Not being able to hold a tune was almost the downfall of what would flourish into a 63-year marriage.
John and Roberta Timoshyk are part of a family legacy of long marriages. One of Roberta’s sisters was married for 75 years; Roberta’s twin sister, Shirley, was married for the better part of 25 years; Michael, one of John and Roberta’s two sons, has been married for 30 years; the other son, Bill, has been married for 24 years; and daughter Tracy has been married for the better part of a quarter century.
Today, Roberta visits her husband every day at 2 pm in Evergreen Extended Care Unit. She often stays into the evening. “He took good care of me and our children,” Roberta said. “Now I’m taking care of him.”
John and Roberta met in 1947 at the Hastings outdoor roller skate park, in Vancouver. John was 18 and Roberta 17. It was the beginning of a dedicated courtship that had a rocky beginning.
“In those days some of us skated with metal wheels and some skated with wood,” Roberta explained. “No matter what the case, you could see John and his buddy coming from a ways off. They were all over the place on those roller skates. You see, they were hockey players. They were both used to skating on ice. Boy, you could sure tell,” she laughed.
“In those days it only cost 25 cents to join Teen-town in North Burnaby,” she explained. “They held dances and there was live music. John gained the courage and asked me to dance, so I obliged. He was such a smart dresser and he poured on the charm like no-one’s business. When we were dancing he’d lean in close to try to sing in my ear. As it turns out he could hold a tune about as well as he could roller skate.
“My girlfriend and I looked out for each other. So I asked her ‘if you see this guy coming, tell me so I don’t have to dance with him.’ Any case, she never did tell me when she saw him coming. And here we are 63 years later. John was really a charmer to me. After a while I decided to overlook the fact he couldn’t hold a note and we started dating.”
At the time, John worked making golf clubs at a small outfit in Vancouver. When that fell through he pulled up his stake and set out for Powell River. As the couple were not yet married, Roberta stayed in Vancouver. John found gainful employment in the bustling MacMillan Bloedel mill, where he worked for 44 years as a machine tender before retiring.
John started frequenting the old Powell River golf course in Townsite when he was in his 20s. “Then he started golfing as well,” Roberta said. “The sports reporter at the time used to call him Dapper John because he always came impeccably dressed. He wound up setting the trends here at the time.”
The two would commute back and forth from Powell River and Vancouver on weekends by private ferry service, using the Gulf Wing or the Gulf Mariner, two ex-Canadian military ships, as transportation. “There were many times I’d thought, after watching everyone come off the boat, that he’d left me high and dry. But then there he was. I tell you, he was no sailor. He was always the last one off, green as could be. Turned out he spent the entire ride feeding the fish.”
It took a push from Roberta for the two to be married. “After we’d been together for three years, and for a good part of it going back and forth, I gave him an ultimatum: marry me or I’d go somewhere else,” Roberta said. “A year later we married and I joined him in Powell River.”
Having worked on golf courses from the time he was 10 years old, John eventually became very good at the sport. He played a lot of tournaments up and down Vancouver Island, and he won a lot of prizes. He won the Malaspina Open on two occasions and won the Club Championship. “Bill Marriette—he used to own a real estate company—wanted to take John to the Bing Crosby open one time,” said Roberta. “For one reason or another it didn’t happen. Who knows if it had happened if things would be different.”
She said that later on John played hockey in the BC Amateur Hockey Association, for Rodmay Regals, at Willingdon Civic Arena. She said they called him “Dirty John” on account of the fact he was a tough player.
“The secret to long marriage? I always let him think he was the boss,” Roberta said, “and in some ways he was. But you know what I mean.”
She added that 40 years of shift work helped, too. “You get to appreciate your time together more,” she said. “It always seems fresh when you’re not in each others’ hair all the time. We always went to bed happy and in a good place. We’d never carry a grudge. He’d give me a kiss goodbye when he went to work and a kiss at night before bed. We’d always work stuff out and we were always respectful to each other.”
When first married, money was a struggle for the couple. “Back then we didn’t have much of anything,” said Roberta. “I was brought up with nothing. My dad was a First World War veteran. We didn’t have a lot of money so we weren’t showered with a lot of things. We didn’t shower our kids with a lot either.”
The family didn’t have a car until John was 40. “We were buying a house at the time,” said Roberta. “We couldn’t afford much else. One time, my son Michael was walking to SuperValu with his dad, and he said, ‘how come we don’t have a car?’ And his dad said ‘it’s because you keep wearing out your shoes.’
“It seems these days people are so quick to want to throw everything away. I can’t say for sure, but these days things come too easy for people. And they don’t truly appreciate what they have,” Roberta confided. “We are privileged to have life so easy now. We need the appreciation to go along with it, I think.
