Ernest Clifford Stevens
born: September 14, 1924, Sidney, Manitoba
died: March 24, 2009, Virden, Manitoba
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ALBUM: Ernest Clifford Stevens
1924, Sidney, Manitoba. Hazel attends to two-week old Ernie as another brother looks on.
Hazel Stevens with the first four Stevens brothers, around 1925. Ernie is the baby.
Ernie with his father Fred Stevens, March 1942
Hazel and her brother Ernie Stevens, October 1942
L-R: Ernie, wife Bertha, daughters Brenda and Kathy, and Ernie's mother Zelma Stevens
Front left: Bertha (Clark) Stevens
Back, L-R: Bertha's husband Ernie Stevens, Gertie (McKay) and husband Charlie Stevens, Ben Thiessen and wife Glenda Stevens (Charlie's daughter)
L-R: Charlie, his brother Ernie, Murray and Hazel (Stevens) Fraser, Jim Burrows (Alice Hood's husband)
L-R: Ernie, Charlie, and Albert Stevens
L-R: Ernie, Edmund and Wes Stevens
Ernie (L) with sister Hazel and brother Charlie
Wes Stevens with brother Ernie
October, 1989 at Hazel's funeral:
L-R: Edmund, Charlie, Ernie and Wes Stevens
OBITUARY
EULOGY
A Life Remembered
The sudden death of Ernie Stevens has gathered us together this day. We gather because we share the sense of loss that comes when someone who has shared our lives is with us no longer. Each of us has known Ernie in our own unique way ... as father, father-in-law, grandpa, brother, brother-in-law, uncle, neighbor, mentor, coffee shop companion and friend. We gather to share stories of him … to remember him … to honour the impact that his life has had on ours. We know that the place which Ernie held in our lives can never be filled. We trust that in time healing will come, and that memories will help to soften the wounds of our loss.
Our relationship with Ernie does not end at death, even though he is no longer physically present with us. Something of his spirit lives on in our lives. The force which animates this continuing relationship is the love and affection that bound Ernie’s life to ours. The gifts and blessings of Ernie’s life are interfused with ours, blended with mind and memory, joined to our souls. Someone once said that, “the dead are not dead if we have loved them truly. In our own lives we give the immortality.” So we gather to hear the story of Ernie’s life, and to give thanks for those gifts of his which will never die … his legacy … which lives on through those who loved him and were loved by him.
Ernest Clifford Stevens was born on September 14, 1924, the fourth child of six, born to Zelma and Frederick Guise Stevens. He was born in Sidney, Manitoba, and spent his childhood in La Riviere and Roseisle. All the Stevens siblings shared a creative, inventive nature, and Ernie was no exception. As a boy he developed what was to be a lifelong friendship with Clifford McPherson, the son of his mother’s best friend. The two boys shared a love of all things electronic and mechanical.
Mrs. McPherson paid tribute to her dear friend Zelma by naming her son Clifford after Ernie, and giving her daughter the name Zelma. From the age of 11 onward, Ernie grew up in a home without his mother. He learned how to cope in the kitchen, making some special food requests for his dad and older siblings. He did enjoy spending time at the McPhersons where he had some fine meals after doing chores there … cutting wood with Clifford, and spending time talking about their latest electronic projects.
Ernie was very inquisitive by nature … he was always curious to find out how things worked. While still in school, using the tools from his dad’s workshop, he made a small gas-powered piston engine, which his teacher encouraged him to enter in the local fair. He won first prize for his entry … a one-dollar bill!
He fashioned a square gas tank and V pulley from a round jam pail, and used parts of a washing machine motor to power his bicycle … and so he had his own unique moped to climb the hills around Roseisle. Using the Radio Amateur’s Handbook as a guide, he built a small battery-powered radio.
Ernie was conservative by nature – one of the original recyclers. “Waste not, want not” was the motto by which he lived. If Ernie needed a washer for a bolt, he would fashion his own.
In wartime, Ernie joined up, but wasn’t accepted by the army because of a leg injury he’d sustained on his bike. A truck had hit him and thrown him into a barbed wire fence in the ditch. He almost lost his leg as a result, and developed a lifelong dislike of hospitals and doctors due to the lengthy stay in hospital. He was grateful, however, to the young doctor who convinced the other doctor that the leg could be saved.
The army wouldn’t take him, but the air force did, and from 1942 until 1945, he served at Eastend, Saskatchewan, doing mostly office work … and peeling potatoes. Towards the end of the war, Ernie’s brother got him a job at a welding shop in Winnipeg. From there he worked for an electrician in Pilot Mound, wiring farmhouses for rural electrification.
In 1958, Kathy was welcomed into the family. Kathy and Brenda grew up in a home where their Dad was always busy in his basement workshop, inventing things, building things, repairing and improving things. His work was also his hobby. Ernie was a man of great patience. When the noise coming from the basement proved to be interfering with the girls’ TV watching, their shouting down the register, or thumping on the floor to get their dad’s attention usually resulted in his stopping his work to accommodate them. He’d come up for air, now and again.
