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Obituary - Edward Reed

On March 27, 2013, The Canadian Nautical Research Society lost a former Treasurer, Past-President and longtime friend, Ed Reed, of Ottawa. Only 61, Ed was one of the early members of the society. He worked for the Bank of Canada at the time and contributed his accounting skills to the CNRS as Treasurer by balancing the books and ensuring that we had a solid financial basis on which to launch The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord when the responsibility for publishing the journal moved from Memorial University of Newfoundland to CNRS in 2001. Annual general meetings were always fun as Ed could not resist opening his Treasurer's Report with a terrible accounting joke that only he got. We all laughed dutifully and then begged him to tell it again at the next meeting. It became a CNRS tradition.

For a number of years, Ed and I worked on keeping CNRS membership up to date and pushing debits and credits into the right columns. He had the neatest printing of anyone I ever met. Occasionally, we spent a Saturday afternoon at his office reconciling names and dues. When one of his colleagues mentioned to Mary Ann, Ed's wife, that he had seen her with Ed at the bank over the weekend, she never missed a beat. She just said that she was not with Ed and it must have been some "bold hussy". His co-workers never raised the issue again!

Like many of us, Ed also took his turn as President of CNRS from 1996 to 1999 and helped increase our investment portfolio as membership rose. Even after he stepped down as Treasurer and President, Ed remained a member and book reviewer for many years. When he moved to the Conference Board of Canada we lost touch for a while, but continued to touch base on likely books for review. Ed was a man of wide-ranging interests from maritime history to the Civil War. He and Mary Ann eventually had to build an addition on their house so Mary Ann could have a kitchen and Ed, a library.

Although he had been ill throughout the fall, Ed was actually doing better which made his loss so unexpected. The obituary appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on April 2, 2013 and there will be a celebration of his life later in the spring. Condolences, tributes and donations to The Heart and Stroke Foundation, The Canadian Diabetes Association or the Community Foundation of Ottawa can be made at www.tubmanfuneralhomes.com.

Faye Kert,
Ottawa, April 2013

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