These are some of the hardest words we have ever had to put together – we have known the Dawe family as neighbours and friends for the last 11 years.
We only met Tony as 1701eh after we had been geocaching for about four months. We had heard that Tony was a geocacher from another neighbour and then put two and two together to know his caching name. One afternoon in March 2004 after a particularly cold and frustrating DNF at POTC Eldorado we arrived on Tony’s doorstep and all blew raspberries at him – when we explained why he had a great laugh and he has been pretty much laughing at our geocaching inadequacies ever since.
One our kids’ favourite caches was the day Tony and Sue called us last December and suggested we all go and do Troglosheep together. That was the Scouter coming out in Tony – he didn’t trust a Beaver leader alone with climbing ropes!
Tony absolutely loved a good puzzle cache and a good joke. On Saturday we had been caching with Sue and Tony in Woodstock and then split up to finish a series. Tony was a step ahead of us and had arranged with some muggles to give us trouble at one stage to slow us down. We arrived at supper to his usual laughter!
We have spent the last two and a half years trying to catch up to Tony, but we never really wanted to. Earlier last week he had presented us with our 2000 Finds Geocoin engraved in recognition of our milestone. He was a very kind and thoughtful friend. We too have had him ask us to call when we arrived safely home from a cache he was concerned that we were doing with the kids.
We have the utmost respect for Tony as a great husband and father who should not have been taken from Sue, Allan, and Becky so soon and as a hiker whose love of the trail benefited all of us in the geocaching community. We will miss him.
Anne, Alex, Philip, and Matthew
Rideau Rangers