One of the people who was pivotal in the formation of the Barrie Food Bank will mark a century on Thursday.
“It’s a birthday,” Bill Friend said nonchalantly during an hour-long interview with BarrieToday, Wednesday at the IOOF seniors complex on Brooks Street. “I was a war baby, from the First World War.”
Approaching 100 years old isn’t something he has dwelled on as the big day nears.
“It never bothered me,” said the easy-going and spry Barrie resident. “I went to work at 16, my brother was out of work and my mother was a war widow.”
There’s no magic elixir, however.
“I’m just taking it easy these days,” he said.
Friend isn’t sure what’s in store for him tomorrow as he officially becomes a centenarian.
“I think my son has something up his sleeve, but I keep my nose out of it,” he said.
William Frederick Friend was born in England on July 26, 1918, in the village of Westerham, Kent.
His father, a private in the Canadian Army Service Corps, was killed in France in October 1918, just weeks before the war ended, leaving Friend to grow up without a dad.
“I never saw him and he never saw me,” Friend said. “I was only a baby when he died.”
When Friend was five years old, his mother, Florence, moved the family, including his brother who was 12 years his senior, to Canada via the Port of New York. Friend can recall some of the voyage across the rough seas of the North Atlantic, but only vaguely.
“Mother had nobody out here,” Friend said with a vigor and recall that belies his age. “Mother was quite English, of course. She was stern and manners mattered to her.”
Growing up in east-end Toronto, Friend remembers her running a rooming house in the 1920s at 459 Shaw St., an address he pulls from memory after a brief pause.
One of his earliest memories dates back more than nine decades.
“I remember we had some pictures taken with one of those ponies,” Friend said with a chuckle. “It’s somewhere here, buried in my stuff in one of these damn files. That’s the early ’20s.”
Friend said his mother drew a war widows pension of $60 a month plus an additional $15 monthly baby bonus.
“Then she took sick,” he said. “She wasn’t very well.”
Friend excelled in school and was an honour student, but that all changed when the economy tanked and the Great Depression struck with a vengeance.
At the age of 16, he went to work as an office boy in the mailroom at General Steel Wares to help support his family, according to a biographical sketch compiled by his son, David, for the Barrie Kiwanis Club.
“I had to go to work. It was very competitive, as there was a lot of unemployment,” he said. “With my dad being killed in the war, I learned that I had to stand on my own two feet.”
Friend took night courses, through the University of Western Ontario, learning to type, do shorthand and some accounting. Those skills came in handy to keep him employed during some lean years, as well as later on when he served in the Canadian military.
In his early 20s, Friend joined the Army Reserve before soon being placed into active duty.
In 1941, he shipped out to England.
Not long after arriving in Europe, Friend became ill and was assigned to headquarters where he put his typing and shorthand skills to good use, supervising a group of clerks involved with reinforcement units.
In 1946, Bill returned to Canada and civilian life.
At age 28, he returned to work at General Steel Wares in its purchasing department. While making a call to a supplier, he was attracted to a voice on the other end of the line. He suggested they go on a date and Betty Lancaster obliged.
They met for the first time in the King Edward Hotel’s lobby.
He proposed to Betty on Valentine’s Day, 1954.
The couple moved to Guelph in 1958 and soon welcomed son David into their lives.
After five years in Guelph, the family moved to Gravenhurst where Friend had accepted a job as a purchasing agent at Rubberset.
“I answered the ad and thought it was in Barrie,” he said with a big grin at the thought. “It was a division of Sherwin-Williams, you know, the paint people? There had to be a couple hundred employees there. They must’ve made a million wooden handles there for paint brushes.”
Friend and Betty built a house just outside of town, a painting of which he had commissioned for their 20th wedding anniversary and which still hangs on his wall.
They quickly became involved in their new community, including the Anglican Church. Friend was twice elected to the board of education, including as its chairman, and also served on the town’s planning committee.
Friend retired from Rubberset in 1983. David was off to university, so he and Betty sold their home and made the trek south to Barrie.
“It was halfway between Muskoka and Toronto,” he said. “It was a nice place and my wife liked it. It’s a lot different now, almost cosmopolitan.”
Friend worked part-time as a clerk in the courts, while also spending a lot of time working in his garden. He was also a Kiwanis Club member.
“I worked during the day and went to meetings at night,” Friend said.
In 1984, Friend was also one of the founders of the Community Food Foundation, precursor to the Barrie Food Bank. For his community service, he was presented with the Ralph Snelgrove Award in 1988.
The Barrie Food Bank’s humble beginnings came when a group of local churches, which all ran their own food banks (including the Deacon’s Cupboard at Trinity Anglican Church in downtown Barrie) decided to join together.
“The food bank as you know it today is an amalgamation of all the churches. We all had food banks and people were -- how should I put this? -- freeloading by going from one to the other,” Friend said.
Officials from the various churches decided to meet.
“I opened my big mouth at the first meeting,” Friend said with a hearty laugh. “I made a suggestion and apparently it was acted upon and the next thing you know, I’m chairing it and looking after the whole organization.”
Delegating tasks to those involved with the food bank in its nascent days was what made it successful, he said.
“We started out small in a church basement and then it just got bigger and bigger,” Friend said.
“I really enjoyed it, actually, but it’s a lot different now,” he added. “The food bank was a big part of my life.”
Gradually, the food bank set up shop in a storefront location thanks to a “nice donation” from Ralph Snelgrove, who founded CKVR-TV in Barrie.
Friend also later worked with Bruce Owen when he served as the local MPP in the riding then known as Simcoe Centre, from 1987 until 1990.
“I guess you could say I was his right-hand man and I kept my nose clean,” Friend said. “I get a Christmas card from him every year.
“I seem to get on well with people and I get things done,” he added. “I was always getting involved, my poor wife.”
Sadly, Betty died in 1996.
“We had quite a happy life together,” Friend said while gazing at a portrait on his wall.
He was able to find a special friend in companion Ethel Spry. During their time together, they shared a love of cards and travel, remaining good friends until her death.
He soon also added grandfather to his resume, as David and his wife, Margot, welcomed two children, Aaron and Alana.
No great-grandchildren yet, however.
“Maybe it’s time to give them a little pep talk,” he said with a mischievous smile.
