On Saturday morning, October 6, père Walter, the oldest scj member in Canada died in Fleury hospital in Montréal. Walter reached the age of 95 after 76 years of religious life. Walter spent the last years of his life in our community house in Montréal, made possible through the attention of Samuel, his personal care giver, and of all the members of the community. The arrangement made it possible for Walter to complete his life in the midst of a community.

Père Walter was a welcoming presence in the community.  He was born in The Hague, the Netherlands on August 8, 1923. He joined the community in 1943, making his first vows in 1944, during the war years in the Netherlands. He came to Canada in 1951 and during his first years in Montréal he obtained a Baccalaureate in Pedagogy to prepare him for teaching at the Séminaire du Sacré-Coeur in Pointe-au- Chêne. After a stint of teaching he became pastor in Kilmer-Harrington, Grenville and Brownsburg. The last years of his life he lived among his confreres in Montréal, where he is remembered for his lively conversations with Jesus in the chapel, where he sometimes complained to Jesus that he was forgetting him.

Walter will be remembered in a Eucharist at Grenville on Thursday, October 11. He will be buried in the community plot of the cemetery in Grenville. May he rest in peace.