Marko Ropar
Husband, father, master woodworker. Born on Jan. 31, 1938, in Bosiljevo, Yugoslavia; died on Jan. 5, 2016, in Toronto, of natural causes, aged 77.
"Never leave work for tomorrow, only food." That was one of Dad's favourite sayings, and words he always lived by. Marko was born in what was then Yugoslavia (now Croatia), just before the start of the Second World War. As a child he learned all too quickly the realities of hardship, struggle and survival.
The loss of his father during the war meant that during the difficult post-war years, his mother relied on Marko, the eldest child and son, to help support his three younger siblings, even though he was still a young boy. As a result, his formal education stopped at about grade four.
As a teenager he had to do mandatory military service, which cemented his belief in the need for discipline, both in work and in life. If you didn't apply discipline to your duties, you could be broken, mentally and physically. But his time in the army wasn't all bad, Dad said; the environment encouraged camaraderie, loyalty and friendship. My mother remembers vividly how the village boys came back after serving. They were men. They walked straighter and taller and exuded quiet confidence (and yes, all the girls would swoon).
Dad knew that his family's subsistence farming would never yield a better life, so he developed his natural talent for woodworking and building and honed those skills while working in Germany for five years. He returned home, married Ana Tomasic in 1965, and went back to Germany for another year to earn money to emigrate from their homeland.
They made their way to Canada in the late 1960s and never looked back – or went back, for that matter. They made new lives in Toronto and raised two daughters, Nancy and Annie.
It wasn't until 2011 that I was able to cajole Dad into visiting Croatia with me and my husband. It was my first trip there, and Dad's first trip back. I am so thankful we went – he talked about it for years after. He explained why he hadn't returned earlier ("It was too expensive," "We didn't have the time") but as our trip proved, Dad was more Canadian than he realized. Although he was in his homeland, he felt like a foreigner. Everything had changed there, but he was very different, too, altered by his own experiences, building a new life from nothing, raising a family, beating cancer, hating retirement. And had he known there were no Tim Hortons there, he might have backed out of the trip – he really savoured that first cup when we got home!
Dad could never just relax – he always had to be doing something. During his working years as a cabinetmaker and carpenter, he would spend all of his hard-earned vacations doing home renovation projects. He was a workaholic, but he was always there for his children, whether to take us to school, give us a hug, or make us laugh when we needed it most.
Marko was full of love for his family and we knew it. He wanted us to have more fun in our lives. His advice was direct, and practical: "You're working too hard!" "You should eat more!" Funny to hear these words from a man whose own philosophy was "Work today, food tomorrow." But we were immensely lucky to have him and his example. Because of him we worked hard and succeeded because we wanted to, not because we had to.
Annie Ropar is Marko's daughter.