CAMBRIDGE — Roland Jonas may have appeared to the world as a tough, sometimes stubborn and always busy small business owner, but his family says there was much more to him than that.
An avid angler, he’d often end up talking more about fishing at the family hunt camp up north than the appliances he was trying to sell at Jonas TV, said son Peter Jonas.
“He’d be talking with someone about a washing machine then I’d turn around and he’d be talking about the lodge with them. Sometimes he’d spend more time talking about the lodge than the washer.”
Roland Jonas died Friday at age 79.Barbara Jonas remembers her husband as “a family man. We did everything with kids, together,” Barbara said.
“I remember when we had a station wagon and had service calls in the evening in the 1960s. We put all the (four) kids in the back and all we went to the call. That’s the way we did it back then.”
Peter remembers his dad as a doting grandfather to a dozen children.
“He was hard on the outside and soft on the inside,” Peter said.
“A marshmallow on the inside,” said Peter’s wife, Susan.
Roland quit Galt Collegiate Institute in Grade 9 to join the Royal Canadian Navy. He served aboard ship in the Korean War.
A natural athlete, Roland played football, hockey and boxed when not on duty as a radio operator. It was his electronics training that gave him a career after discharge from the navy in 1953.
Peter now owns the store that began with his dad repairing televisions and putting up antennas on towers around Galt. In 1955, Roland opened the store in a house at Water and Dando streets. It was there he met Barbara. She started work there in 1958, doing the books. They married in 1960.
In 1968, the family moved to a 20-hectare (50 acre) farm along Highway 97 east of town, leaving the house to grow into a full-fledged television and appliance store. At the farm, Roland tried his hand at raising cattle, growing fruit trees and tending to hives of bees.
Daughter Christina remembers how her dad sold honey at the store — and was on call to the fire department whenever a swarm of bees bothered a homeowner.
Members of the Continental German Canadian Club, Barbara remembers how “Roly always liked to dance.” He was also a member of the Galt Sportmens Club, where he was a crack shot in handgun competitions.
Peter said his dad purchased an old logging camp near Sudbury 30 years ago that became a summer family retreat.
“He’d always say I’ve got so much work up there, I’ve got to get there,” said daughter-in-law Susan. “But first, he had seven hours of fishing to do before he’d do any of the work.”
Peter said his dad could hook a fish anywhere, anytime. “I could be getting nothing all day and I’d hand him my rod. He’d get something right away.”
Diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease didn’t slow Roland until about a year ago, Peter said. Two years ago, he amazed farm visitors by chopping stacks of wood or running circles around them on all-terrain vehicles.
A celebration of life is planned at Corbett Funeral Home, 95 Dundas St., Monday, May 2, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The family suggests memorial donations to the Alzheimer Society of Canada or the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
kswayze@therecord.com
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