John “Jack” Edward Parry was born on March 5, 1930 in Victoria, British Columbia. Jack was swept off his feet by Jenny Stoicescu and they married in 1960, a love affair which endured for 62 years. The couple moved to Ottawa, where Jack worked with the Department of Transportation as a VIP flight engineer. Jack served on the flight deck of the prime ministerial aircraft serving prime ministers Pearson, Trudeau, Clark and Turner. It was at this stage in his life that Jack learned that politicians were not to be approached cautiously for their eminence or distinction; they were just regular people doing their best to serve their country. No different than him. Jack was a father, grandfather and great-grandfather, and it was in the early years with his young family that he developed a passion for travelling to Florida to escape the Canadian winters. In his retirement, Jack and Jenny tried the Winter Texan lifestyle for three years before deciding to “settle” in Florida for the remainder of their snowbird career. In late 1991 and early 1992, governments in Canada, and more specifically Ontario, began announcing that there would be limits placed on payments for out-of-country medical services that were previously paid for in full. Snowbird travel insurance premiums, as a result, had increased by up to 10 times. If the governments of Canada stopped paying for medical expenses as mandated by the Canada Health Act, how would retired Canadians, most on limited fixed incomes, be able to afford to travel? Encouraged by his dear and devoted wife, and being keenly aware of the financial difficulties which Canadians would have, Jack took it upon himself to reach out to Canada News, a small Florida newspaper dedicated to Canadian news. He implored the publisher to help him organize a meeting so that Canadians visiting the United States could come together and have a unified voice. His initial pleadings were rebuffed, but Jack persisted. He continued with a simple snail mail letter campaign insisting that Canada News assist him with his cause. Jack wrote as many as a dozen letters and his goal was finally realized. Canada News published a notice “Calling all Canadians” to convene at the Lakeland Center in Lakeland, Florida on March 19, 1992. Although the group had yet to give itself a name, this was the day on which the Canadian Snowbird Association was conceived. For all intents and purposes, Jack Parry was the founding father. Their immediate goal was to establish an association of snowbirds to lobby the Canadian provinces and force them to obey the Canada Health Act. When we asked Jack about those early days, he exclaimed with bewilderment, “They made fun of us!” “People said that will never work, who cares about a bunch of retired Canadians in America?” What a pleasure it must have been for him to watch the Canadian Snowbird Association grow from the original 1,092 snowbirds to more than 100,000 members during his tenure and to prove all of those naysayers wrong. As a founding member of the Canadian Snowbird Association, he was elected as a co-chairman of the association’s initial steering committee and was appointed as the first president of the Canadian Snowbird Association prior to the association’s first organizational meeting held at the Florida State Fairgrounds on February 27, 1993. “We are not going to take this lying down. We are going to tell the politicians that we are going to go where we like, for how long as we like.” OBITUARY Jack Parry March 5, 1930 - March 18, 2023 52 | www.snowbirds.org
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