WOLF: Does anyone else regularly read the obituaries?<\/p>\n
Published 7:35 pm Saturday, February 28, 2026<\/p>\n
Anyone else routinely read the obituaries?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve read newspapers, in print and later online, for as long as I can remember. Still do, every day.<\/p>\n
But only recently have I begun to semi-regularly check the obituaries (of my hometown paper). Is that morbid? A routine concession to advancing age? Just something lots of folks do because it\u2019s part of the package?<\/p>\n
Obviously I\u2019ve been aware of the obits all this time and have unfortunately read many of the over the year when some I knew passed away. But it was never a habit.<\/p>\n
After we lost my father last year, it became just that. I\u2019d been looking for it in the Cowichan Valley Citizen after Dad passed. It wasn\u2019t there immediately but since I was checking (via the e-edition), I began to read some of the other obits and had a couple of \u201cI didn\u2019t know that\u201d or \u201cI didn\u2019t know they were related\u201d moments.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m getting to the age where we\u2019re sometimes losing the parents of my friends, or just names I recognized from when I was a kid, so I linger a little longer on those pages.<\/p>\n
Along those lines, I spotted an obit a while back that sort of tied much of the above together (my hometown, the Citizen, my childhood, etc.).<\/p>\n
Nearly a decade ago, I was temporarily stationed back in the Citizen office as they looked to find me a more permanent work home as we created a new project.<\/p>\n
I wrote a piece about some of my memories of growing up in Duncan, and included the name of Mr. Rodman, who was the principal when I was a student at Mt. Prevost School, which was then a Grade 8 to Grade 10 \u201cjunior high.\u201d<\/p>\n
To my surprise and delight, Mr. Rodman saw the column and paid a visit to the office (fourteen-year-old me could never have imagined him coming to my office, instead of the other way around) and we had a fantastic chat, reminiscing about school days of yore. Close to 90 years old, he was spry and funny and talkative and not at all scary like he seemed back in the day.<\/p>\n
A great memory.<\/p>\n
So I was understandably saddened recently when, during one of my hometown obit checks, I saw the heading \u2018Sidney Thomas Richard Rodman (Dick)\u2019. I immediately knew it was Mr. Rodman (all my old teachers will always be \u2018Mr.\u2019 or \u2018Mrs.\u2019 no matter how old I get), even though I had no idea that was his first name.<\/p>\n
I only knew \u2018Richard\u2019 from the signature on my old report cards or the shortened, informal version \u2018Dick\u2019.<\/p>\n
I also learned all kinds of other interesting tidbits of information.<\/p>\n
Mr. Rodman made it to 100 before passing. The family clearly has some terrific genes, as the obit mentioned he was survived by an older sister.<\/p>\n
I had no idea he trained with the Canadian Armed Forces. Or worked on his hobby farm until he was 97.<\/p>\n
Or grew up in Victoria. And was married for 71 years. And on and on. What a life well-lived.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ve found that in a variety of cases. Though it\u2019s still jarring to read an obituary, it\u2019s fascinating to learn about people and see them in a more complete light.<\/p>\n
RIP, Mr. Rodman.<\/p>\n
Philip Wolf is the editor of the PQB News and Vancouver Island Free Daily. He can be reached at 250-905-0029 or via email at philip.wolf@blackpress.ca.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WOLF: Does anyone else regularly read the obituaries? Published 7:35 pm Saturday, February 28, 2026 Anyone else routinely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":{"0":"post-506724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-surrey","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-surrey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}