Ernie’s electronics and mechanical projects were amazing. He made his own 2-way radios for the house and the car, an intercom system, several metal detectors, and a simple hearing aid with a transistor radio earpiece. He also figured out a way to make an amplification device to help those hard of hearing at The Sherwood enjoy their TV watching. With parts ordered from an electronics company he made his own laser bean, and delighted in showing Kathy the little red light shining on the chest freezer in the basement. He modified his bicycle so the pedals moved up and down instead of around in a circle. His modifications to the family car caused Bertha some trepidation. She was sure that his tinkering with the ignition and carburetor might have disastrous results.
He loved to spend time with friends who knew how to talk “electronic-ese” and had loads of patience for young chaps such as Keith Lobel who was interested in learning more about electronics. He enjoyed sharing his knowledge and his projects with his friends, and he loved to pore over diagrams filled with electronic “hieroglyphics.” He had great respect for those he worked for, and with … and enjoyed trips away on courses to learn more about the Zenith and Sylvania TVs that he worked on.
Brenda and Kathy fondly remember fishing trips with their dad to the river and roasting wieners on the riverbank; stops at the Creemee for ice cream and popsicles; picking berries; and rides out to the Assiniboine Valley and the “Million Dollar Bridge” at the Eternal Springs. They remember the extra loud lawnmower Ernie used, and the relief when the motor finally shut down. They remember their dad spraying down the house to cool it on hot summer nights. There were holiday trips and many car trips to visit relatives and friends. They noted how their Dad had a soft spot in his heart for their pets, although he wouldn’t be caught showing it.
Ernie retired at age 65 … but continued with his various projects. The timing was probably right for him, since the tendency was growing to simply throw things out when they didn’t work. Ernie could never understand why you wouldn’t fix something if you could.
He was famous for his one-day trips … away and back home in his own bed that same night. He enjoyed attending the Threshermen’s Reunion with his brother Wes, or Charlie, brother-in-law Murray, or his “electronics” friends, and he took great interest in the farm machinery and the way it worked.
He and Wes made several trips to explore the hills around Roseisle, hunting for the remains of their old house and stopping by to visit his childhood friend, Cliff McPherson, and working in a visit with brother Charlie at Carman.
In 2004, at the age of 79, Ernie underwent heart bypass surgery, and although he didn’t give up his routine, he lost interest in his workshop. He took up an interest in reading and movie watching, and preferred true stories such as “Paddle to the Amazon” and some of the Reader’s Digest stories. He especially liked the movie, The World’s Fastest Indian. The title referred to an Indian motorcycle. Erie had owned an Indian motorcycle at one point in his life, and he could identify with the Anthony Hopkins character in the movie, Bert Munroe, who worked at modifying his motorcycle to improve its speed and set land speed records at the Bonneville salt flats.
Ernie was an independent man, never wanting to put anyone out. He learned how to cope with the household and laundry after Bertha died in 1997. He enjoyed coming to Kathy and Dale’s for Sunday supper, and returning home with leftovers for the week. He always waited to be invited; he never just dropped by. He didn’t like to impose, and for him it was important to know one’s place.
Ernie was a regular at the Chicken Chef two or three times a day, but for Ernie it was always tea, never coffee. It is said that Ernie spent more money on tea there than anyone else before or since. He was always glad to meet his buddies there, and to visit with the former Greyhound bus drivers (from the days when Cook’s Electric received parts delivered by bus). You could tell time by Ernie … he would be there promptly at 9:00 and 3:00. The joke was that if he didn’t show up at his regular times you knew something must be wrong. On the 24th of March, Ernie didn’t show up … he had died suddenly in his home. He left this life the way he would have preferred, quietly and at home. He was 84.
Ernie was predeceased by his parents, his wife Bertha, his three brothers Ed, Charlie and Wes, and his sister Hazel Fraser. He leaves to mourn, his daughter Brenda Heywood, his daughter Kathy and his son-in-law Dale Heaman, his grandson Jason, his brother-in-law Murray Fraser, his sister-in-law Dorothea Stevens, his brother Albert and sister-in-law Grace, and many nieces and nephews. Ernie will be greatly missed.
As people of faith we believe that just as Ernie’s life is a gift from God, so the gifts that he leaves us enrich our lives and our memories. In some way unknown to us, Ernie’s life remains in connection and continuity with those who have gone before and those who remain. Knowing this, we can bid Ernie farewell with grateful hearts, confident that nothing can destroy the good that has been given through Ernie’s life. He leaves a legacy of honesty, respect for others, resourcefulness, curiosity, creativity and inventiveness. With thankful hearts, assured that the Holy One has welcomed Ernie into God’s deeper presence … and assured also that God holds those who remain in tender care … we can say … Thanks be to God for Ernie. Thanks be to God for a life lived with quiet patience and ingenuity.
The rose statue in Roseisle was conceived, designed and built by Ernie's friend Clifford McPherson, and painted by local artist Stephen Jackson. It was unveiled in 1980.
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