Lifelong standard of service

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Fred Walsh pulls out his “Bible” - a two-inch by three-inch daytimer - from the breast pocket under his sweater to check what he’s got on the go this week.

A foot clinic Tuesday, Lodge Wednesday, dinner with his son and family Saturday for a birthday, a Rotary dance....

“Next week, I go away on the day I have my CNIB Kings County advisory board meeting - I won’t make that,” Walsh says.

“I try and get to Evergreen every week and visit. That gives me a lift. I have a whole group down there and they’re an inspiration. And, it gives them a lift - everyone needs it.”

Walsh, 79, of Rockland will miss his regular busy routine this week. He and wife Mary will be guests at Rideau Hall in Ottawa Feb. 22, accepting Walsh’s Order of Canada for voluntary service.

He reads through the page of single-line entries, listing all the organizations and community groups he’s contributed to over the years, that makes up the nomination for this award: it includes agricultural work, education and advocacy groups; community, school and church committees; county council and service time, years with Rotary, Lions, CNIB, 4-H.

“Look at all that! No, don’t write that down, don’t put it in. This is crazy. I’d be embarrassed if you said that.

“They missed one,” he laughs then, describing an agricultural award he once won.

As for the Order of Canada itself, Walsh says it’s more important to be humble: “But there are so many other people who have done so much. I told them, ‘You’ve got the wrong Fred’.”

Setting the standard

Walsh’s award has deep roots.

“As you live life, you meet people who inspire you - not only your parents, but great teachers, people you work with. They were human beings and inspire you always.”

Walsh’s parents worked hard, his father as a Nova Scotian deputy minister of agriculture and his mother bringing up the three boys and serving in the community.

“Father - he wanted us to work. When I was 12, the war was one and I went out and worked summers on farms. I got $2 a week and my board. I had a paper route in the winter, and I’d get up at 5 a.m.

“Mother went to help at the sailors’ canteens, and I remember we’d go around Christmas Day and ask the sailors home for supper.”

Walsh said there was time for Scouting and church, but going away to boarding school in Rothesay for his high school years set another high standard.

“That was great for dressing, discipline, we had chapel every day and twice on Sunday. Manners make the man, and a little spirituality in life is important.

“All through your life, there’s some ultra being watching out for you - I believe that.”

Walsh’s last school summers working farms brought him to the Valley.

“I worked for Irvine and Margaret Turner in Welsford the summers of 1946 and 1947, and I stayed that fall because I’d graduated high school to pick apples. I was so scared - it was a 24-foot ladder and the trees were so tall. I’d only pick a couple bushels a day I was so slow going up and down, and I had to have another fellow help me move the ladder.”

He vowed, if he ever grew apples, he’d only have small trees.

A year on a Quebec farm to learn French, two years at Nova Scotia Agricultural College and another two at McGill’s MacDonald College, and Walsh borrowed the money from his father in 1950 to buy an apple farm in Rockland - Birchleigh, in receivership after the apple market collapsed following the Second World War.

“I paid him back in 10 years - that’s how we were brought up. We had to pay our way.”

His first summer on the farm, 1951, he spent working the land, blasting rocks with dynamite and planting trees. He missed his university graduation, out in the field and orchard instead.

Now with his own farm and settling into the community, Walsh, 22 or so years old, expanded his community involvement.

“We had the Farm Radio Forum, and I organized one here in Rockland, in South Waterville and in Tremont. We’d have all the local farmers and listen to the radio program and then discuss it.”

Those groups led to county agricultural associations and, now, the single federation that represents farmers here today.

He met Mary, a friend of a friend, and they were married in 1954.

“She’s the mother of my family, my best friend, backing me always - and letting me do all these things. But, she does them, too, so it’s shared.”

In 1960, Walsh says Mary really held her own as he recovered from the loss of an eye: he was whitewashing the inside of one of the farm buildings with lime when he met with the serious accident.

With six children and their combined involvements, Walsh says, yes, there were evenings when everyone was home at the same time: “Some.”

He took on roles with co-ops, the credit union, the school board, county council and county committees. He travelled for agricultural study and then spent 22 years with the Department of Agriculture, promoting programs and helping other farmers make advances.

What’s it worth?

Has he ever quit?

“Well, once.”

Walsh was chairman of the county parks and recreation commission, and it was having a summer program and hiring some students to lead it. After sitting through interviews, he recommended the five students he’d hire.

“That wasn’t the way it was going to be, I was told. Politics. I sat there for nothing, so I resigned.”

That’s about the only affiliation Walsh doesn’t have.

“I’ve voted five ways, and I vote for the candidate. I’ve always been apolitical and told people ‘you can’t do it,’ ‘the department will look stupid’ or ‘you’re setting a precedent.’

“There’s a right way, and you have to be squeaky clean.”

What does that get a person in the end?

“Satisfaction,” Walsh says. “I tried to always follow the guidelines as well as I could. You have to have those things.”

In other words, there are still standards in Walsh’s mind. With the Order of Canada, does he think his father would approve.

“Look, come here,” he says.

On the wall is his dad’s Civil Order of the British Empire, signed by King George VI.

“It’s not about what you get - it’s what you give, and then you get back twice as much.

“Our kids are doing it now, and it’s nice to see.”