Andrea asked me if I would like to say something today, to recount a story, a personal memory of Fern.

I've known Fern and Ed for 16 years now, and many of my memories of Fern are of the visits Andrea and I have made over the past ten years that Andrea has been living in England. Warm greetings at the airport, eating meals together, visiting their friends here in Kelowna. Small everyday things really.

But my favourite memory of Fern is of a big day for Andrea and me: our wedding day. Fern arrived with a Ed a week or so before the wedding with what we learned later was a broken back. This was probably sustained when Fern and Ed were nursing Fern's dad through his last days. Fern was of course hugely upset at the death of her father, but also thrilled that her daughter was getting married. And to such a great guy too!

Andrea and I did not have a conventional wedding service. We wanted special people to bless our union: a friend sang a love song he had written, my brother's wife read an EE Cummings poem, and Fern -- at our request -- recited The Owl and the Pussycat.

Fern had barely been out of the bed the week before the wedding. But there she was, looking great, though she walked a little unsteadily to the podium, and then holding on to it, and standing to one side, she announced The Owl and the Pussycat. Well as anyone who was there will tell you, Fern stole the show.

Her voice was clear and sharp, her eyes bright flashing mischievously at the poem's wit and humour. She recited it beautifully. The love story came alive as she spoke -- we all saw each scene: the boat, the land where the bong tree grows and the pig with the ring through the end of his nose. When she came to the part about being married by "the turkey who lives on the hill", she turned a little to the right, and 100 guests saw the officiating Superintendent Registrar of the London Borough of Haringey in a totally new light -- and fell about laughing. We were all right there with Fern at every word. And when she finished, everyone just spontaneously applauded.

All of those years of teaching, of parenting not just her own children, but so many others who are here today, all that love of her family, of poetry, of humour, all that love for love itself was in that recital. Fern not only blessed our wedding with that poem, she blessed the marriage that Andrea and I enjoy.

Fern was a fine woman -- I'll sure miss her. Thank you.