A Tribute to My Father

Celebrating a life well-lived

Hi friends,

It’s been a while since I’ve shared anything here. After establishing a good cadence in the first few months of the year, I fell off the wagon as I focused on other things in work and life that took up all of my bandwidth.

It’s been a big year, and the death of my father in July provided one of the heaviest events of my life so far. His celebration of life was yesterday — Sunday, October 6, 2024 — and I wanted to share my speech with those of you who may have known him, but weren’t able to attend.

A friend recently shared a metaphor with me that grief is not something you get over, but more like a pebble you will carry in your pocket forever. You can pull it out, look at it, touch it, feel its weight, but it always goes back in your pocket, and you carry it with you wherever you go.

While I do hope to establish a regular writing practice again at some point, I’ll continue to be focused on other things in the short term, including grieving the loss of my dad.

Wishing you all the best in the meantime, and please cherish the time you have with your loved ones while you can. Nothing is guaranteed, or forever.

Jamie

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Celebration of Life for J. Michael Knowlton, October 6, 2024.

I’ve been thinking about this speech for a while, ever since my Dad’s cancer returned last spring. Although he was ultimately taken from us far too quickly, in many ways it was a blessing because we knew another ending was not so far away, one that would have been much more painful. Both for him, and for us.

So how do you write a speech about someone you looked up to your whole life? Who was loved and respected by so many? It’s weighed heavily on me these last few months. I don’t know where to start other than from the beginning.

For those who don’t know, my dad was raised in a military family, and he moved around a lot. I don’t think he ever really had a sense of home in the truest sense. He was born in Vancouver, spent parts of his childhood in eastern Canada and at a boarding school in England – where the tapioca pudding left a permanent imprint in his brain about how truly terrible food could taste – and I believe he went to high school somewhere in Calgary. If I’m honest, there were too many places for me to ever fully remember. Looking back though, it’s not shocking when I think about how much my parents have moved around in the last 20 years. If anything, the 15 or so years we spent in our house in Mississauga during the formative years of my childhood were the exception, not the rule, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time. 

I know my dad loved and respected his parents, but I never got the sense that he ever felt as supported by them as he had wished to be. I remember stories he told us about how he had to use thick magazines and elastic bands for shin pads when he played hockey, and I am not sure if his parents ever attended one of his games in any of the sports he played. He was athletic, and smart as a whip – his nickname at some point was Know-it-all-Knowlton – but I always got the sense that he lacked the support he needed, and that left him feeling like a bit of a lone wolf in the world. 

I know this because he told me, but it was also clear through his actions. He was so adamant about always being there for me, Rob, and my Mom. Every practice, every game, every tournament or homework assignment, no matter how monotonous or inconvenient or however many better and more important things he could have been doing with his time. He always showed up for us. He always made sure we had the best equipment too, because he never wanted his boys to lack the tools to do our best and to have the most fun possible, in the way he had to.

After all that, you’d think he would have wanted to spend at least some of his precious time off each year getting away from it all, getting away from us, and having some time to decompress and relax on a beach somewhere with my Mom. I know that’s how I feel a lot of the time as a new parent. But not my dad. As soon as we were old enough, every vacation was an active and adventurous family trip somewhere, often to the mountains to go skiing. Looking back, those are still some of my fondest memories, and will forever be the reason why skiing and the outdoors have always made me feel at home. Instead of the usual arrangement of participant-spectator for all of my and Rob’s soccer and hockey games, it was so fun to be able to do things and share experiences together as a family. I remember how excited my Dad was each year to unveil a new pair of skis from Santa a few days early so we could put them to use on Christmas Day when the snow was falling and the hills were empty. I also remember how proud he was the first time my brother and I were able to navigate the moguls on a steep black diamond run in Utah, hearing the locals hoot and holler from the chairlift as we blazed our ways down the fall line. 

Looking back, these are all things I almost completely took for granted as a kid. It’s just the way it was for us. But it was not normal. It was something special.

