Interview with Dad: April 2014
Author’s note: I lost the recording of this interview when I lost an old recorder of mine while working. I thought I had backed it up, but apparently I didn’t. It’s lost forever. I do still have this profile piece I wrote for class at the time and I think I may even have my notes around somewhere. I thought about writing something new for Father’s Day but I am not sure I feel up to it, so here we are. This is written from my perspective three years ago.
In 2013, it was my dad’s 57th year.
That September, I moved into my apartment in Halifax. My parents lived in Bedford, where I’d lived all my life. It was only 20 minutes or so outside of the city, but I managed to convince my parents it was in the best interests of a journalism student to live downtown. My mom and dad came with me to help set up my bedroom, which was bigger than the rooms of my three housemates. My window, though, lacked a curtain — there wasn’t even a place to rest a curtain rod.
“You don’t want some creep looking in on you,” my mom said.
Dad was standing on a chair to screw in the gold-coloured hooks for the rod. Always the handyman. For no apparent reason, Dad suddenly lost his grip on the screwdriver. He mumbled curses as it hit the hardwood floor.
About two months later, he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The ALS Society of Canada defines the illness as “a disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed.” 80 percent of patients will die within five years of diagnosis. Not only is there no cure, but there are also no effective methods of treating the disease.
I can still drink a cup up tea with him, but he needs to sip it from a straw. As he sits his tan-coloured recliner, the only sign of him being sick is the way he moves (or, well… doesn’t move) his fingers. When he walks, though, his hands hang by his sides like two dead weights. But Dad is much more than his illness.
When we begin the interview, he goes into “formal mode.”
“Daddy… you can still talk to me like I’m your daughter,” I say. He lightens up.
My dad is a short man with hair that’s mostly grey now. His eyes are a pale blue-green colour, which I inherited from him. But you need to know the most painful part about my dad being sick. None of us will ever be as good to Dad as I know he’d be to us if we were in that situation. I’ll explain. When my mom was going through chemo the second time, I was 17. Mom didn’t have much of an appetite then. One day, though, she was really craving Dairy Queen ice cream and movie popcorn (yes, specifically from a theatre). Well, there hasn’t been a movie theatre or a Dairy Queen in Bedford for several years. Of course, Dad got in his car and drove to Halifax for both. That’s just who he is.
My father, Ronald Francis Dingwell, was born on June 30, 1957. The hospital in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, was the closest to his childhood home in Stephenville, so that’s where he was born. He was the oldest of three children. When he was five, his father Neil was transferred to work in Goose Bay. Since Neil worked for Air Canada, transfers happened often. The family moved back to Stephenville when Ron was 12.
He doesn’t remember many details about Stephenville, but he does remember the military base. The planes fascinated him and prompted dreams of becoming a pilot. But being a pilot required 20/20 vision — something Dad didn’t have. His eyesight has since been corrected by laser surgery, but that innovation didn’t exist in those days. He realized he had to put that dream to rest.
Dad always had an interest in technology. He liked taking things apart and putting them back together. When he was 12, he put his skills to the test with his parents’ clock radio. They would leave the old radio on all night, and Dad could hear its incessant “hum” from his bedroom two doors down.
One day, he asked his father if he could try to fix the humming radio. His father agreed on the condition it would be put back together. Young Ronnie obliged, and — success! Once he was done with the radio, it no longer hummed. But here’s the catch: it didn’t do anything else, either.
Later in his teen years, Dad made up his mind about his post-secondary education. He studied for one year at the College of Trades and Technology in St. John’s. He completed his second year in Gander, since that particular college would allow him to focus on telecommunications. He graduated in 1976.
Ron met my mother, Doreen Hutchings, in 1982. They were introduced by mutual friends at The Sundance. The Sundance was (and still is) a bar on George Street in St. John’s. It was nicknamed “Some Chance” by the youths who frequented the place — as in; there was “some chance” you’d be taking someone home. As for my mom? No chance! Dad asked for her number at the end of the evening. She responded: “It’s in the book.”
Despite the harsh rebuttal, Ron and Doreen became good friends. They even kept in touch when Ron’s new job with the RCMP transferred him to Halifax, Nova Scotia. When Doreen decided she needed a change from her job at Memorial University, she too moved to Halifax. Their romantic relationship developed and they married in 1989. In 1991, Christopher Dingwell was born. I came along two years later.
Dad’s 35-year career with the RCMP often caused him to be away from his family, but he says it was always an adventure. For him, the most memorable “adventure” was helping out during the Turbot War. Dad says it lead to Canada firing its first shots in anger since the Korean War. A Spanish vessel was illegally fishing off the Grand Banks, and he was sent with the SWAT team to help with their technical abilities. Dad recalls having to change ships while at sea in the middle of the night. It was winter, so the water was icy and the air was freezing cold.
“I think if we had hit a bad wave and I was popped off into the ocean,” he says, “you wouldn’t have seen me until I [washed] up in England.”
“When Dad used to go to these things, he wasn’t allowed to tell me where he was going,” Mom says. “He’d just be gone.”
She says he missed my birthday because of the Turbot dispute. I was 2, so I don’t remember.
My father’s retirement party was a testament to how much everyone loved him. He’d served a long career, and everyone agreed he deserved it.
“If I can grow up to be half the man my dad is, that’s pretty damn good,” Chris said.
Dad enjoyed retirement for four months. Then, the diagnosis came.
There’s an estimated 946,759 people in Nova Scotia. Sixty-five to 85 of them have ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s. Somehow, one of those people is my dad, Ron Dingwell.
These days, he works from home. Dad is helping the province of Nova Scotia with the renewal of the province’s radio system (Dad helped them with the system 15 years ago as well). He uses a headset for his conference calls, which Mom helps him put on his head.
“Not being able to dress myself or, now, effectively feed myself — it’s just daily activities,” Dad says. “I’m disappointed that I can’t to the things I’d like to do; that I’d planned to do.”
