Previous Page

Next Page

Page 5

offered to the community include hot meals five times a week, adult education classes, food vouchers for area grocery stores, and an Out Of the Cold program.

Judy and John have many interests in common. They’ve been members of the Woodstock Fanshawe Singers for over 20 years. They walk and they cycle. They read avidly and widely, often recommending books to each other.  John keeps fit with curling and swimming. We know that Judy, like her daughter, is an accomplished pianist. They also have shared values - a commitment to peacekeeping (they belong to the Baptist Peace Fellowship), a passion for learning, for ecumenism and for building life-affirming inclusive communities. While the Search Committee works diligently to find a senior minister, our community of faith continues to be enriched by the wisdom, the gentleness and the warmth of Judy and John Furry.

47 Years Later........And They Said It Wouldn’t Last!

Our second love story begins during a tea dance being held in the gym at Northern Secondary School in Toronto in 1956. As usual, the boys lined up with their backs against one side of the gym wall, the girls did the same on the opposite wall. One of the Grade 9 girls, Dawn Crothall by name, expressed dissatisfaction with this state of affairs and, on a friend’s dare, asked a boy from Grade 10 to dance. Although Ted proposed on the third date, it would be four years before they became man and wife. Dawn was taking Commercial courses in high school. Since the age of 12, she=d spent summers and school breaks  helping her aunt who worked in the office of Birks’s Jewellers so when she entered high school, typing and shorthand were a breeze. After she left school, she worked as a stenographer at Birks for a year and then got a job with the Metro Police in Willowdale in the office of a detective-inspector.  Ted took classes in mechanical drafting at Northern. He graduated in 1959, the year that the Avro Arrow was cancelled and too many draftsmen were also looking for work.  Then he decided to join the RCMP until he learned that he couldn’t marry until after his training and Dawn wouldn’t promise to wait for him! This is when he began an apprenticeship at the Toronto Star. He worked in one area or another of the printing business until he retired three years ago.

Dawn and Ted were young and they were poor. They lived in the basement of  a Bathhurst Manor triplex and carried out janitorial tasks in exchange for reduced rent. Many meals were eaten at Dawn’s family home and they’d return to their apartment carrying gifts of milk, eggs, and leftovers from the meal. Eventually they moved to Don Mills and then to West Hill. Two of their children, Heather and Raymond, were born in Toronto. When Ted was laid off from the Star, he moved the family to Mississauga where their third child, Greg was born. When asked the question, “Of what are you most proud ?”, they answered without hesitation, “Our children. They are good people....good citizens.”  The Yarkers are now proud grandparents of Christopher (21), Kyle (19) and Kaylee (15).

During her growing-up years, her Anglican church was the hub of Dawn’s social life as she belonged to Brownies, Girl guides, CGIT, Sunday School and the choir. When she and Ted met, they threw their energies into the programs offered at St. George’s Anglican. Ted can hardly remember a time when he wasn’t involved in the Scouting movement. He has the distinction of being the youngest Scout (he was 12) to attend the Boy Scout Jamboree in England in 1953. When they moved to Mississauga, they