After he passed, one of the most common messages I got from the people closest to him was how much they loved and looked up to him because he always put his family first, while still managing such a successful career. He was a mentor to many, always asking about their families, encouraging them to check out a little bit early so they could make it to their son or daughter’s game, practice, recital, or event. He preached what he practiced, and he gave the people he was responsible for space and encouragement to do the same. 

My dad was a man of many talents, too. He loved a home improvement project more than anyone I know. And he loved to build things from scratch. I remember when our cottage on Moon River was just an empty, forested lot. In the fall after we bought it, Rob and I must have been 10 and 12 at the time, and he put us to work, chopping down and delimbing trees to help clear the lot for the builders. We would work all day with our little axes and hatchets while he wielded a chainsaw, and my Mom helped pile up all the small branches and brush left in our wake. And when we were finished, we piled all the wood onto the center of the lot where the building would go, and had a giant bonfire, helped by a healthy dose of gasoline, of course. And yes, someone definitely called the fire department on us! But setting that pile of wood on fire was something I’ll never forget. It was so cathartic after all the hard work we’d done over the previous weeks, and we all watched the flames climb high to signify the start of a new chapter in our lives. In the end, I’m sure it saved us some money to clear that lot ourselves, but I got the feeling he wanted to do it for a different reason. He loved rolling up his sleeves and making things happen. Bringing his visions to life, and sharing experiences with the ones he loved most.

But despite all his successes, like all of us, he had unfulfilled dreams too. About a month before he passed, he told me that if he hadn’t needed to support a family and a mortgage when interest rates were so high, he wished he could have been a homebuilder himself. Using his mind and his hands, to help bring beautiful projects to life. But he didn’t have the financial freedom at the time to make the leap out from under the safety net of a well paying corporate job, and when he finally did, he felt it was too late. In a way, he gave up one of his dreams for us. But he hoped that my brother and I wouldn’t have to do the same.

My Dad was quite stoic, and more often than not, he was a man of few words. He led by example, not bluster. What’s amazing to me though, is when I look back on some of the major decisions of my life, I realize how many of them were shaped by the example he set, without his explicit guidance or instruction. When I decided to put aside a safe and successful career path to travel the world, and start a company, he was behind me all the way. He believed in me like no one else I’ve ever met. Always my number one fan. Always in my corner, 100%.

During those travels almost exactly 10 years ago, I did a powerful journaling exercise. The prompt was to write my own eulogy, assuming I had lived a fulfilling and happy life. The point was to articulate how I wanted to be remembered, so I could get a better sense of what really mattered most to me. Then I was to measure up how I was spending my time, and whether I was moving towards the things that mattered most, or spending time on things that ultimately mattered less.

There are some things you do because they look good on a resume – things you achieved, career successes, money earned, etc. This is where we are likely to spend most of our time, on what you could call resume virtues. But eulogy virtues are something different. Eulogy virtues are about who you are, what type of person you were along the way to all that achievement. Did you make time for the people most important to you? Were you kind? Did you love and were you loved in return? Were you principled and honorable? Did you have integrity, no matter the cost?

As I was preparing for this speech, I looked back on the eulogy I wrote for myself so many years ago. In writing about how I wanted to be remembered, I see now that I essentially described how I remember my Dad. Yes, he built and achieved many great things, and provided for his family beyond what we could have ever hoped. But most importantly he always put us first — my Mom, my brother, and me. He loved us deeply and unconditionally. He taught us right from wrong, and he stuck by his principles even when it cost him. He loved to spend time with us, and he supported us in every step of our lives. 

I feel like I have been the luckiest person alive to have been born as his son. The only way I know how to honor him will be to continue to follow my dreams, but never at the cost of being there for the people most important to me. As a father, husband, son, brother, uncle, friend and mentor, just like he was.

Thank you all for being here, and sharing your love and memories of him with us all. May his impact and legacy echo within all of us, for generations to come.