My dad set an example of how to work yourself to death — and how not to

This First Person article is written by Taylor Maavara, who is a Canadian environmental scientist living in the U.K. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.

I found him again in Newfoundland. 

Cancer had forced my dad to cancel his trip in 2018 to photograph puffins. Dad had always been a photographer; it wasn't his career, but it was his passion. So that's why on a blustery August day in 2021, three months after he died, I lay on my belly on a clifftop on the edge of North America, my Toronto Blue Jays cap on backwards, glasses in my mouth, imitating one of Dad's characteristic photographing poses. I had brought his camera, despairing to see it collect dust where he last put it down. 

After getting the shot of the puffins, I pointed the lens east toward the ocean. A rainbow had formed over the horizon. Dad?

Dad was convinced he had worked himself to death. He cared deeply about his job, wore many hats and he worked long stressful hours with lots of travel. He took setbacks and successes at work personally, and was deeply invested in the well-being of the people around him. On one of the many nights that he thought would be his last, he held my hand and told me to stop following his path.

He knew that if I wasn't working, I felt guilty. I research how impacts like damming and climate change alter river ecosystems through changes to carbon and nutrient cycles. The pressure to constantly publish new, original, and impactful science was immense, and the nature of the work left me feeling like I was forever failing to produce anything that led to meaningful environmental improvement.

So I, too, worked weekends, evenings, and I lay awake in bed at night worrying about work. So three months after finding him on that Newfoundland trip, I quit my job. Without realizing it, I planned trips to places where I felt I'd find him. I didn't understand the escalating urgency I felt about these travels. 

I found Dad on an ice climbing trip in Algoma district in northern Ontario the following year with a friend. I found him on a February walk down the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto, where we used to ride bikes and photograph sunsets when I was younger. I found him on the seventh day of a ski expedition across Baffin Island. Looking through his camera at the absurd flat-topped Mount Asgard, I started tearing up because Dad was seemingly there with me and he was delighted. 

Whenever Dad got a good shot, he'd wait until after dinner to retreat to his office to edit the photo. He vibrated with excitement and his enthusiasm was infectious to everyone around the kitchen table. Once he was satisfied with the edit, he'd email the photo to his friends and family with a simple caption like "Good evening."

I drove across Canada that summer after I quit my job. I was clueing into the fact that my main motivator for the previous 12 months of travel had been to find Dad, even if I didn't know what that meant. I stopped at the Terry Fox Memorial in Thunder Bay, Ont., to thank Terry for giving Dad an extra couple years, since his legacy indirectly funded Dad's exceptional cancer treatment in Toronto.

I spent a weekend in Winnipeg, where I stood on the dock at the Forks that we'd once crashed our canoe into because Dad made me steer from the bow while he took a photo. I camped in Grasslands National Park and photographed prairie dogs in gale force winds. I scrambled up snowy mountains in Waterton Lakes National Park and wrote notes to Dad in the summit logbooks. On the West Ridge of Mount Tupper in the Selkirks, I felt like Dad was beside me photographing a mountain goat. 

Canoeing the Yukon River with friends, Dad would have been as upset with those headwinds as I was. "Be a leader," he kept repeating in my mind. But also, "Keep the canoe straight so I can get this shot."

I knew my rambling search had to end eventually; I couldn't stay unemployed. I drove back east to Toronto in August, mentally preparing myself for a new job that I wasn't sure I wanted. I worried I would default into my usual ways, Dad's usual ways, of overwork and exhaustion. 

But looking through Dad's camera, I found him all over Canada, and I realized, Dad had set the example for how to work yourself to death, but he also set the example for how not to. Dad used his camera as an instrument to spend time outdoors, meet new people and forge strong bonds with his friends and family. His camera was a tool: his map on the path of a life well-lived. 

I'd also been following those intertwined paths. But through my travels across Canada, Dad showed me how to stay on the path that leads to a full life. It wasn't as obvious, the navigation was harder, but the views were grander. I still lose the trail a lot; I'm not even sure if I'm on the correct path right now, but every so often I bump into Dad's memory and he points me in the right direction.

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