Monday, November 3, 2025
Ted was my mother’s younger brother, he was my uncle, and later in life he became my good friend. He was born in 32 but I remember him so clearly in the 50’s when I was a kid. Tanned and athletic, driving his beautiful red MGA convertible. He was the guy you wanted to be when you grew up. Always seemed to be coming or going to a soccer game or a tennis match or even a boxing match at the gym. All of us nephews and nieces adored him. He would play wrestle with us, or take a lucky kid for a ride in the MG or even share a coveted honey and OJ shake (but only if you stuck out the early morning exercises with him). The old guy, as I came to call him after he turned a spry 80, was a man who always tried to see the other side of things. Perhaps its why he almost never spoke ill of others. In Europe, as a kid during the war, he fled with his parents and two sisters from Ukraine to Poland and back again, then to Germany and finally to Austria where they saw the war come to a close. The family lived terrible hardships but they stayed together and they lived to get out. As an adult, if he heard anyone complaining about Canada he would gently remind them of his experience and what Canada meant to him. Stoic by nature and nurture he was deeply appreciative for the small things in life, like nature and the outdoors. A brisk walk on the modest trails of a Windsor park would invigorate him like a week in the Rockies. A game of chess after the walk was to be savoured. At 90 years of age he still loved babies and always got laughter out of them. Clear headed and intellectually curious right up to the end, he would have a philosophical observation on most situations. He could be perplexing. Sometimes just when you wondered where he was going with this latest monolog, the old guy would launch into a joke or a song. The joke may not have been outrageously funny nor the song evidently relevant but it always left you with a smile. Though his heritage was mixed – Ukrainian, German, Polish, it was the Ukraine that had his heart and he was a committed supporter. There is so much more to tell of this well lived life. But I will take his cue and end with something philosophical. In the full measure of his long life Ted Krigel was a thoroughly decent man and he did what most decent people try to do. As he plied along day by day through his 92 years with every contact he engaged, his family, his friends, the kids he coached at soccer, the guys at work, the old lady whose driveway he shoveled when he was 85 himself, the orphanage he helped out – no matter who it was, he always, always gave a little more to the situation than he took. It could have been as small as one of his jokes or something as unnoticed as a quiet exit when others might have lashed out. It wasn’t premeditated, it was just the way he was. But his was the karma behind that so called “gentle upward arc” of humanity so often referenced by historians. His was the life that made the world a little better place to be.
With love to my Uncle.
Your friend, Bill
