Reggie and our father had a complicated relationship. They could be in serious conflict, particularly as Reggie’s drug use and the problems surrounding it became worse.

But there was another side to their relationship that is just as important.

When Reggie was in trouble, he repeatedly turned back to Dad. Whatever disagreements existed between them, Reggie knew that his father would be there and that our parents’ home remained a place where he could find safety, support and another chance.

I don’t have any writing from Reggie specifically describing his relationship with Dad. Rather than try to speak for him, what follows is a profile of our father and, in large part, the eulogy I wrote after his death in 2023.

Our Father

My brothers and I were very lucky to grow up in a stable and supportive home. Our parents instilled in us several core values: good manners, honesty, a sense of right and wrong, helping others, and the value of education.

Our father was a potato farmer, but lobster fishing was his passion. He fished his first trap when he was only nine or ten years old. Years of fishing gave him massive forearms. When my wife Lisa first met him, one of the first things she noticed was what she called his “Popeye arms — just like the sailor.”

Dad was tough, but he was also a kind and compassionate man.

His own father had beaten him when he was young, and Dad vowed that he would never treat his own children that way. I never once saw him become violent with anyone, even when violence was directed at him.

One night a local man who held a grudge came to our house and sucker-punched Dad, destroying his eardrum. Dad could have had him charged, but he knew what that might do to the man’s family. He chose to forgive him instead.

That was Dad.

A Life of Adventure

Dad wasn’t someone you would necessarily have looked at later in life and imagined as an adventurer.

But at seventeen years old, he joined the crew of the Theron, the supply ship for the 1957 Trans-Antarctic Expedition. That journey took a young man from Prince Edward Island to places most Islanders of his generation could only have imagined.

[The video is the official restored video on the expedition. Some interesting tidbits about this movie. The father of a fellow that Reggie and I knew very well at Saint Mary’s University is the first man shown in the video, Ralph Lenton, he was the radio operator. By chance, I saw his son at a Homecoming a year or two after I had graduated, and he happened to be wearing a sweatshirt that said, Shackleton Station, Antarctica. I said to him, “my father was there’, he said, “so was mine”, and we talked and discovered that they were on the same ship! Isn’t that amazing, I had known this guy for over 5 years and because of a chance meeting, we discovered this connection. Tony and I restored the first version of this film that went on Youtube, in 2004. Thankfully, it has been beautifully restored and colorized.

My father can be seen briefly in the King Neptune ceremony that is held when a crew member goes over the equator the first time.]

He travelled through London, the Cape Verde Islands, Uruguay and South Georgia before reaching Antarctica, where the ship spent about thirty days trapped in the ice.

Dad took photographs throughout the expedition and created an album that he later took to the local high school to share his experiences with students. His adventure fascinated me as a child, and it still does. His willingness to take that enormous risk at seventeen helped inspire my own desire to travel and see the world.

He was also mischievous.

Dad had helped load the ship’s supplies and had access to the stores. At one point, he and another Islander on the crew, Kimball Jarvis, managed to convince the captain that some of the ship’s beer had frozen and gone “skunky.”

They generously volunteered to dispose of it.

Instead, they stocked their cabin with as much of it as they could hide.

It was a funny story that Dad enjoyed telling.

It also takes on a different meaning when viewed against what happened later in his life.

Dad’s Own Battle With Addiction

Dad loved to drink.

Eventually he moved from beer to hard liquor, and by around 1980 he had reached the point where he was drinking a quart or more a day.

My mother and others staged what I have always described as a PEI-style intervention, and Dad was sent to a treatment facility in the United States for almost two months.

He never drank again.

By the time he died in 2023, Dad had been sober for 43 years.

Being an “AA guy” became an important part of the rest of his life.

He spoke at meetings. When he visited me in California, we would find a local AA meeting where he could speak. He helped many people struggling with alcohol and addiction, and helping people who were going through difficult times was simply part of who he was.

