Anton "Tony" Yochim

Tony was born at home and grew up on the family farm near Revenue.

He was the youngest of eight children and attended the local country school to grade six.  His schooling didn’t teach him to spell, but he was good with numbers and still able to add scores faster than anyone when playing cards.  At age twelve he started attending dances at the country schools with his parents.  He developed a love for dancing and rarely sat down the entire evening.  While at a dance that his teacher also attended, he asked her to dance.  The next day she reprimanded him and told him it wasn’t appropriate to dance with your teacher.  When relating the story to us he said “I didn’t mean anything by it, I just loved to dance.”  At the age of twenty-one he was attending just such a dance when he caught sight of a pretty little blonde, after one dance he was smitten.  That was the start of three years of courting and almost seventy years of marriage with his “little Helen” as he liked to call her in recent years.  We’re quite sure he’s dancing with her now.

Tony had taken over the family farm and with Helen they farmed there until 1960 when they purchased a farm near Reward.  Whenever a neighbour needed help Tony was quick to lend a hand whether it was help with animals, lending a tool, or helping to complete the harvest.  They sold the farm in 1987 and moved into a new home in Unity.  Even in town he continued to keep busy doing maintenance on a local apartment building and maintaining yards for neighbours. He considered his early nineties to be young enough to stand on a chair and paint his garage door, resulting in a broken hip when he fell.  The day after surgery they had him walking and he recovered quickly.  We can imagine that Tony must have been an energizer bunny as a young boy because he never seemed to run out of energy.  Whether having a foot race to the barn with his sons, playing cards till late hours, standing on his head with his grandson, beating his grandsons in pool at 96 years old, letting the young ones slide down a snowy hill and pulling them back up, he always tried to make life fun.  We will miss his zest for life and will have many stories to share and laugh about for years to come.

Cards can be directed to 

Timothy Yochim   Unit # 11  5960 Cowichan St. Chilliwack, BC  V2R 0L6

Memorial Donations may be directed to Luther Place, Unity,  SK

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