In the early 1960s, in the small Welsh town of Morriston, Joyce Lewis was getting ready for a date with a rugby player named Peter. The doorbell rang – and there were two men outside.
One was Peter, as billed. The other? Merlyn Williams.
“Merlyn told me: ‘If I toss a coin, you might decide to go out with me instead of him.’ I told him it doesn’t work that way,” Joyce recalled. She and Peter went out for the night.
After the date had ended, coming back past the church and down the road to her home, Joyce paused.
“Who was sitting on the church steps about four hours later? There was Merlyn, waiting for me to come back,” she said.
Merlyn and Joyce were married in 1965. They moved to Yellowknife in 1967, Merlyn opened the Williams Electronics business, and the couple became central figures in the city’s theatrical heart and community spirit for decades.
Merlyn passed away on September 7 at the age of 84. He is remembered as a storyteller without compare, a comedian, a loving husband and father, and a proud Welshman who nevertheless discovered Yellowknife and the North meant just as much to him – perhaps even more.
A celebration of his life will be held at the gymnasium of Sir John Franklin High School from 2-4pm on Sunday, November 2. Doors open at 1:30pm.
“He loved us so much and he made sure we were always safe and happy,” said one of his two daughters, Diana Curtis.
“That was the main thing – happy. You can be sad, you can be mad, you can cry, but dad always made sure we were happy.”
‘A world away’
Merlyn Williams was born to Rose and Trevor Williams in Morriston on March 18, 1941.
Having trained in electronics and married Joyce, Merlyn found himself impressed by a friend who had left Morriston for northern Canada, then returned to Wales for a visit: Gren Thomas, who would go on to become an icon of the territory’s diamond industry.
“Come for six months,” Joyce remembers Thomas telling the couple. Merlyn went to Yellowknife to work in the bush while she took a job at a hospital in Fort St John, BC before moving up to join him. They spent their first two nights together in Yellowknife at the Akaitcho Hall residence.
“It was a complete world away from Wales,” Joyce recalled of the town that would become their home for the next six decades.
“Wales was quiet-ish. Yellowknife seemed to be full of excitement and new things going on. It was only 2,500 population at that time up here, and you knew a lot of your neighbours, which was nice.”
Within days of Joyce arriving, the Williamses had been whisked to the East Arm of Great Slave Lake courtesy of Merlyn’s colleagues in the exploration industry.
As they sat on an East Arm beach waiting for a plane to carry them back home, Joyce recalled thinking: “We’ll be OK here.”
Roles and ravens
Merlyn worked for Harold Glick at Yellowknife Radio before deciding he could make his own business work. Williams Electronics was born, a brand and retail store that remains in the city to this day.
Meanwhile, he immersed himself in everything that he thought being a Yellowknifer meant. In particular, he nurtured a love of acting through performances at Mildred Hall School and the newly built Northern Arts and Cultural Centre.
“Yellowknife didn’t change him but it added to him, if you like. He became a thespian,” said Joyce, who joined in many of the performances.
“I remember really idolizing both my mother and father because they were up there on stage being completely different characters. They were becoming celebrities in my eyes,” said daughter Bethan Williams.
Merlyn formed the Nevar Singers with six fellow Welshmen, which was both a nod to his home country’s love of choirs and also to his own love of ravens, Nevar being the word “raven” backwards.
Merlyn, once dubbed “the raven whisperer” by the CBC, developed a lifelong affinity for the North’s most emblematic bird. His family swears some ravens formed lasting friendships with him.
Joyce remembers one raven being hit by a car outside Williams Electronics. Merlyn took it home to 54 Street, built an outdoor cage for the bird, provided food and water, and eventually coaxed it out into the garden for a tentative stroll and an inspection of the toddler pool (theoretically bought for Diana and Bethan) that he had transformed into a birdbath.
“The raven got a bit stronger and followed us up the steps and into the house,” said Joyce.
“He came up the steps, walked across the kitchen floor, pooped a few times and then got as far as the fridge. He was waiting for the fridge door to open.”
Merlyn and the raven only parted ways after a spirited and lengthy conversation once the bird had gone back outside and found its way to a neighbour’s roof.
‘He would tell stories, we would listen’
If anyone knew spirited, lengthy conversations in Yellowknife, it was Merlyn.
More than anything, residents and family members remember him for his stories and a sense of humour that never faded.
“He was totally annoying when I was growing up. Well, he wasn’t annoying, but he was always a jokester, and a lot of my friends remember him telling jokes coming into the house. He’d always have a story to tell my friends,” said Diana.
“There’s no filter. Merlyn just didn’t need a filter.”
“He was always a conversationist,” added Bethan. “He definitely made people feel comfortable. He was also a very, very good listener – and I would say he was a bit of a flirt.”
He put his natural charm to the best of causes, becoming a pillar of events like the annual springtime Caribou Carnival. Soon, Merlyn was a near-guaranteed presence at any Yellowknife community gathering of consequence.
“I decided at some point I was going to ride in the Canada Day parade every year on my scooter with flags and silly outfits,” said Janet Pacey, another fixture at many of Yellowknife’s more recent events.
“All of a sudden, there’s Merlyn with his little moped that he basically built himself and his little red-and-white outfit and his statuette of Nugget, the dog they used to have.
“He would ride around in his moped with that dog in the basket, and he’d have a big hat on, and he’d say to me: ‘Janet Pacey, we’re going to ride in the parade together.'”
Merlyn would ride in a straight line. Pacey would complete laps around him.
“We just had a great time. That went on for years and years,” she said.
“He was very deeply Welsh – the later in the evening it got, the more Welsh she became – and he and Joyce were the cutest couple.
“We would go and visit at Christmas, he would sit and tell stories, and we would sit and listen for a couple hours. Him telling stories, eating cookies. It was just great. He was a fantastic man. Funny to the core.”
People personality
Merlyn lived the last part of his life with aplastic anemia, a form of blood cancer.
He is survived by his wife, daughters, a brother, five grandchildren and six nieces and nephews.
“My dad was sharp right to the very end. He didn’t skip a beat,” Bethan said.
She remembers him as a father who took her everywhere, giving her a “tomboy” childhood packed with adventures that she devoured enthusiastically.
“We went hunting, we went fishing, we went exploring, we went looking for things, for artifacts. I’d go out with him flying his planes. I’d go rescue his planes. We’d go canoeing together. We’d go out on the boat,” she recalled.
“He would make it fun. We would be looking for old cabins and then he’d tell stories, so you couldn’t wait to find this cabin in the woods.”
Diana sees in her father the source of the joy that people say she exudes.
“I know that comes from both my mom and dad. I think my dad just gave me that people personality that comes out in me,” she said.
“I’m not afraid to tell a story, even if it’s a bad story. I know when to stop talking, too. I know when to read the room and zip it. He may not have known that.”
Joyce remembers a man whose heart and integrity remained constant, from the man who penned a love poem to Yellowknife within a year of moving to the city, right through to the man who fought for the interests of northern seniors in his later years.
Diana said the family hopes to carry the torch of belonging and community presence that Merlyn has passed.
“I can’t drive a scooter,” she admitted.
“But Janet Pacey can drive a scooter in the parade, and maybe mom and I… maybe we go in a sidecar, you know? I know we can carry that on.”
