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Friday April 18, 2025

HAPPY EASTER

Easter brings back a flood of memories. Some good, none bad and some just a little weird.

My earliest memory of Easter was an annual trip into Vancouver to HONEST NATS DEPARTMENT store "48th and Fraser" to be exact if you remember the 50’s radio commercial. I believe my father the late UNCLE JOE CHESNEY must have had a part in the writing of that popular radio commercial because I don’t ever remember my Dad fishing out his wallet after we had picked out and up or Easter outfits.

For me it was usually a new white shirt, dress slacks and a sports jacket. Somewhere in a box buried away in my storage locker, there are 8 mm home movies of Marlene (my sister) and I all duded up ready for church. Far too often when visitors came over my Dad for some strange reason felt they would love to see our family’s history on a projector screen set up in the living room. Gather round. “Hey Dad show the people how you can make Marlene and I walk backwards up the stairs” usually got a few laughs.

Another memory that comes crashing through each Easter is the story of THE FUNNY BUNNY. You see the aforementioned father UNCLE JOE CHESNEY when he started his own radio station in Langley in the early 60’s he felt the radio station needed a listener Easter contest. The birth of FUNNY BUNNY was underway. Listeners to the radio station were encouraged to draw, sculpt, paint, weld mould or whatever you imagined a “funny bunny:” would look like. I know it sounds hokey right? Well hokey resonated with the listeners of the radio station. The annual contest quickly got out of hand. The judging of the best three bunnies usually took place at the Guildford shopping centre.  Hundreds turned out to see this simple little contest.

The FUNNY BUNNY became so big we took it on the road, I say we because as the boss’s kid in my teens it was my job to move the dozens of FUNNY BUNNIES around the Fraser valley to promote businesses who agree to have a bunch of weird and wonderful bunnies in their showroom window. One ill fated trip with all the bunnies loaded up in a stretch van, I was coming from Fort Langley to Langley, when someone cut me off. It was death or glory for me and the funny bunnies. I hammered on the brakes to avoid the crash. Big problem. The FUNNY BUNNY that had won the promotion that year was a 3 foot tall bunny created out of sugar cubes. The tidal wave of sugar cubes came sliding to the front of the van and most of the other bunnies were heavily damaged. The sugar cube version could not be saved and the final stop on the 1967 FUNNY BUNNY contest had a number of funny bunnies that were not looking as wonderful as their original version.

My fondest EASTER memory was Easter Dinner which usually meant some other family would be coming for dinner, or we would be venturing into the big city of Vancouver for dinner at the Connoly’s. Today family is the feeling that circles me and causes me to reflect how lucky I have been and how lucky I continue to be.

Monday my newly adopted Viking Clan family arrives from all points east to our home on Merklin street where the games room is already being reinvented my my fiancée Gayle, who packs away Easter items like Christmas decoration. She loves it. I love her!

HAPPY EASTER from our house to yours.

David Chesney
Editor/Publisher

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