Obituary for David Friesen

June 29, 2022

David Frank Friesen passed away June 10 peacefully at his farm on the Snake Trail, just shy of his 93rd birthday.

Born in 1929 to David and Agatha Friesen on a farm near Altona, Man., he grew up in a small farming community. One of his first jobs was to work for the Manitoba Hydro company and then at 18 he joined the RCMP.

One of his first postings was to Cardston, where he served with Rufus Goodstriker. He fell in love with beautiful foothills and surrounding mountains and vowed to retire in this area.

He was predeceased by his sisters Esther and Ruth, and his wife, Pat.

He is survived by his sister Alma Park, who is 94, and by his two daughters and their spouses, Shannon and Gordon Culham and Trish and Gerald Golbeck. Dave has four grandchildren, Cara and David Culham, Ryan Beckett and Jacquie Eden, as well as five great-grandchildren, Matthias, Markus and Eva Eden, and Katelyn and Braxton Livingstone.

All his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were able to visit him in the last two weeks before he passed.

Dave served with the RCMP for 25 years, spending most of his service time in the Yukon Territory and Northwest Territories. He became involved in his community wherever he lived. He also empowered the local Inuit people, helping to install the first Inuit justice of the peace during his time in Coppermine. He and Pat also initiated an Inuit co-operative for the selling of their artwork and furs.

Dave’s favourite sports were hockey, curling and golf. He even made a rough course on a sandbar in the Arctic when he and his wife, Pat, would golf on weekends.

After retiring from the RCMP, Dave served as president for several community sports organizations, the Yellowknife Curling Club and Golf Course. He coached the Cowley Lundbreck Weasels hockey team, co-founded the Livingstone Landowners Association, and served with the Cowley Lions Club as president and then as Lions district governor.

He was granted an outstanding citizen’s award this year by the Pincher Creek MD for his legacy in seeking justice for the Indigenous school children at Lower Post residential school in British Columbia.

Dave loved the great outdoors and was an avid fisherman and hunter. He took up saw-sharpening and framing as hobbies when he established his retirement home on the Dunmoovin Farm in the Porcupine Hills.

In his later years he enjoyed spending his winters in San Carlos, Mexico, and in helping his daughter Shannon on the farm cutting grass and making deer sausage. He will be fondly remembered and ever missed by his family.

He lived his life in fulfilling the motto on his RCMP uniform, written in French as “Maintiens le Droit,” which means to “maintain or uphold the right.”

A celebration of life will be held Saturday, July 16, at 2 p.m. at the Dunmoovin Farm.

Shootin’ the Breeze extends condolences to the family and friends of David Friesen.