Richard (Dick) Erik Gilbert Sanders

August 24, 1937-February 13, 2025

In 1955, Dick Sanders met the love of his life, Ann Geary, at a dance in Montreal. He was a Sir George Williams student, working summers in the Canadian Army reserves to pay for university, and Ann was studying at Macdonald College to become a teacher. For the next four years they dated and were engaged in 1959, but frightening news threatened their future together.

Ann was diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer and given two years to live. Her parents took Dick aside and told him they'd understand if he wanted to walk away from their engagement, but he adamantly refused. Thank goodness. Ann underwent surgery in February, 1959, and was declared free of cancer. They married five months later, on July 11, in the Town of Mount Royal, Montreal, and Dick pursued a career in advertising while Ann began to teach elementary school.

In 1964, Dick and Ann moved to Toronto where their first child, Shelly-Ann, was born in July. Just seventeen months later, a son, Scott Erik, was born. Dick was ecstatic; as an only child he'd longed for a sibling. The Sanders family was complete in 1970 when Susan Louise arrived in March. An avid hockey fan (Dick spent hours a day in the winter as a child in Beaconsfield, Quebec, playing hockey on the frozen lake, using magazines as shinpads), Dick made sure his children learned how to skate, with lessons at the Granite Club.

Eager to pursue opportunities south of the border, Dick jumped at the chance to move to Chicago for a new job and career, in wallpaper sales. In 1972, the family moved to Rolling Meadows, Illinois, a short drive to O'Hare Airport where Dick spent a lot of time, as he traveled frequently throughout the United States for work.

In his spare time, Dick coached Scott's hockey teams, experimented with the latest wallpaper trends at home, and dabbled in do-it-yourself projects with varying success! There was the picnic table he built with the seats too low to reach the table and the fireplace he bricked, with the bricks set directly on top of one another, instead of the usual staggered pattern, a reflection of his wonderfully atypical personality.

After six years in Chicago, Dick and Ann moved the family back to Canada, to Waterloo, Ontario, where he ran his own wallpaper business and played tennis, a sport he enjoyed until just a few years ago. Throughout the family's moves, there was one constant in Dick's life—family. He loved being a father and never missed any of his children's parent-teacher nights or Halloween trick-or-treating, and he made Christmas special with real spruce trees that filled the house with the scent of joy. And, over the last thirty-two years, Dick thrived as a proud "Gramps," eagerly attending his grandchildren's school performances and activities.

After retiring, Dick took up landscape painting with an extraordinary passion, setting up his easel in front of Starbucks where he could chat to passersby. In fact, he went to Starbucks for coffee so regularly that, at one point, if you looked at the Google Earth image of the Starbucks at the intersection of Caroline and Brant Streets in Burlington, you would see Dick Sanders, at the door!

Dick continued painting when he and Ann moved to Trafalgar Lodge Retirement Home in 2024, where he gave painting talks to residents and displayed his art at shows kindly organized by Trafalgar Lodge.

Beloved by his family, Dick will be missed by his devoted wife, Ann, his three children, Shelly (Steve), Scott, Sue; nine grandchildren, Shaleesa, Amanda (Morgan) Texony, Bethany, Shontelle (Rahul), Ian (Khadijah), Leora, Shontia, Zachary; two great-grandchildren, Alia, Aisha; sister-in-law, Gayle (Michael), nephew, Alexander (Narayana), and cousins. A Celebration of his life will be held at Kopriva Taylor Community Funeral Home, 64 Lakeshore Road West, Oakville, Ontario on Monday, February 17, 2-4 pm.

Please consider donations to the Canadian Heart and Stoke Foundation.