Kevin Ray Misfeldt (1959-1997)

Karen and Kevin Misfeldt on a happier day, when she became Mrs. Karen Shields.

Kevin Ray Misfeldt was the dearly loved twin brother of Karen Shields, but sadly, they will not be sharing any more birthdays. Immediately below you can find Karen's way of explaining what happened to her brother, followed by comments by some of the rest of us.

• Why Kevin Has a New Job (13K)

He was a good husband, a good father, a good son, a good brother and a good friend. He loved his work. He loved and respected wildlife. He was a conservationist. He will be remembered by those he taught to duck hunt, to bow hunt and to fish and by those who heard his stories. Kevin lived for his wife and his children. He taught his children and nieces and nephews archery, to fish, to canoe, to skate, to play hockey and to play ball. He loved music and to dance. He was a good man, a decent man, a kind, gentle and patient man. He loved life. His life was a blessing. He will be missed.

By Carlyn Miller

Age 11

Thursday, January 30, 1997

Dear Uncle Kevin, Here's a poem I wrote for you.

A Summer Rose

A summer rose blooms quietly against the setting sun, the soft, gentle colour attracts everyone.

"How beautiful", "How elegant", "How delicate" they say, the rose stood in harsh winds and would never sway.

But one day the people noted the petals had all withered, "How sorrowful", "How tragic", all the people weeped.

Whenever a storm came rising up, all the people thought of the flower all alone,

And the courage that they sought, came swelling up from deep inside And all was fine again.

Dedicated to Kevin R. Misfeldt, 1959-1997, Age 37

Thank you, Uncle Kevin

Carlyn Miller

On the Loss of a Brother

I didn't know Kevin Misfeldt for very long, about five years, perhaps. I first got to know him when I met my wife Karen; she would always talk nostalgically about how Kevin and her were "best buddies" when they both were young, and then she would talk excitedly about what she would do when, from time to time (usually at Christmas), we would get to travel to Saskatoon to meet Kevin and others from her family. Often, _how_ somebody talks about something-- or someone-- tells you more about how they feel about the thing or person, than do the words themselves. That was certainly true about my wife and her twin brother. Her words just sounded so happy when she would talk about Kevin. His loss has been devastating for her; she has lost her "Buddy", the only person who could dance with Karen the way she liked to dance. I won't even try to fill his shoes.

Kevin was always a real Canadian "hoser", and I mean that in the best sense of the word. He was a tall, strong, very good-looking man, always in his element when working or playing outdoors. He knew of, and cared about, very little of the technology I'm using to write these thoughts. But he never made fun of or looked down upon things he wasn't involved in; and he was the most friendly brother-in-law I could ever have hoped to have had. From time to time I wondered out loud to Karen, "how can your brother live like that out there in Blackstrap, for the ridiculously low wages the Saskatchewan government pays him for all that work he does". Slowly, I began to realize, he did it because he was the best man anyone could hope to find to do it-- and because he loved doing it. It was a part of him, as surely as technology is a part of me.

The last time I remember spending good times with Kevin was in early January 1997, as Karen and I came back to Saskatoon from James and Betty Misfeldt's residence in Regina Beach, preparing to fly home to Toronto. Kevin's two eldest children, Brent and Jostein, were playing junior hockey in the community rink in Hanley, a tiny Prairie town about a half hour south of Saskatoon on the highway to Regina. There, shouting out over the boards at the side of the rink were Kevin, Karen and myself, yelling encouragement to the home team (and a few choice words to the referee). The experience was surrealistically beautiful for an unrepentant Canadian nationalist like me, as here we were, in a small, almost unheated rink, acting the part played by thousands of Canadian parents for decades before, with no advertising, no parking fees, no big-city tensions; nothing but the pure joy of the game of hockey. And you could see it on Kevin's face, how proud he was of Brent and Jostein, even though he wouldn't admit it to their faces (and they would have denied it, even if he HAD admitted it). Many other parents would grumble about the fuss and bother of paying for, and participating in, your children's hockey careers. Not Kevin. It wasn't a chore for him, it was what he lived to do. And when you saw how his wife Tarena smiled at him as she looked on, you could see how happy they were with each other, living in their little, isolated rural Saskatchewan world with their children. Would that it could have remained so.

How does a man succeed at life? How do you measure where he ranks, compared to his (or her) peers? If you judge it by living, and dying, in doing the job you were meant to do, or if you judge it by the children you leave to carry on the knowledge of your life, or if you judge it by the number of people who hurt when they know you are gone, Kevin has set a mighty high standard for the rest of us to overcome.

Kevin died young, too young, need it be said. But as every dark cloud has a silver lining, so too does the loss of a man in the prime of his life. I remember Kevin Misfeldt not only for his accomplishments, but especially because my last memories of him are forever of a young, vital man, immortal in my mind doing the exact thing he was meant to do.

Wiser men than I will have to write Kevin's final epitaph. As for me, all I can say is that I came to genuinely love him as a brother.

In rememberance

Marcus Shields