STANDARD TRANSMISSIONS
Passings
By Rik Davie/The Scugog Standard

This year will have to go down as an ‘annus horribilis’ in Scugog, when one notes the number of community volunteers and leaders we’ve lost in the past 12 months.
_A sad bookend to a year that saw us lose the likes of Gerald Kelly and Anne Wannihkhof, among others, is the passing of Bill Harrison late last week.
_Bill and the indomitable Annabell were a bit of a mentoring team for me when I first began as a reporter at a once great newspaper (but that’s another story).
_Their story began long before I met them ... more than 50 years before ... when they both attended a dance at the old Caesarea dance pavilion and the sparks flew. They tied the knot one year later and both were involved for many years in the newspaper world and the world they built together that eventually included a daughter, who is now Clerk of Scugog Township.
_Bill was a news editor at such places as the Colbourne Chronicle before he answered the call of community news pioneer Peter Hvidsten and returned to Scugog to become editor of the old Port Perry Star.
_He also joined the Scugog Volunteer Fire Department and spent many years not only covering the news - but also being a part of it, as one of the select group who answers the call in all kinds of emergency situations.
_Neither he, nor his bride, have ever been ones to do things halfway and Bill rose among the ranks of the fire service to eventually retire, albeit grudgingly, with the rank of Deputy Chief, leaving behind one of the best trained and best equipped volunteer fire departments in Ontario.
_Bill will have a full firefighter’s funeral, with all the respect and ceremony that is his due.
_And as if that weren’t enough, he will also be honoured by his comrades at the Royal Canadian Legion. A renaissance man to be sure.
_It was when I first appeared in the hallways of a Scugog newspaper that I wandered into the lives of Bill and Annabell Harrison. Bill had moved on, but Annabell was the matriarch of the newsroom. She was in charge of ‘paste up’ - that olden method whereby we cut out and pasted the newspaper together using a wax machine and border tape and... well that’s a whole other story too. She also ran the darkroom, developing the film us reporters shot on assignment. You learned very quickly to make sure you used the right settings on your camera, because you didn’t want Annabell standing at your office door looking at you like you were a troublesome child because your photos sucked. She trained a lot of reporters over the years and her eye for mistakes on a newspaper page was almost mystic.
_I found out quickly that if Annabell didn’t think you were a complete idiot, she would help you out with names and contacts and the particulars of who had done what to whom in the community. She had - and still has - an encyclopedic knowledge of the families and family trees around here. She is, to this day a valued critic of those of us in this business.
_She and Bill were a team. Partners in every way and a love story to be sure. Bill will be missed by Annabell, daughter Kim and granddaughter Mandi and by the light of his life, great-grandson Brayden. Finally ... a guy to talk to, eh Bill?!
_There are no people on the planet like news people and I consider Bill and Annabell two of the very good ones. I will miss our chance meetings and Bill’s comments on how we do here at The Standard. And Annabell, if you’re ever looking for work ... you know where to come.