When I figured out that Barons was barely a detour on a recent drive to Lethbridge, I knew I just had to visit.
Rather than continuing southbound on Highway 2, I took Highway 520 east out of Claresholm and in 25 minutes I had arrived at the village of about 300. Now, Barons isn’t necessarily a must-see destination these days, but it held a certain amount of curiosity for me, so I figured if I was in the neighbourhood, I might as well check it out.
My interest in Barons was sparked by one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met: Edgar Clesson Dunning. Although Edgar has been gone for 13 years, he left an indelible mark on me not only as a friend and mentor, but by the way he lived his life.
Edgar’s dad, Vincent Clesson Dunning, had been operating the Barons Globe and the Carmangay Sun in the early 1920s when he accepted an invitation from the Delta Board of Trade to establish a newspaper in Delta, a municipality on the banks of the Fraser River just south of Vancouver. Delta had been without a newspaper for the better part of a decade before the elder Dunning brought his wife and three sons to town to begin publishing the Optimist in 1922.
Edgar would eventually wear many hats at the Optimist, including editor and publisher, but by the time I joined the staff and made his acquaintance in the early 1990s, he was already in his 80s and had reduced his workload to that of a weekly columnist. I had the pleasure of listening to his first-hand accounts of Delta’s early days and every now and again he’d throw in a tale about the antics of the Dunning boys during their time in Barons.
If there was someone that didn’t sweat the small stuff, it was Edgar, and I always attributed that outlook on life to why he made it to 100. He was quick with a joke — some of them were even funny — and slow to anger, ignoring all the noise around him so he could enjoy what really mattered.
Edgar was an inspiration to many, particularly when it came to the art of aging, which he did incredibly well. He lived on his own, trading in his house for a condo after he turned 90, he still drove (albeit not at night) and he continued to write his weekly Rambling column. In fact, his last column was published on the day he passed away.
I think about him often and I do my best to emulate the way he lived life.
My side-trip to Barons found a sleepy little village, one that had a larger population a century ago when the Dunnings called it home than it does today. Wikipedia says at that time not only did the village have a grocery store, bank and hotel, but it was also home to a dance hall and opera house.
Those might all be gone now, but it was worth the detour to see where some of a great storyteller’s tales had originated.