That makes what happened with Reggie particularly difficult to understand.

Trying to Help His Son

Dad understood addiction in a way that many parents never could.

He had been there himself.

He knew what it was like to lose control of alcohol. He knew what it was like to reach the bottom. He knew treatment. He understood AA. And he knew that recovery was possible because he had lived it himself for decades.

Then his son became addicted to heroin.

Dad tried to help Reggie, just as he had helped many other people.

But helping his own son through heroin addiction was very different from helping someone at an AA meeting. Dad had experience to offer, but he couldn’t control the forces affecting Reggie’s life or make Reggie’s choices for him.

That doesn’t mean Dad gave up on him. He supported Reggie to the end.

Their relationship was not always easy. Reggie’s addiction, his choices and the crises that followed created plenty of conflict between them.

Yet when things went badly, Reggie repeatedly came back to Dad.

Whatever argument they might have had, whatever disappointment or frustration existed between them, I believe Reggie knew something fundamental: his father would still be there.

Dad might not approve of what Reggie had done. He might tell him so. But Reggie knew he still had somewhere to go where he would be safe, loved and supported.

Looking back, I think there is an important distinction between their two stories.

Dad’s recovery could easily tempt us to ask why, if he could stop drinking and remain sober for 43 years, Reggie couldn’t do the same thing with drugs.

I don’t think that would be fair to either of them.

Their addictions, circumstances and lives were different. Reggie repeatedly tried to stop using drugs and went through periods of treatment and sobriety. But heroin, other drugs, mental-health problems, his criminal record and everything else happening in his life created a very different path.

Dad could offer Reggie his experience, his support and his love.

He couldn’t recover for him.

When Reggie Disappeared

On a cold night in December 2005, Reggie drove away and was never seen alive again.

About six months later, his car and partial remains were found in a woodlot on Bull Creek Road.

How Dad held himself together during those months, I still cannot comprehend.

But he did.

My mother was devastated, and Dad remained strong for her.

Dad had already survived his own addiction. He would later survive Stage 4 cancer and serious heart disease. But losing a child was something else entirely.

One of the things Dad often told people going through seemingly impossible challenges was:

“If you give up you’re done. You have to have the will to keep fighting and want to live.”

That was how he lived his own life.

Reggie’s Story Became Another Way to Help

After Reggie’s death, I created mereggie.com to preserve his writings and thoughts and to tell the story of his addiction, court cases, disappearance and the search for him.

Dad was very proud of the website.

Over the years, people dealing with addiction themselves—or struggling with addiction in their families—contacted us after finding Reggie’s story.

Dad enjoyed talking to them.

In a way, something remarkable had happened.

His own alcoholism had led him into recovery. Recovery led him to AA. AA led him to help other people. He tried to use that experience to help his own son, but ultimately could not save him.

After Reggie was gone, Reggie’s story gave Dad another way to continue helping people.

Helping others is one of the things that impressed me most about my father’s life.

Never Give Up

Dad faced an extraordinary number of challenges during his lifetime.

He survived alcoholism.

He survived accidents at sea, including being thrown overboard into freezing water.

He survived Stage 4 colorectal cancer after a year of gruelling radiation and chemotherapy.

He developed serious heart disease and congestive heart failure.

And he survived the disappearance and death of his son.

Through all of it, somehow, he kept going.

One of my favourite memories of Dad came much later.

For my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary, we took them to Iceland and drove around the entire island. Dad loved the fishing communities. Everywhere we went, he inspected the boats and talked to whatever local fishermen he could find.

Before we left Iceland, we spent a few hours at the Blue Lagoon.

Dad got into the naturally heated water and lay back.

He normally had a serious expression on his face, but I had never seen such a look of pure bliss.

He was in another world.

When I wrote his eulogy after he died in 2023, I found myself thinking about that moment.

I hoped he had found that same kind of peace again—this time with Reggie and all the family and friends who had gone before him.

Cheers, Dad!