JUNE 25, 1934 – MARCH 7, 2022
Truth and Tales – A Noble Life and Family Upbringing
We are saddened to have lost Donald Royce Noble on March 7, 2022 at 87 years of age. Don Noble was an adventurer, story teller, professor, husband and fabulous father. He woke his children up each weekend to a new adventure. He turned a simple ravine or trail or beach into a mystical place with swamps and castles and guard dogs and villains. They were spellbound. So were their friends.
He met Irene Cojocar in the 1950s in the vibrant city of Windsor, Ontario. They started their careers in Detroit, married and started their lifelong adventure raising two boisterous boys, Sean and Darrin, and working their way through towns and universities and colleges throughout Southwestern Ontario.
Don was a Windsor boy. He was born in the depression and war years and his parents struggled to make a living. They left Owen Sound and Durham to raise their family across the river from jobs and greater prosperity in Detroit. Sean and Darrin felt like they grew up in Windsor and Detroit because they travelled there often to see our cousins and close relatives from Riverside to Walkerville to Sandwich to Dearborn to Eight Mile to Rochester Hills. They loved it. Windsor was an exciting place and steeped in Don’s stories about tough kids on Bernard Road, the Purple Gang who Grandpa lived with at the Collingwood apartments, the local hoodlum Norm D and Dad's tough and brave boxer and ball player brother Uncle Bill who Dad says held a guy by his feet out a window of the Prince Edward hotel, beside the Top Hat restaurant. The altercation may have occurred because Don switched the good wine for the cheap Thunderbird or Night Train that he brought to the party and the guy hanging out the window possibly challenged Don over it. In a million years, that guy could never have guessed how badly it would go for him once brother Bill arrived to help Don! Who knows how much of this is true but it makes a good story.
As did the tales of fun times with family friends Saul Nosanchuk and Clare Winterbottom, Norm Papiernik, Marv Gold and Jack McGuire at Bo-Mac’s lounge. Don told stories about his Dad, Alfred Royce Noble and the barber shop at the Penobscot and Ford buildings in downtown Motown. And Don’s business partner Bob who faked his death by leaving his shoes beside the St.Clair river but showed up months later to propose to Irene, before she and Don were married, and again many years after that as an executive at a major refinery. Now that’s a story. As are the many adventures Don took his family on in Kentucky and Natural Bridge and the Nada tunnel in Slade where people lived in trailers with a horse tied to the front porch. One time, he boosted Darrin up over a fence into a cave where the historic Daniel Boone hut was found and there is still a piece of that hut hanging up at the family cottage. Don knew the artist Al Cornett (a friend of Woody Harrelson) who Don’s family saw over the years and whose art hung on the walls of Don’s long term care room where much of this obituary was written. Such good memories.
He kept those adventures rolling through his family years when he took his boys to Red Bay, giving rise to a new era of fun with family and friends. When his boys became parents themselves, Don and Irene brought excitement into the lives of a new generation. Their grandkids loved to visit Dorchester to see their Bica and Panda (as they liked to call their Grandpa). They would burst from the car, boots flapping, to race and see what their grandparents had in store. At the cottage, Panda awoke early and donning the grandkids in pyjamas and boots he would take the them down to the beach, or some distant land. Just like he did with his boys. Don took people places, imaginary and real.
There were other travels like their drives to Florida. On a causeway toward Sanibel and Captiva Island, There was a torrential downpour he steered them through years ago, a lifetime ago, to get them to this special place in Florida to enjoy a vacation. The boys were scared in the back seat of Dad’s big, brown Oldsmobile Delta 88 Rocket 455 but their Dad was a great driver and kept them safe. On another trip he pulled the Mercedes over beside a lagoon and marked a floating alligator by throwing a chunk of cement at it. Dammed if it didn’t swim straight toward them. Their great Bica shrieked “Oh Donald” as they clambered into the car which wouldn’t start, as usual, in true 1969 Mercedes fashion. It was exciting and wild. Other times, he’d walk them along South Beach and Little Havana and get the boys pizza and some fish to lure sharks. One time they actually caught a shark. They will never forget that. It was a spiny dogfish but to a kid it was a real shark. He took them to Poppa Hemmingway’s on Key West and in Halifax they walked by a giant blue shark hanging from a dockyard forklift. In BC they climbed the Grouse Grind. They attended a beach wedding in Santa Barbara with Keith and Effie Miller, went to the Crystal Cathedral and Disneyland with Lauryn and Allysa, visited the Rainbow and Whisky a Go Go and saw every nook and cranny of St Lucia where dad taught for a bit. Another time they went to Bermuda where he and mom honeymooned and Darri-boy was conceived and they stood on the steps of the now-closed hotel. Their Dad took them places. Imaginary and real.
