Tribute

Ray's parents, Robert E. Allen and Esther Thea Allen, married during World War I and were living in the Fraser Forest area when Ray was born in Abbotsford, BC. Robert (Bob) and his younger brothers Frank and Cecil were all involved in logging the Fraser Valley as young men.

By the late 1920s, the Allen families, along with Ray's cousins, the Schluter family, had all decided to go “homesteading” in the Peace River Country. Ray and the Schluter boys were all raised on neighbouring homesteads during the Great Depression.

One winter, when Ray was in his early teens, some neighbours they had never met crossed the frozen Cutbank River with a team of horses and sleigh. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses and Bob and Esther enjoyed their visit. Arrangements were made to return. They did, and were surprised to see all the Christmas decorations had been taken down and their farmhouse was full of ‘family,’ 20 or so.

The whole clan had come to hear what Ray's parents felt was the ‘truth’ from the Bible. In 1940, Ray was baptized in the Cutbank River along with other family members. By 1942, his grandmother, Margaret Allen, was a baptized Witness. Ray’s parents were zealous JWs ‘witnessing’ on horseback to Cree natives around Moberly Lake, some in primitive conditions, some in teepees.

By the late 1940s, having sold their homesteads, most of the family had returned to the South Coast. Ray and his wife June (nÈe Spangler) decided to join them, moving to Powell River in 1950 with two young children, Frances and Kenneth. By 1956, Ray was working with the crew that surveyed for the transmission lines that were strung across Jervis Inlet from Nelson Island.

Shortly thereafter, he began working for Powell River Company in Townsite and bought a house located down ‘on Cranberry Lake’ and by 1959 a second son, Michael, was born. Swimming, skating on the lake and living near all their cousins on Allen Avenue was a good life for the children.

Occasionally at a house party or wedding reception, Ray would be asked to sing and play his guitar as he had a good singing voice and had sung on the radio in the late 1940s. He was even asked about “a career in Nashville?” He received “fan mail” with photos, had “groupies,” and always laughed about it.

Ray was an amateur astronomer and on really dark nights he would set up a telescope down by the lake and his children would learn about ‘Jehovah's creations,’ about the constellations, stars and craters on the moon.

Ray sold the family home in the late 1960s and they moved into a new subdivision in Westview where Darren, their youngest son, was born. Later, in the mid-1970s, they moved south to be near the beach at Douglas Bay.

Ray was Control Room Operator in the Electrical Department at MacMillan Bloedel when he retired in the late 1980s. He was well-known in Powell River and always had a friendly, easy going way about him. Whether he was at the mill, at the Kingdom Hall, or if you met him when he called at your door as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, he had a quick smile, was easy to talk to and had a good knowledge of the Bible.

Anyone who got to know Ray knew him to be a kind and gentle man. He loved his family and will be sadly missed by all of us and by all of his ‘old friends’.

Ray's hope was to be remembered by Jehovah and resurrected into a restored paradise earth, as promised in the Bible. We all look forward to seeing him again in good health and growing younger. Meanwhile, he is peacefully ‘sleeping.’

A memorial service for Ray will be held Saturday, September 3, at 2 pm at Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses, with a tea to follow at Cranberry Seniors’ Centre.

A full obituary to follow at a later date.