CARTER, FREDERICK CHARLES Fred passed away peacefully on March 27, 2019, in Peterborough, ON.
Born to Charles Augustus Carter and Mary Anne Moore on June 19, 1924 in the front room of the family home in the Junction area of Toronto, Fred was an only child. He lived in the High Park area until retirement and then lived mostly at the family cottage at Belmont Lake, Ontario. His father was a businessman and a well-known musician and founder of the Toronto Kiwanis Club and his mother was a very strong influence in his early life.
He was an athletic, shy, active boy who attended Western Technical and grew up into a charming and engaging character. He first travelled to Belmont Lake at the age of 4, fostering an abiding love for the region and for fishing and boating. Unfortunately, he lost his mother to heart failure when in grade 10. He graduated from the University of Toronto in Engineering, having scraped through high school by the grace of a benevolent teacher who made sure he passed French, which was essential. He had an abiding fascination with mechanical and electrical devices and initially sold transformers for Maloney Electric. He met our mother Margaret Carter (no relation) through dancing and they married in 1950. His father passed away in 1957. Fred went back to school in 1963 to obtain a BEd and became a physics, chemistry and math teacher (Langstaff, Parkdale, Northern Secondary and then Jarvis Collegiate). Fred loved his interactions with students and teaching was a rewarding experience. He enjoyed mentoring students with aptitude and interest and particularly liked to drop puns and exclamations that were archaic and obscure and then debate whether such words actually existed. Genuinely a genius, he had an encyclopedic memory for details and formulas, loved his slide rule and even in the last few years of his life continued to provide “advice” i.e. solutions to students struggling with physics and math.
Fred greatly enjoyed music, boating of any kind, playing bridge, folk dancing and lively pursuits. He was a tinkerer and could fix anything (always the first option, no matter how broken), but endlessly frustrating to his wife because if something was back to the point of working, then it was unnecessary effort to put things completely back together. He liked to take the Rube Goldberg approach to plumbing and function was always more important than form. A true child of the depression, he felt every dollar in his personal spending, but was genuinely and spontaneously generous to others in need. He was a kindly soul and utterly dedicated to his family. He and Margaret were inseparable and they enjoyed a wide circle of friends and relationships. Our father keenly felt loneliness and separation after our mom passed away late in 2017.
Our family particularly appreciates the support and friendship many people provided to our parents in their advancing years, particularly the Tuckers and Masons at Belmont Lake and the fantastic staff at Fairhaven.
Fred will be greatly missed by his children Charlie, Ron (Ludmela), Margaret and Les (Eileen), grandchildren Veronica (Brad), Tim (Anja), Emily, Stephanie (Dave), Dylan (Rachael) and Keegan (Asunta), and great-grandchildren Aleksandar, Lydia and Petra.
In lieu of flowers, donations to the Fairhaven Foundation or the Five Counties Children’s Centre of Peterborough would be appreciated.
Visitation will be at BRETT FUNERAL CHAPEL, HAVELOCK, on Thursday, April 4th from 7 to 9 p.m., with the funeral service on Friday, April 5th at 2 p.m. and reception to follow; for further details see www.brettfuneralchapels.com