Dan Dempsey used to command and lead the Canadian Forces Snowbirds in airshows across North America.
He also flew airshows in the F-86 “Golden Hawk” Sabre from 2009-2012 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight in Canada. His teammates included fellow jet jockeys — and astronauts — Chris Hadfield and Jeremy Hansen.
In all, Dempsey spent 46 years flying jets, first for the Air Force, then as a Cathay Pacific pilot out of Hong Kong and New York, then with defence contractor Top Aces out of Victoria.
This week, though, found Dempsey toiling with a ground crew of sorts, tackling the mountain of donations to the Times Colonist book drive, just as his wife Ruth used to do.
“The reason I’m here is because of Ruth,” he said, pausing amid the massive book-sorting effort in the Victoria Curling Club. “This was the highlight of her year.”
Ruth Dempsey passed away in 2019, one day after her 63rd birthday. She had been dealing with cancer for six years, but refused to let the disease stop her from volunteering for the annual charity sale, something she had been doing since 2005. Those who worked beside her at the book drive miss her a lot.
“This would have been 20 years for Ruth,” Dan says. He’s happy to serve in her place, one of the bustling mob of volunteers who have spent the past week sorting the hundreds of thousands of volumes donated to next weekend’s sale.
Dan and ex-Mountie Dennis Flewelling curate the book sale’s military section, arranging the titles into dozens of subsections: all of the world’s conflicts, military hardware, peacekeeping… A couple of times over the past few years, Dan has come across a copy of A Tradition of Excellence - Canada’s Airshow Team Heritage, his own 768-page history of Canada’s airshow teams.
Ruth’s brother, Ralph Sommerfeld, has also been volunteering at the book drive for many years. The Dempseys’ daughter and grandson joined in on Saturday.
Such people are the backbone of the book sale, which funds literacy efforts on Vancouver Island. The Times Colonist’s name might be on the event but its success depends on the hundreds of volunteers who have no direct connection to the newspaper.
Each has his own story, her own motivation. Most are book-lovers, word nerds. Many are retirees. Some just like each other’s company, treating each spring’s sale like a family reunion.
Their backgrounds are diverse. Dennis Seymour, retired after 30 years in the army, spent the week doing grunt work, horsing stacks of books around with a pallet jack. Wayne Aitken, the co-author of Blisters and Bliss (essential reading for anyone tackling the West Coast Trail) wielded a boxcutter, day after day. Victoria city council’s Chris Coleman spent last weekend lifting boxes and bags out of donors’ cars at the drive-through book drop-off.
Saanich Coun. Karen Harper, a one-time school teacher and librarian, sorted books during the week. So did UBC creative writing student Ciel Lenz, back home in Victoria for a break between semesters. So did Bou van Oort who, after spending his early years in a Second World War concentration camp in the Dutch East Indies, went on to become a Rhodes scholar. Margaret Horsfield, the author of three books about the west coast of Vancouver Island, shuttled titles from the sorting stations to the sale’s 470 trestle tables.
Many devote their time to multiple causes. Typical is Anne O’Leary who, after 27 years at the reference desk at a public library, now volunteers as a gardener at Government House and a hike leader with Victoria Outdoor Club. She also pitched in at the downtown Salvation Army thrift shop until it closed. The book drive allows her to flex her library-research skills.
Many have volunteered at the sale for 10, 20 years. A handful, such as Marsha Birney, the queen of the cookbooks, go back to the very first sale in 1998. Mary-Ethel Audley, who in 1975 became one of the first female patrol cops in B.C. (in an A-line uniform skirt and two-inch heels, no less) was at that 1998 event, too. So was the Times Colonist’s Keith Ellender, who puts paid work on the back burner in favour of volunteering in the weeks leading up to the sale. “I always book my holidays around this,” he says.
Others volunteers do that, too. Angela Leung, who works for the Victoria school district, showed up for the first time on Wednesday, her day off, and was immediately impressed by the collegiality she found. She plans to take vacation so that she can help out again next week.
Why do they do it, devoting their free time to standing on the cold, concrete floor of a cavernous curling rink, working for free, subsisting on nothing but coffee, dust mites and the occasional Timbit? Because they’re thoroughly decent human beings, that’s why.
The book sale takes place at the curling club at 1952 Quadra Street on Saturday, May 4, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday, May 5, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you come, please take a moment to thank a volunteer.
For more information, or to make a donation to the Times Colonist Literacy Society, go to tcreads.ca.
