he was 20. Rod had met the woman of his dreams. Five
years later, he married her. |
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Enid and Rod had
five kids and farmed in Alberta for a decade before Rod got the
itch. |
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Tempted by a foreman position at the Pine Creek Experimental
Farm just west of Haines Junction, he decided to try his luck in
the North. |
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His family joined
him a few months later. |
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"I was three weeks old when we arrived on an old DC3", said
Russel, who's the youngest son. |
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"I came up in a
hammock". |
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After a six-hour
flight, Enid and the kids landed in Whitehorse. |
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It was dark and the
temperature was hovering at minus 53 Celsius. The family still
had to drive three hours on the twisty highway to Haines
Junction. |
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Enid cried and cried
the whole way, said Russel. |
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"But the next
morning when she saw the sun shining on those mountains - she
never shed another tear." |
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Rod's confidence in
farming north of 60 was lost on the federal government. |
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Six years after he
took over the experimental farm, the feds cut funding. Rod went
from 30 farm hands down to one. |
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Although he was
forced to take interim work with Parks Canada and later at the
local weigh scales, Rod never stopped working the fields. |
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During the summer,
he was lucky to get four hours of sleep, and most of it was at
the dinner table, said Riedl in his eulogy. |
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Rod had all this
antique farm equipment, and he used to dig his potatoes by hand,
even though there are machines to it. |
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"I guess he just
didn't want to miss any potatoes and didn't want them damaged."
said Riedl. |
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"And he was a real
source of employment for all the local kids, who got to stook
oats, stack hay and loved driving the machinery. |
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Riedl remembers
moving to the Junction in '77 to become principal of St. Elias
Community School. |
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The houses supplied
for the teachers were new and pretty barren. |
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Rod learned that
Riedl wanted a vegetable garden and was in his backyard digging
in manure one day when Riedl returned from work. |
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The pair became fast
friends and spent weeks hunting in the St. Elias Mountains and
fishing the local lakes. |
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"Rod would take a
wall tent and the kids would come along," said Riedl. |
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And inveterate
walker, Rod would often head into the hills on foot. |
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"Then he'd come back
into town and round up all his friends and family, telling them
he'd found a great place for a picnic." said Riedl. |
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"We'd get way back
there in the bush and there'd be this dead moose at the end -
it'd be his way of getting the moose out." he said with a laugh. |
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Rod loved the
outdoors and instilled the passion in his children. |
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"He was very
conscious of doing things with his kids - you didn't see them in
front of the TV", said Riedl. |
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"And you never saw
him mad. He  was a family man
and a community man." |
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Russel remembers his
dad tapping on the door at 4 a.m., with a whisper - "want to go
fishing?" |
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"You'd leap to your
feet before you even knew you were awake," said Russel, who
remembers hiking in to the end of Kathleen Lake. |
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The family was
always doing things together. |
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One of the more
memorable events is Easter Sunday, which, like the fishing,
starts at 4 a.m. The whole crew jumps on snow machines and rides
to the top of Mt. Decoeli to watch the sunrise. Russel's kids
have been part of that tradition since they were old enough to
bundle up, he said. "It'll even hold more meaning next year,"
added Russel. |
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Rod was famous for
his potatoes and supplied half the town. |
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His passion was
experimenting with agriculture, said Riedl, who remembers
oddities like purple potatoes. |
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And Rod had his
planting system down to a fine science. |
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The seed potatoes are sliced in half, placed cut side down in
the heel depression of his stride, and covered with just enough
dirt to protect them from late frosts, but not so deep the young
shoots had to battle their way to the surface. |
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"His patience and work ethic were inspiring", wrote long-time
friend and farmhand Sean Fry in a letter read at the service. |
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Fry started working for Rod as "a young lad", earning a few
cents a hill for the potatoes he dug. Over the years, Fry's
summer job expanded to include fencing, hay production, root
picking and even cattle tending. |
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Rod taught Fry many
things - how to cook potatoes to perfection in a microwave - how
good a beer left chilling in a mountain stream tastes after a
day of dusty work in the fields - that oatmeal really does stick
to the ribs enough to get a person through a morning of hard
work - and how to butcher animals. |
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"When you butcher a
cow that you've helped calve, named, fed in all manner of
weather and now need to eat, you speak softly to it with great
respect," wrote Fry. |
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From Rod, Fry
learned that at the end of a day of hard work, "you can look
back with a sense of accomplishment and really feel alive." |
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"Rod lived and
savoured these simple pleasures as well as anyone I have met."
Rod was a quiet force that everyone listened to, said Riedl. |
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But he also had a
good sense of humour. |
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One year, Rod came
back from Alberta toting a plywood cut-out of a cow with a
Holstein hide tacked to it. |
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It was supposed to
be a hunting blind, but instead became a Rent-A-Cow. |
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The tattered animal
would appear on front lawns at birthdays, at weddings and even
ended up in a government truck. |
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Renewable Resources
unwittingly left keys in one of its trucks. The vehicle showed
up downtown Haines Junction with Rent-A-Cow in the back. |
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More than 400 people
showed up for Rod's funeral on Saturday, where John Deere
tractors acted as the honour guard. |
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Rod's headstone is
going to be "that damn rock" the size of a truck, that sat in
the middle of one of his fields. The obstruction was always in
Rod's way. |
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"He used to say he
wanted to be buried under the thing," said Russel with a grin.
"So we're going to do it." |
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They just have to figure out how to move the rock first. |
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