Obituary of Dave Toms
A life fully lived – a life filled with family, aligned with friends, and endeared to the natural surroundings of the Central Newfoundland wilderness – Dave Toms has left this earth with a special legacy for all who knew him. His life was rich and exciting, filled with love and family, a beloved wife and mother of his children in Jane, and an enormous array of relatives, neighbours, friends and acquaintances – and above all an identity with nature and wildlife that few people are privileged to have experienced.
Dave grew up in Bishop’s Falls and Beaver Mountain, and lived a rich life, not of the wealth of power and finance, but of the wealth of family love and the wilderness of Central Newfoundland. His character and personality, formed with the warmth of identity with his total natural environment, will be sustained in his five children throughout their lives. Henrietta, Paul, Karen, Krista and David – all have traits of a persona that captured the character of a true, raw, pioneering Newfoundlander in the endearing personality of their beloved father.
One of this province’s original outfitters, he embarked on a special relationship with his natural environment, its abundant beauty and varieties of wildlife, starting in 1956, and continuous until his departure from this earth. Beaver Mountain and its lure of a special magical beauty of the interior of the Newfoundland wilderness, was his paradise on earth. He not only eked out a living from this idyllic place on Great Rattling Brook, but lived a life identifying with all the wildlife, natural surroundings and the myriad of activities there that characterized his life.
His employees and clients were more than just workers and customers. They became his friends, his associates and his stories of tales told over and over as each year brought new challenges, new excitement and memories that are forever etched in the minds of all who visited there. His prowess and skills are known and treasured throughout this province, many parts of Canada, the United States and even several countries in Europe.
His talents were immense. He was a sculptor, whose carving skills brought life to antlers with wildlife scenes of moose, salmon and caribou; an artist who captured on canvas everything from natural habitat to cabins and homes. He engraved wildlife scenes on glass that spellbound the viewer. He could fashion a drinking cup from birch bark and drink water from pure springs in his beloved wilderness, and he possessed skills for caping wildlife that renewed life in each animal. He could bring life to wood simply by whittling it. And his acceptance by animals with a special love for him between them is known throughout this province. Dogs were an important feature of his life, and they understood him readily when he talked to them.
True to his Church, Dave and his family never missed Sunday Mass, even bringing on many occasions his guides and customers to worship at Sacred Heart Church. An Honorary Life Member of the Knights of Columbus, he gave of himself to his Council and fellow knights for many years.
Dave loved life and all that it held. But overall, he loved Jane and his children, and they were the focus of his strong family unity. He believed firmly in family, and witness to this could be easily visible in his attention to all of them, and this love transferred equally to the grandchildren as they entered the Toms family unit. His brothers and sisters were all close in spirit and life, even when they lived far away in other provinces making their own way in this world.
As he takes leave from this earth, he would like for all of us to remember him as one who lived life simply, with a strength of family and love of all things in our natural environment. To conclude, I share this quote from General George Patton, which sums up how special a person Dave was to so many -“It is foolish and wrong to mourn a man who died. Rather we should thank God that he lived.”
Our most sincere sympathies to the family and friends of Dave
Toms 1939 2020..
Death notice for the town of: Grand-Falls-Windsor, Province: T-N