If engineer built a deck, elephants could dance on it
James (Jim) Moyer of Paris Born: March 1, 1949, in Guelph Died: Sept. 2, 2018, of cancer
BRANTFORD — Born March 1, 1949 and raised on the family farm near Maryhill, northeast of Kitchener, Jim Moyer could have done without the cows, pigs and chickens and he wasn’t fond of farm work but then there were those powerful tractors.
If it had an engine and wheels, Jim was in heaven.
“He liked the machines,” said his wife, Carol Moyer. “He was driving tractor at age 10.”
This passion for all things mechanical would follow Jim throughout his life, into his career as a civil engineer and his years in commercial and industrial building design and construction.
“He came from three generations of builders,” said Carol who often benefitted from her husband’s self-sufficiency and doeverything-right-the-first time, attitude.
“I’d say ‘if Jim built a deck, 10 elephants could dance on it,’” she said. “When he did something, he did it well.”
Jim’s early years on the farm were rather privileged, born the only boy in a family of seven girls.
“He always used to say ‘my girls take care of me,’” said Carol. Then she remembered how he was also the only kid in the family with his own bedroom and he would be the one sitting in the front seat on car rides while his sisters were squished in the back. Mind you when the family moved to Kitchener, Jim not only lost his private bedroom, he had to sleep on a cot in the hallway.
Generally, being the only boy did have its privileges even if he wasn’t always the apple of his sisters’ eyes.
The first time citygirl Carol met Jim was at her friend Jane Moyer’s house. Carol was 13 and Jim only 11, hardly dating material. Jim and a pal had come into the house and sister Jane was not amused.
“His sister said ‘that’s my dumb brother and his dumb friend,’” recalled Carol.
Little did Carol know that just over a decade later, that ‘dumb brother’ would become her husband.
“I have no recollection of seeing him again until we were in our 20s,” she said. There was one time, when she needed a lift back from Oshawa where Carol, a teacher, had been attending an outdoor education program and Jim was on a co-op engineering work term.
“He drove me home, that’s when I took to him,” she said. “He’s not a big talker, he was quiet.”
Their next encounter was the following summer and one instigated by Carol.
“A group of us used to go to the Maryhill pub,” she said. “There was a woman named Mary who played the piano and everyone would bring instruments.”
Carol’s brother was coming to the gathering one evening so she suggested Jane invite her brother, Jim.
“She said he wouldn’t want to come so I said I’d ask him,” said Carol. “He said ‘yes’ and followed me to the car.”
Jim, still the quiet one, was kinda hard to read but he made his feelings known when a guy approached Carol and said he knew her birthday was coming up and he would take her out for dinner.
That spurred Jim into action. “He said ‘she can’t go, she’s going out with me.’”
There was no follow up, no plans made, no promises of time or location made. Nevertheless, Carol felt confident and dressed up on her special day and Jim showed up. He was always a man of his word and that date would be the beginning of a romance.
“We got married in 1972,” she said. “I was 23, he was 21 and still in university.”
After graduating in the same year, Jim took a job with a Hamilton-based construction company though he was not happy. Jim was upset the company was building public housing to minimum code and not for quality.
“He couldn’t stand people who took shortcuts,” she said.
After about a year Jim quit and landed a job at Schultz Construction in Brantford, a company that shared his values for quality work, for paying attention to detail and Jim was always about details.
That job would be the beginning of Jim’s legacy, as his company built industrial and commercial properties all over Ontario. He left his mark on dozens of communities around the province.
Around the same time he started with Schulz, the couple adopted their first son, David, followed soon after by Eric. Carol quit teaching to raise her family.
In 1975 Schultz was changed to T.E. Taylor Construction Ltd. and run by Jim and his partner, Tom Taylor. In 1999, after Tom retired, Jim assumed full ownership and changed the name to STM Construction.
Working for a Brantford company where there would be a lot of demands on his time meant the family had to move to Brantford from Cambridge. After about three years, they purchased a lot to build a home and Jim was in heaven, planning every inch.
Though she loved her spacious Brantford home, once the boys left it was a lot of space for two people and Carol wanted to realize her long held desire to live in Paris. In 2009, they purchased a Victorian house, a creaky old place that Jim wasn’t thrilled with.
“I loved old houses, which he couldn’t stand,” said Carol. “This one was built in 1868.
“People said he must really love me to take this on.”
The problem for Jim was that old houses need pretty much everything floor to ceiling, and walls are generally not straight. For an engineer who craves linear lines, the Victorian was a challenge both emotionally and physically.
Jim was very much a hands-on guy, refusing to hire tradespeople for jobs he figured he could handle.
“There was nothing he didn’t think he could do,” she said, adding with a laugh “It’s a wonder he didn’t fill his own teeth.”
Jim had also renovated the building they purchased on the main street of Paris, where Carol ran her home and garden decor shop The River Lily from 2009 to 2012.
“The (house) front porch was his last project,” she said, noting the terminal colon cancer diagnosed in February barely slowed him down.
“That was sheer courage and determination,” she said. “He just kept going.”
Jim sold his business in 2006, hoping to spend more time at the family cottage at Long Point where he kept his beloved boat, purchased in 1980 and given the rather cheeky name, “Willing Lady.” Willing was Carol’s maiden name.
“Building and water were the constants in his life,” she said. “He was a builder, through and through.
“My mother used to say he’d need to live two lives to finish all his projects.”
Jim died of cancer Sept. 7, having spent his retirement years renovating, helping anyone that asked and occasionally working as a consultant. Carol said he liked nothing better than coming into the house and spreading fresh new blueprints across the dining room table.
“He loved the challenge of trying to figure things out,” she said.