I first heard the poem The Bridge Builder by Will Allen Dromgoole when the former Reform Party of Canada attributed it to my grandfather, Douglas Lloyd Campbell. All of my Campbell cousins will remember that the party created an award that would be presented to an individual that best embodies the spirit of the poem, just as Grandpa did. My Dad followed a similar path, and the highest compliment one could pay him is to compare him to DL. They were two superb human beings:

The Bridge Builder

by Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man going a lone highway,

Came at evening cold and grey,

To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim -

That sullen stream had no fears for him;

But he turned when he reached the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim near,

"You are wasting strength in building here.

Your journey will end with the ending day;

You never again must pass this way.

You have crossed the chasm deep and wide,

Why build you a bridge at the eventide?"

The builder lifted his old grey head.

"Good friend, in the path that I have come," he said,

"There followeth after me today

A youth whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm that has been naught to me

To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross on the twilight dim;

Good friend, I am building the bridge for him."

Dad and Sonya in Guelph, Ontario June 2009