Ron Satterfield, 1921-2016

How often I asserted he was the man for whom the expression ‘salt of the earth’ was coined. He was that rarest of humans: a friend who never, ever disappointed. And now he is gone. Ron Satterfield departed this mortal coil, well into his 96^th year, August 12. His wonderful old heart had skated on thin ice these past few years, yet his demise – imminent and inevitable though it may have been – packs a great wallop.

Our friendship germinated in birding and birds but as the years and decades went by it flourished in diverse soil: nature, history, human folly, the successes and failures of the Blue Jays, a shared antipathy to Stephen Harper.

Ron was a terrific birder and naturalist, someone who knew the wild world and, more important, cared deeply for its welfare. 

He was 60 when our friendship took root. He was an expert birder, I was a Johnny-come-lately who felt he’d wasted his first three decades by not being a birder. He indulged my ardor to tap all I could from his deep well of bird lore. 

Soon enough I was infected by the peculiar madness of the birding Big Day – an all-out effort to list as many species as could be found in a single 24-hour period. For years in the early-mid 1980s, often in the company of Bruce Whittington, Ron and I would head out shortly after midnight on an early May morning to listen for owls then welcome the sunrise at Munn’s Road, counting the singers – warblers, thrushes, sparrows, et al – voicing their joy at the dawn of a new day. 

We got better at it. At first we thought a century – a hundred species – represented a pretty good effort. Not for long: soon the three friends pushed the count to 110, 120. Eventually we counted it a bust if we failed to reach 130 or 135 before the big day was done. I was a hard taskmaster. No breaks were allowed. Lunch was permitted but only on the fly and only after we’d hit a hundred species. Ron was a quarter-century older but he never wilted, never grumbled, never quit. Indeed, years later, after we’d come to our senses and given up the Big Day game, Ron reveled in the memories, made it clear that those times were some of the best of his life.

Though not invested with degree-granting authority I bestowed an honorary doctorate on Ron, often introducing him as ‘Dr. Satterfield’, convinced the award was entirely apt.

He was an identical twin, his brother Harold – ‘Har’ to Ron – the best friend of his life. Each was pretty much a wild child: they spent every available hour outdoors. They were sometimes truant, the classroom never able to match the lure of the fields and waters of Victoria’s Foul Bay and Ross Bay neighbourhoods. 

When the Second World War broke out Har and Ron joined up early. Initially an army man, Ron soon took to the air as a recruit in the CATP, the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Flying Ansons and Cornells he survived a crash; more than a few of his comrades did not.

I loved hearing Ron’s wartime stories. Some of the memories he was least proud of happened to be the very ones I found most endearing. He did not always fit the officers’ template of an ideal airman: he occasionally ‘went over the fence’ for an unauthorized leave in whichever town or city happened to be closest to his base. He was not always the best turned out or most fastidiously shaved of his comrades but at graduation time he finished near the top of his class. Flight-Sergeant Satterfield regretted that he was never shipped across the Atlantic to do his bit for King and Country in the dangerous skies of Europe. He remained in Canada, flew young airmen on training runs, supported the efforts of the CATP. 

When the war was over he returned to Ross Bay, went to work as a carpenter, married a young woman, Joy, he had known her whole life, raised a family of four, found the time to become a master birder.

He never stopped walking. Though his range diminished as he negotiated the years of his tenth decade Ron left his Fairfield home almost every morning, pushed his walker along the margins of Ross Bay, always with binocular in hand. He never stopped taking an inventory of the regular birds he found on the bay and always kept an eye peeled for rarities. He made countless friends, all of whom stopped to exchange pleasantries whenever they were lucky enough to cross his path.

It is trite to say of the passing of a fellow mortal that the world is a poorer place for his parting. In the case of Ron Satterfield the words are no mere reflex. Ron was one of the finest people I ever knew and one of the truest, most loyal of friends. There was no one like him. I will miss him hugely.