July 22, 1933—July 22, 2024

Gerald Goddard was known for his faith, generosity, good humour, hard work, and loving family.
“Gerry,” as some affectionately called him, was born in Thetford Mines, the son of Frank Goddard and Rose McCutcheon, French-speaking Quebecers, according to Gerald’s son, Stephen.

“Around age 3, he moved with them to Island Brook. His first language was French, but he went to school in English in Island Brook until halfway through Grade 4 when he was taken out of school to begin working to help support the family,” Stephen wrote in his eulogy, given at Hope Church in Lennoxville in August.

“He worked on local farms and started logging at age 11, meeting the minimum requirement to cut and pile to scale five cords of four-foot pulp to keep a job with a logging crew. This was done with a crosscut saw.

“He left me a very strong work ethic and attitude that no job was too difficult to complete.”
At age 18, Gerald and his mother split the cost—$2000 each—of buying a farm in Island Brook, where Gerald lived, married, farmed, and raised his family for the next 60 years.

In 1959, Gerald married Mary Cooper, and they had five children: Daniel, Shirley, Stephen, Tim, and Ruth. Gerald continued logging throughout his life, earning a reputation locally for being very thorough and thrifty in his work. His forest floors were left tidy.

He also made and sold maple syrup on his farm and grew Christmas trees, oats, buckwheat, potatoes, and more.

Gerald became a strong devotee of Christian religious faith after attending evangelical meetings in Island Brook, guided by Hubert Lewis, then pastor of the Island Brook Pentecostal Church. Later in life, Gerald was also renowned for sharing that faith, sometimes more generously than time allowed. Son Stephen said the family estimates Gerald gave out around 1200 sheets of paper with biblical verses to guests and people he met along his way.

“Much later in life, he went to Adult Education, completing the equivalent of Grade 8 or 10,” Stephen wrote in his eulogy.

“He was an outdoors man who loved hunting, fishing, gold-panning, and metal-detecting… I received a love of the outdoors from my Dad,” wrote Stephen, who is today an arborist based on the outskirts of Cookshire-Eaton.