Ron (Buck Shot) Barge’s family bid a final farewell to the Calgary children’s TV legend’s on Friday. The Calgary icon graced television screens through four decades as a kids’ TV personality, becoming something of a famous public figure southern Albertans fondly remember to this day. It was on display at Friday’s service as rows of family, friends and admirers gathered at the memorial service in northeast Calgary.
, only 10 days shy of his 88th birthday. Well over 100 people showed up to Centre Street Church wearing jerseys, at the request of the family. Several of those jerseys donned the No.
13 worn by Johnny Gaudreau, another Calgary hero who recently died at the age of 31 and whom Barge, a passionate lifelong Flames fan, undoubtedly marvelled at during the young star’s time in Cowtown. The service was full of people who would’ve watched Buck Shot and Benny in their youth anywhere from 1967 to 1997; several of the people in the crowd even appeared on his show at some point over those 30 years. “What you saw on TV was what we saw at home,” Barge’s son, Ken, said before Friday’s service.
On the stage sat an accordion, a guitar, Benny the Bear, a Flames jersey and a classic western outfit. A screen displayed photos of Barge on TV, in decorated, undersized hat and with Benny the Bear. For many kids in their formative years, Barge was an unforgettable mainstay for local children’s television, a program with skits, song and puppets.
His program would become the longest-running children’s TV show in Canadian history by the time it ended in the late ’90s. For his four children, even though he was the oft-recognized face on Calgary streets and famous — at least by Canadian standards — he was known to them as daddy, a passionate guy who loved his wife, family, friends and music. Barge was someone who loved and expressed it, even in his last months, family and friends said Friday.
“A few days before he passed, and I’m washing the windows at my mom’s house, I’m cleaning the windows, and he says, ‘Brenda.’ ‘What, Dad?’ ‘You’re so beautiful,’ ” his daughter, Brenda Barge, said, standing beside her brother, Ken, the two holding hands before heading into the service. It was a unique upbringing having a father who didn’t wear a suit and tie to work, and instead played songs and carried around a puppet for a living, Brenda said.
“Sometimes it was like, you’re a teenager and you just want to be not special, you want to be just in with the crowd, but I was always really proud of my dad.” But that element of play that was so intrinsic to Barge’s TV presence was no different at home, said Ken Barge, Ron’s lone son along with three sisters. “All he did was play.
He had a passion for doing stuff and making people happy, and that’s what he did,” Ken said. Friday’s service included eulogies from a longtime friend and musician, TV broadcasters Linda Olsen and Jimmy Hughes, his brother Myron and niece Vicky, and his four children, Ken, Angie, Brenda and Cindy. Barge was remembered as a jokester with a unique sense of humour — the kind of person who used his wit, likely a product of years of improv, to his advantage.
“This is his humour: What’s the definition of a perfect pitch? Definition of a perfect pitch is when you throw the accordion in the dumpster and it hits a set of bagpipes,” said Lloyd Kunkle, an old friend and fellow musician. They, with a group of other musicians, travelled and played music together across Alberta for several decades. “That’s his.
” Among his most memorable traits was his love for his wife, Shirley. Kunkle described a Barge who only referred to his wife as “my Shirley.” Friday’s service was emblematic of Barge’s life: music, family, friends, humour, stories and the .
The procession of family members was soundtracked by Buck Shot & Benny the Bear, and had a mid-service performance of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. “He’d love this,” Ken Barge said. “I think in our heart of hearts, if we didn’t have to do this for him, it wouldn’t be this big.
But he was a showman. He was an entertainer. You just want him to have this joy in his last hurrah.
” X:.
