GERALD ASHLEY KERR – 50 Year Summary
How to put 50 years of living into 50 words! That’s a challenge for someone who has become a preacher in his old age! So let me begin…
After saying farewell to my classmates at Stanley High I ventured off to UNB that fall to do an undergrad degree in History & Political Science. I’ve been a political junky ever since still trying to fathom the American presidential system now with scary clowns running for the oval office! After going “up the hill” for four wonderful years and spending two summers in student ministry in PEI and Newfoundland I found myself “going down the road” like all good Maritimers in 1970 to Upper Canada to a teaching job in Orillia, ON at a brand new Ontario community college called Georgian College of Applied Arts & Technology. I met my future wife there, herself just off the boat from Newfoundland, also on the teaching staff having graduated from Memorial University the year before. Yes, I married an older woman! We both transferred to the Owen Sound Campus the next year and spent the next 32 years in Georgian Bay country raising our family with some diversions along the way. I became the college’s library resource manager of a multimedia collection that was introducing computer technology in libraries serving adult and post-secondary students. I took a sabbatical leave in 1979-80 and earned a masters in Library Science at Western University in London. After 12 years with Georgian I took a job as assistant librarian at a government environmental research centre in Vegreville, Alberta for four years (1982-86) living in this Ukrainian town where my young family joined me for just one of the four years. The other three years were spent in a commuter marriage relationship flying back and forth from Edmonton to Toronto as my wife returned to continue her teaching career with Georgian and care for our three growing children. Not recommended by the way as a winning formula for a lasting marriage.
Returning to Owen Sound myself after successfully not landing a library job back East I became a school bus driver (always wanted to), a real estate salesperson (wanted to go into business like my Dad), a human services family support worker with Community Living Ontario (working with developmentally challenged adults changed my life) and got accepted at a seminary in Toronto where I did a term of theological studies all at the same time in 1989. It was a crazy time in our family life when my call to ministry was getting stronger and stronger from my teen years growing up in the church in Williamsburg and Stanley with my young hero, Rev Don Waldon. At the same time we experienced several deaths of close family members including my father in 1990, my wife’s parents in the 90’s and grandparents as well. That chaotic time took me to 1998 when I formally enrolled at Emmanuel College to study theology full time with aspirations for ordered ministry in the United Church of Canada. I was 50 back then in the middle of a mid-life crisis shaving my head and getting my ears pierced on my birthday. Five years later and many tears and stressful times after graduating with my masters degree in divinity from Emmanuel I was ordained on May 24, 2003. This was the same day John Wesley “felt my heart strangely warmed” in 1738 in Aldersgatein his quiet conversion to initiating the Methodist movement. 265 years to the day I joined that Methodist tradition as part of the United Church of Canada. It was a big deal for me!
Having been away from the Maritimes for so long our twenty something year old son, Zak, told us we should leave home and go back East if we had a chance and make this ministry gig as he called it into a ‘great amazing race’ adventure. We took his advice, packed up everything we had, left our home and family behind in Owen Sound and started my ministry in Brooklyn on the South Shore of Nova Scotia in July, 2003. We moved up to Truro in 2005 and spent eight challenging years in Onslow helping three congregations become one which we renamed Trinity UC appropriately enough. These were 10 wonderful years when I reconnected with my Scottish ancestral roots, cycled around the Cabot Trail in ‘four days in July’, watched our five grandchildren get born from afar one of whom was born on that infamous date above when I was celebrating my fifth anniversary of ordination. I did it while on a study/ work leave by joining a team of gay runners from Toronto for the Cabot Trail Relay Race of 300 kilometers. They named our grandson, Kerr, and he was born the very minute I crossed the finishing line of my fifth leg of the relay coming off Mount Smoky. I got serious about running in my mid-fifties while on the South Shore and I soaked up the amazing Maritime music scene and I bought my first motorcycle the same year of the Cabot Trail Relay on my other anniversary with permission of course! (Honda Shadow Spirit – perfect for a preacher).
