In memory of my brother: Charles Truman (1949 – 2026)

I was heading for the Didsbury car show on the morning of Saturday, May 9 when I got the call. I backtracked home, packed a bag, and was off to Regina. 

I arrived in time to reminisce with my older brother who owned some pretty nice cars in his younger days. He even trusted me enough to let me take his ’68 Firebird to town once. 

Back then, he was working in Regina, and Albert Street wasn’t just a road—it was a makeshift dragstrip, a stretch of pavement where a heavy foot and a manual transmission were the only requirements.

By 1974, when I visited him in Toronto, the muscle cars had given way to the free-spirited curves of a VW dune buggy. As the story goes, it was that very buggy that acted as a matchmaker. He was elbow-deep in repairs when a young woman stopped to talk to him; she would eventually become his wife. Their legacy includes three amazing young men: Charles, Kevin and Brian. That makes four generations of Charles Trumans.   

It’s difficult to say good-bye to someone who I grew up with and idolized. Unlike me, he excelled at sports and was playing defence for the senior Midale Mustangs when he was in high school. I enjoyed watching him perform and do well at everything he tried. I was a big kid but Charlie was four years older and he won every fight we ever had, pinning me down until I finally gasped out a surrender and called “uncle.”

When dad went to the United States for a month to visit his relatives in October 1964, Charlie and I had to take care of the farm. He hated milking cows so the deal was struck: I would do all the milking and he did everything else. 

He tended to be very focused and somewhat of a perfectionist. I can still see the summerfallow fields he worked—every turn in the black Saskatchewan soil was a mirror image of the last, so precise that even Uncle Carl couldn’t help but comment on the beauty of the work as he drove past. It wasn’t easy turning that 55 Massey with armstrong steering. When he took over the farm, in 1983 he won the “Outstanding Young Farmer in Saskatchewan” award from the Jaycees.

It wasn’t just farming where he did well. In high school, he was president of the Student Council and was also selected to go on a student exchange trip down east. 

Charlie’s life began with a flash of fire. On the night he was born, a bolt of lightning struck our haystack, sending it up in flames. It’s only fitting that his journey comes full circle; his ashes will be spread on that very site, returning him to the earth where the lightning once fell.

He passed away peacefully soon after midnight on May 10, 2026 at the Regina General Hospital.