My father-in-law, Wayne Franklin, died on June 27, 2025.
He leaves a huge hole in many lives. He was a good man, missed by many.
I first met Wayne in 1999 when my future wife Chrissie brought me to Winnipeg to meet her parents. He opened the door to his house and shouted, “Steverino!” He’s lucky I didn’t just turn around and leave.
Wayne and Sandra were* the best grandparents. They always loved having the kids over and spoiled them mercilessly – much to the chagrin of my wife and my sister-in-law, who didn’t get that same treatment from their parents.
* I struggle with present/past tense here. Sandra is still here so I feel really uncomfortable about using past tense with her. Words are hard.
I have countless photos of Wayne interacting with his grandkids. He was very outgoing and cheerful, and was up for anything as long as the kids were happy.
When we still lived in Fredericton, Wayne and Sandra would come from Winnipeg to visit us at least once a year. They sacrificed their vacation time and their money to spend time with us and their grandchildren. I will never forget that.
They would do anything for their children. When my wife was pregnant with our first child, they came to Fredericton and painted the room we had set aside.
In our next house, Wayne helped me put drywall up in the basement for my train room. It’s just what Wayne and Sandra did.
Here he is showing Nick how to tie a tie.
Wayne even tolerated my railfan habits – for a while. You can see he wasn’t very impressed when we spent a morning in Portage la Prairie in 2004.
Wayne and Sandra accompanied Chrissie and I to Italy for a vacation in 2022. I was a little dubious about spending more than two weeks together with my in-laws, but it turned out to be a great trip. They were respectful of our privacy, and although we traveled between cities together and sometimes went to attractions together, often we went our own ways and that was fine.
This photo is from when Wayne and I walked between two towns in Cinque-Terre, Italy. There are paths between the five towns, some more walkable than others. I walked one of them on my birthday there, solo, and it was a pretty hard walk for me. A few days later, he and I walked from Vernazza to Monterosso, “only” 3.3 km, but with a lot of ups and downs. For a 72-year-old man, he did very well. He commented often that he was glad that he did that trek. So am I.
We were supposed to go to Spain with them in May. Unfortunately, Wayne became very sick earlier in the year, and ended up being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer. He fought it at the Health Sciences Centre here in Winnipeg, and came home for a few weeks before he died. It was all very unexpected and we are still in a state of shock.
We will all miss Wayne very much for the rest of our lives. I’m glad that I knew him for so many years.
You can read a brief obituary for Wayne here.
