Meet my friend Ray

Ray Fletcher and I go back a long way, to the winter of 1983. We had both gone north to the Anglican Diocese of Yukon, Ray as a parish priest first in Atlin and later Dawson City. I arrived to join the Yukon Apostolate, an informal order of laity keen to serve the Church in the North, looking for adventure. I started off in Whitehorse before moving down to Fort Nelson in the British Columbia northeast corner.

Our paths were as unusual as we were eccentric. Growing up in the shadow of Addington Palace in Croydon, once the summer home of Archbishops and later the home of the Royal School of Church Music, Ray grew up as a chorister in the Church of England. He remembers “those early days of being a choir boy. Rehearsing three times weekly we would attend  Church for both ‘high matins,’ sung Morning Prayer, and Evensong. Those were the days, back then, when Holy Communion was celebrated as an early morning Sunday service and not the main focus of the day.’”

He recalls one morning sitting in the nave of Ely Cathedral hearing a voice calling him to some kind of ministry leadership. Remember Isaiah 6:8? “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” The Lord just didn’t say where at that point.

His search continued, to Canada, eventually to a time with the Canadian House of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE). Further travel and investigation led him to the Carcross Community School in the Diocese of Yukon, Both were tests of vocation in search of community. Invited by his mentor, Bishop John Timothy Frame (he often includes the bishop’s middle name) to attend theological school at the Vancouver School of Theology he met his future bride, Marilyn in the school refectory.

Following ordination, he served in the Yukon parishes of Atlin and Dawson City. Dawson was a tough assignment. A community built on Gold Rush greed, the place of sudden wealth or broken dreams, the domicile of Pierre Berton and Robert Service, of Diamond Tooth Gerties and the world’s largest earth dredge, I remember a trip I made there prior to my return south in the early summer of 1984.

I stayed in the rectory with a busy family of three: Ray, Marilyn, and Christopher. (Paul would later join later.) They took me up on the Dome on the longest day or the year; apparently I burst out laughing, obviously overcome by the miracle of the midnight moment. One day, Ray asked if I wanted to come over to Eagle, Alaska, over the Top of the World Highway? Of course I said YES. Space will not allow for a full travelogue but it became one of the great journeys of my life.

Northern people are amazing. Residents live north for many reasons: Some just don’t fit well down south; some, like me seek adventure; many are captivated by what the pianist Glen Gould called the “Idea of North.” During our recent online chat we recalled a dear friend to us both, who died some years ago at eighty-four, the Rev. John Waddington Feather. An English sixth-form (high school) English teacher he came to the Yukon seeking an experience of the Canadian Wilderness —  he had family connection to Mount Waddington no less — that would be the setting for a series of children’s books he was writing. An obituary in the Keighly News notes: “When he qualified as an Anglican non-stipendiary priest he took on a temporary ministry in the Yukon, visiting some of his congregations by canoe and flying-boat.”

John was a true swashbuckler. During the years of his military service he dropped by parachute into Suez during the 1956 crisis, as he said “to keep an eye on the French” as part of a special operations unit. During his teaching years he was priest-visitor to death-row inmates at Shrewsbury prison. A traditional liturgical churchman at heart, he told how he would burst into charismatic tongues prior to entering the cells of capital offenders. (What does one say?) As with many in the Yukon, possibly including Ray and me, we was an inspirational, complex, and interesting character.

Ray subsequently followed me down to Vancouver Island and to Victoria. During that time his lovely nursing instructor wife, Marilyn died of cancer. I remember the service well; seeing Ray and his two sons come to mourn their wife and mother was sobering and profound. I remember especially the music — not the traditional “Abide with me” mix of sadness,  but Epiphany hymns celebrating love amidst sadness. It changed my approach to funeral music going forward. When I asked Ray about single-parenting he simply replied: “it was hard; very, very hard.” I am sure it was.

Ray has now returned to northern BC, first to Burns Lake, later to Telkwa just outside of Smithers. I doubt our paths will cross again; Kathie and I don’t drive long distances, and at eighty-four I think his big travel days are done. That said, my word we had a fun ninety minute visit online and will do so again. The “miracle of modern technology” as some say.

We aren’t done yet. During last week’s visit we laughed; we told endless stories; we  surprised each other — I told him I had a new mother who he knows, Marion Carroll (who is next in line for this series BTW). So many people we have known and loved; places we have been; music and the arts; the church (warts and all); piety, and Ray’s beloved Canterbury Cathedral, the cathedral church of his childhood, a space to which we both return online, for Ray, a daily devotion. We have both benefited from the ministry of the late Robert Willis, and the present dean, David Monteith, both great men, excellent leaders, articulate, courageous, faithful individuals.

Ray is a churchman through and through. Some might find such a voyage restrictive or even boring. The truth is that the church is the place where we have met interesting people, those with whom we have both shared, learned, and worked alongside. Even today, in our mucked up, mashed up church, I find brilliance, courage, compassion, resilience, and grit amongst a myriad of characters, people just like Ray. Thanks Ray for great adventures, stories, and for our next conversation.

Ken

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