Coffee, Fishing, Family & Ocean: The Life of John Darguzas

Rimus Jonas Victor Darguzas, or John, as he was known to almost everyone who knew him after his school days, passed away after a stubborn and hard-fought battle with cancer on April 11, 2015.

Born  in Germany en route to a better life in Canada (via Lithuania, and his fiercely brave parents Stefania and Victor Darguzas),  John’s gritty and determined entrance to this world later extended out to all facets of his life and personality.

Graduating from the University of Manitoba in 1968 with a degree in English, John crowed that he Coles-noted the majority of the way through. He may have taken some shortcuts, but his frank, thoughtful intelligence was immediately evident to anyone who met him. His innovation and charismatic rule-breaking charmed Jacqueline Ramsay when he met her (while dressed as a giant baby) at a Halloween party in 1967.  They married in 1970 and chased the Canadian dream to the West Coast when they bought a tiny, wildly impractical and soul-searingly beautiful little cabin in the forest of North Vancouver.   The cabin became the focal point of John’s family for special occasions, reflection, and life’s most important decisions.  It was John’s favourite place to stare at the rolling clouds, blue-black ocean and ever-changing backdrop of Indian Arm: a place he believed fully to be the most spectacular place in the world.

John held a series of increasingly senior sales positions at Kellogg’s, and later McKillican Distribution, where he leveraged his innovative intelligence and trademark straight-shooting likeability to garner quota success and the respect of his peers.  Unfailingly logical and methodical, intrinsically kind, and unrepentantly opinionated, John was the kind of man that was impossible to forget.  He worked hard and played with great relish: fishing and boating and participating in extreme gardening: all the while revelling in the wild beauty of the West Coast with his family. His tough-as-nails exterior sometimes obscured a giant, compassionate heart that enveloped his grand babies, friends, family, animals, and anything that was suffering or hurt in any way.

John is survived by his devoted, endlessly patient, and gentle wife Jacqueline Darguzas (nee Ramsay), his sister Lidia Darguzas, his son David Darguzas and his partner Mittita Barber, and his equally obstinate daughter Kristin Auger and her husband Corey.  He had numerous nieces and nephews and  3 grandchildren: Nolan, Jude and Summer, who loved "Grandat" as exuberantly and unquestioningly as he did them.

John’s spirit, grit, and belief in working hard, passionately and deeply won’t ever be forgotten in the hearts of his friends and family who loved him so very much.

John's wish was to forego a formal funeral because "They're just sad and people cry and no one likes going to them" -- but In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the Paul Sugar Palliative Support Foundation.  John's family will be forever grateful for the true and deep kindness Dr. Sugar and his team demonstrated in John's last days.