Walter Francis Edwards was born on September 6, 1913 and passed away on February 28, 2007.
Walter grew up with his mother Rose, his grandmother Annie Beck and brother Ernie in Vancouver, B.C. while his father Walter Kendrick Edwards served overseas.
After the war, the family lived in Vancouver, then Penticton, and by 1919 at Robin’s Range near Kamloops. On Armistice Day, 1924, his father died and the family moved to Burnaby.
Walter attended Nelson Avenue School, and in 1928-29 Vancouver Technical School.
He was a grain messenger at Pier D in Vancouver, biking up and down the waterfront to Second Narrows and the Marine Building. A better paying job came next: repairing, moving and loading 60-pound grain doors into the boxcars. Each car held 360 doors. Fun, for 35 cents an hour, and when wages were cut ten percent, he quit.
1932 found Rose, Ernie and Walter at Dugan Lake, near Williams Lake and in 1934 at Kersley. In 1936, Walter took up mining with Julius Powell at Coulter Creek, and in 1938 with W.H. Hong.
In 1940, Walter bought the Kersley farm from Bob and Jane Barlow. His mother and brother looked after the farm while he was in the RCAF 1942-1946.
Ernie got married and moved. Walter returned to farming seed potatoes and a dairy herd.
Walter married Betty Helsdon in 1953 and began his family.
In 1961, the dairy cows were replaced by beef. In 1984, he earned his private pilot’s licence with Richard Inglis and bought his Cessna 150, CF YKV. At 84, he decided that the skies were in danger and sold his plane. Badminton, golfing and dancing became his pastimes.
He is lovingly remembered by his wife Betty, his children: Ken Edwards and wife Vivian and daughters Megan and Caitlin; Jenny Wolpert and husband Clancy, sons Christopher and Elden, and granddaughter Julia; Jim Edwards and daughter Felecia; Bob Edwards and son Michael; and Dolly Gilson and husband Brian and daughters Chelsea, Danielle and Kim.
Walter has flown away beyond flood, hard work and aging. He always loved to fly.