John Hoag and I were fellow members of Rosedale, Toronto, for 40 years. It was customary for John and Sarah and their two children, Hannah and Matthew, to sit in the pew immediately behind the one in which my family sat. This positioned me to hear his periodic insightful commentaries on what was taking place during the service-uttered sotto voce-sounding very similar to the hushed tones one hears from some television commentators during golf tournaments.
John was born in 1930 in Brantford and died, sadly and unexpectedly, on September 11, 2005 in Bracebridge. The memorial service was held at Rosedale a few days later with standing-room-only attendance. John was an outstanding architect. Having attended the School of Architecture at the University of Toronto, he practised his profession in London, Boston and then New York City until 1966 when he returned to Canada. When in New York he was a member of the Mendelssohn Men's Choir. Following his return to Canada, he joined the staff at the University of Waterloo to run its cooperative program, a position he held for 25 years until his retirement.
John served on the Rosedale Board of Managers for many years and, also, was Chair for 26 years of the committee on church architecture for The Presbyterian Church in Canada, which won a Premier's Award for Accessibility in 1986 for its handbook of standards and accessibility guidelines for church architecture. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, an honorary member of the Ontario Association of Architects, and was given the Order of da Vinci by the OAA in 1987 for his outstanding contribution to his profession.
John had a great passion for France. He travelled there many times and painted many canvasses of French scenes, some of which were displayed at Rosedale's Fall Festivals. My connection with John was as a friend with whom I enjoyed exchanging views and reactions on a continuing basis. In the fall of 2001, John, on behalf of the Knox College Former Residence Association, invited me to speak at its annual dinner at Knox College. I asked him what I should talk about. With a mischievous grin, he replied, gruffly, and also ambiguously, "You're supposed to be funny."
That was all I got from him. In his introduction before my remarks he described me "just like the guy next door." I realized that he was setting me up for some kind of a response and so in my opening I referred to what he had said and then remarked that after the audience had heard my address I could appreciate their saying to themselves: "We wish this guy had stayed next door."
I have pleasant memories of recently serving with John on the congregation's last ministerial search committee which, after it had done its work, recommended the call of our present minister William ("Bill") C. MacLellan, much to the enthusiastic response of all concerned-which, I may say, has continued unabated to the present. John made wise contributions throughout the search committee's deliberations but the event that sticks most in my mind was a three-hour train trip out of Toronto on a Saturday evening to hear a potential candidate preach the next morning. Two distinguished women members of the committee accompanied John and me. John saw to it that we travelled in style-first-class Via. He arrived at Union Station with a freshly packed hamper of gourmet food prepared by his favourite restaurant. During our journey, while we were thinking of getting into the hamper, John, with his eyes twinkling even more than they usually did, produced from another source a bottle of Scotland's eau de vie for our pleasure. I had, for more than one reason, some doubts about whether it was appropriate to take up his offer, but the nice steward said that it would be all right. Of course, there was some justifiable logic in it by reason of the connection between the eau de vie and Scotland and, then, The Presbyterian Church in Canada's roots in the Church of Scotland. There was, therefore, a loose connection between what John was proposing and our church. I think it likely that John had the same rationale, or something like it, in mind.
A description of John that was repeated several times during his memorial service was that he was "a raconteur and a bon vivant." He was also a warm-hearted and stimulating friend. We will all miss him very much.