Along the way I took another sabbatical leave to finish up a degree I was working on part time and ended up at Queen’s in Kingston on a ministry fellowship for three months where I spent most of my time training hard at Good life to run the Boston Marathon which I did do in April of 2011 along with 27,000 other valiant souls. I graduated from Emmanuel at the University of Toronto the following month with a masters in pastoral studies with that same son, Zak, who encouraged us to go to NS attending my convocation along with his son, our first grandson. We enjoyed a great “guy” weekend together taking in a Blue Jays game at Sky Dome with Boston where my grandson, Ethan, caught a ball in the stands! And it looks like it’s time to watch those amazing Jays again go for the American pennant race.
After this, my wife, Ida, and I decided it was time to get a little closer to our family so I accepted a call to St. Paul’s United Church in Perth, ON in 2013 where I have just completed this month three years of ministry. Perth is a great little heritage town with lots of Scottish flavor and plenty of connections with the East Coast which has made us feel right at home. St. Paul’s is a big and busy congregation. Check out the website at www.stpauls-uc-perth.org where there’s a write-up on me and what we’re up to. I’m probably working harder than I should for someone my age but I’m enjoying every bit of it and that’s what counts. God is good all the time and I have the support of my long suffering wife who has the scars to prove it. Without her none of this could have happened letting me be practically a full time student half of my life! This past June after a year of solid training that followed five years of going to pot and falling off the wagon after my big Boston bash I ran the world’s first official Kilted Marathon (Guinness Book of Records)race right here in Perth as part of the town’s 200th anniversary celebrations. There were 86 of us crazy fools and I got the Sunday off to do it. After 42 kilometers and almost six hours in 38 degree scorching heat and a soggy kilt I got the T shirt and a handmade pottery Scotch whiskey Quaich as my prize and even raised $700 for Multiple Sclerosis in memory of my sister!
Life is good but not without some sad times. I lost my only sister, Jessie, in 2012 just in her sixties. This was followed by her husband, Robert, my brother-in-law, two years later and my dear sweet mother, Marie, passed away at the start of this year in January just weeks after her 88th birthday and days before the anniversary of my sister’s death who died on her own birthday. My Mum lost her best friend when my sister died and so did I.
With that chapter of my life finished we turned the page to focus more on our own family where too much time has passed with too little contact. Our two sons, Jeremy and Zachary live in Owen Sound with their partners where they were raised. Jeremy and Karen gave us our one precious granddaughter, Erica. Zak and Sarah have Ethan, the eldest grandson and Jonah. Our youngest and only daughter Lindsi and Jarin are living in Thunder Bay and are raising our other two grandsons, Kerr and Kaiden. We feel blessed to have this little family all healthy and doing well.
I am so looking forward to seeing all of you again and can hardly wait to hear your many stories of love and loss, joys and sorrows, challenges and celebrations in your life as we motor on into our golden years.
(Rev) Gerald (Gerry) Kerr, BA, MLIS, MDiv, MPS
rev@bell.net ~ 613-390-1820 (cell) ~ 613-267-9897 (home) ~ 613-267-2973 (work)
Born August 24, 1948 Age 68 Married July 7, 1973 to Ida in Buchans, Newfoundland (43 years strong) Sons Jeremy (1975) married to Karen (2000) Erica (2010); and Zachary (1977) married to Sarah (2002) Ethan (2005) and Jonah (2007) and Daughter Lindsi (1980) married to Jarin (2006) Kerr (2008) and Kaiden (2010).
1970 – Bachelor of Arts (UNB, Fredericton, NB)
1981 – Master of Library & Information Science (Western University, London, ON)
2002 – Master of Divinity (Emmanuel College, Victoria University in University of Toronto, Toronto, ON)
2003 – Ordination United Church of Canada (May 24th at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, Toronto, ON)
2011 – Master of Pastoral Studies (Emmanuel College, Victoria University in University of Toronto)
