On the night before he was shot and killed at a Nanaimo sawmill, Fred McEachern, a father of two, was finishing plans with his wife to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon.
Their plans to visit the Grand Canyon and the bright lights of Las Vegas ended abruptly Wednesday morning when McEachern, 53, was gunned down at Western Forest Products.
In just five days, McEachern would have been on a plane to Las Vegas, said Trevor Flatman, his best friend. Flatman and his wife were to join them.
Instead, Flatman will head with a friend, Giz Thomson, to Nanaimo today to leave flowers at the sawmill to memorialize his lifelong friend.
“I don’t know; I have to do something,” Flatman said. “We’ve known each other since we were 10 years old. We were thick as thieves through all those years.”
Thomson, also a good friend of McEachern, said she still hears his laughter.
“He was a very strong, smart man. He was a fantastic dad — really involved in their lives — and a terrific husband, and he’ll be greatly missed.”
McEachern was born and grew up in Victoria. His parents owned the former Oak Bay Flower Shop on Oak Bay Avenue and Hampshire Road.
McEachern went to Monterey Elementary School, then Oak Bay Junior High School and Oak Bay High School. He graduated in 1978. His first job was at Oak Bay Marina making $2.10 an hour in the marina’s café. He and Flatman were hired the same day.
The two boys met through family at Victoria’s Memorial Arena and remained best friends.
“We’ve shared a lot of firsts together,” said Flatman. From adolescence to manhood, they shared first jobs, first concerts, first cigarettes at Bowker Creek, their first basement apartment in 1979, first high school reunion, first Molson Indy.
Their first concert was the Beach Boys in 1972. And going to Vancouver to see the Molson Indy would become a pilgrimage
Both would be pallbearers at the funerals of the other’s parent.
“He was my best friend,” said Flatman, an advertising salesman at the Times Colonist. “I lived with him more places than anyone else.”
After high school, McEachern moved briefly to Burns Lake in 1979, his mother’s birthplace, to work in a lumber mill. When he returned to Victoria, he worked at Hudson’s Bay, where he would meet his wife, who also worked there.
Later, he took another mill job and moved with his wife from Vancouver to Castlegar to Tahsis, eventually ending up in Nanaimo.
“He was lots of fun. He had a great sense of humour,” Flatman said.
“He lost his dad at an early age. My parents became like his parents.”
As a youth, McEachern was a hockey player and hockey fan. As a father, he coached his son in hockey.
McEachern leaves behind his wife of 25 years, Lorraine, and two children — Tristan, who turns 21 this month, and Paige, 25 — and a sister, Gail.