As Sean and Darrin grew up, they tried to return the favour of adventures and journeys. One time, they took their Dad to Ireland to discover their roots. As they stood on a blowing and blustering moor, beside a Martello tower, Don yelled to them over the wind to announce that we weren’t actually Irish. They were more Scottish and English. They could barely hear him over the gale but Sean and Darrin shouted back, “What? We aren’t Irish? We came all the way out here to be told we are in the wrong country? Is this just a ploy to go to Scotland next?” The boys marched toward the nearest pub to warm up and “sober up” to this news by drinking a few pints. They never did get to Scotland and they regret that.
Dad was not without his flaws. He was impulsive and anxious to take food and drink. The boys often said, “Our Dad would steal candy from a baby”. They’d seen him do it. And so had Lauryn, Allysa, Gracyn and Jake. If you left your drink unattended for a bit too long, it would go missing. Darrin bought him a Cutlass with a Rocket 455 and a T-bar roof. He tried to sell it to pocket the money. Thankyou Cal Childs for tipping Darrin off. He’d take your change off of the TV in the pension hotel room by the British Museum. Don’s idea of nutrition when the boys were kids was to feed them leftover bread crust dipped in honey as their Saturday morning starter before they hit the toboggan hills. Sometimes the morning adventure would go awry and they’d get chased away from Doctor No’s castle by giant dogs, or Sean’s boots would get stuck in the mud and they’d have to call for reinforcements to pull him out. One time Don showered naked under the eavestrough and Sean’s friend Jon saw him do it. He was impressed.
Donald was a proud and storied educator. He managed International Marketing at Fanshawe College and later taught there as a professor. Before that, he taught at the University of Waterloo. He received his Masters Degree from a Heed University in Florida. He taught in the Philippines (there is still remaining a shirt and flag he brought home), he helped found the London Small Business incubator (where Bart later lost his fingers on a table saw) and partnered with George Lewis to start a college in Centralia where Don was Dean of Academic Studies. Bob Becker started a campus for them in Durham. Don was an accomplished educator and left many awards and recognition plaques on the walls of 220 Huntington. He was asked to join Mensa but turned them down. Sometimes he appeared on TV and his family were so proud to see him. He delivered amazing tributes and presentations and was asked often to speak. He had a love of jazz and it was playing during the great Laila Biali Saturday night CBC show while this was being written. He’d play jazz and dance with Sparky the dog. He outlived his foe, Norm D who threatened both him and his younger brother and computer wiz IT pioneer, Paul, with a gun. Don liked cars and had a ’32 Ford with a V8 and rod brakes, a ’68 Firebird SOHC, a Mustang and other cool cars often with big engines. In the most recent years, Don helped Darrin race the Omega at Sparta, after helping him for decades to fix-up and maintain the car he had bought for Mom back in 1976.
Don was ready to go and he had been for a while. He spent 5 years between hospital and the long-term care home near Darrin’s house in Galt. Darrin got to see him often and take him to the cottage (in his Cutlass) but he missed Mom terribly. He was satisfied with his life and had told gis family so since his 50th birthday party and he was not afraid to leave. Dad wanted a simple cremation and to have his ashes spread in his favourite places. He will join Lynn on the beach in Red Bay and at the Grotto. They may sprinkle a little on Ouellette and Dougall Ave and on the spot where Norm D and his gang hung out by the Kresge’s or the Metropolitan stores. He will be reunited with his parents, Royce and Mabel, and his aunt and uncle Norm and Norma, and his brother Bill, and their infant brother known only as Baby Noble on a grave marked somewhere in Windsor Grove cemetery that Albert Brandt used to look after, a haven which safely keeps their Bica Rachila Antonese and gypsy grandfather and Mosu, Constantine Cojocar. Lauryn and Allysa poured an old bottle of Mosu’s whisky on his grave. It probably tasted better than what was in the bottle by the railroad tracks in Kayville, SK.
Donald will be missed by his wife Irene, sons Darrin and Sean, daughters-in-law Connie and Shaunie, grandchildren Jake, Gracyn, Allysa and Lauryn and surrogate daughter Yvonne Yolanda “Yodi” who called him “Sir”. As well, he will be fondly remembered by his brother, Paul Douglas and wonderful wife Moira and son Chris. In a 2008 letter, he asked Sean and Darrin to share these words: In loving memory of
Donald Royce Noble MA, MM
Devoted family man. College educator. Freemason
June 25 1934 – March 7 2022
“The best he was is his family”
Semper paratus
Continued good fortune and the Lord’s continued blessing to my singular, cherished family
See you on the high someday among the stars.
In the interim: Touch Not the Cat ‘Bot a Glove
Love eternal
P
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d r n
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Adieu. Fare thee well. See you down the trail, guys.
He asked if it might be posted to the big oak tree at his cottage.
Rest in peace amongst the stars with family and pals and Sparky and Jones the dog.
