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Robert Hungle missed by Yellowknife

Amanda Vaughan
Northern News Services
Published Friday, September 28, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Robert Hungle was a man who gladly spent every winter alone in one of the country's more isolated areas, yet was gregarious enough to make friends wherever he went, according those who knew him well.

NNSL Photo/Graphic

Robert Hungle hugs his daughter, Renee Ellis, during a visit to her Alberta home earlier this summer. - photo courtesy of Renee Ellis

"He couldn't make an enemy," said his eldest daughter, Renee Ellis.

"I could never stay mad at him for more than two seconds," she added.

Ellis lives in Slave Lake Alberta with her husband and three children, though she was recently in Yellowknife for her father's memorial service.

Hungle died of natural causes sometime on or before September 13 at the Red Rock Lake Lodge. The lodge is owned by the well-known aviator Max Ward, who founded Wardair, and Hungle was his winter caretaker.

Hungle had spent every winter at the lodge for the last 20 years, leaving Yellowknife in late August or early September, and not returning until break-up, according to his long-time friend, Larry Galt.

"He made the most of his three months in town," Galt said. He described Hungle as a "free spirit" who "always seemed to be in the thick of a party," but also loved the solitude of the lodge.

Ward's secluded mansion had been vandalized over the winter, causing costly damage, and Galt said word got out that he was looking for a caretaker who wouldn't hunt or trap or do anything that would involve leaving the lodge alone for long periods of time. This suited Hungle just fine, and continued to for the next two decades.

Ellis said her father loved to read anything he could get his hands on, and loved visiting her and his grandchildren, which was his ritual every summer.

"He was a kind and gentle man, very giving, and also unusual," Ellis said of her father.

She spoke of him as a very independent soul, who refused to live on anyone else's terms but his own. In spite of this fearlessly independent streak, Galt also described Hungle as a man who was universally loved.

"To know him was to like him," he said.

With a chuckle, Ellis mentioned that even his old girlfriends never had a bad word about her father.

Fellow Yellowknifer Cynthia Brown confirms Ellis' statement, and credits Hungle for her own move to the capital, after meeting him in an Edmonton bar in 1975.

"He was coming back to Yellowknife, and I came back with him," Brown said of her old flame. She said she was 20 years old, and to come town with Hungle was to be instantly accepted into an established group of friends and acquaintances.

"He was responsible for introducing me to all the Old Town residents at the time, and I was immediately part of the community," she said. Brown described Hungle as a talkative man who loved to tell stories, and get footloose.

"We went to all the dances, and he was a great dancer," Brown said with a girlish giggle to complement her memories.

Brown said she lived with Hungle for two years, and it was an eventful time for her.

"I caught my first fish, and he taught me how to shoot a gun," she said, also describing a summer that the two spent with several friends out at an abandoned cabin on the Devil's Channel.

Brown said Hungle did various jobs before watching the lodge for Max Ward, including working at a bar, and a finance company in the early 70s.

"It was a big joke," She laughed, "nobody could picture him sitting there in a shirt and tie approving people's loans. But he did it."

Brown fondly referred to Hungle as the kind of person that picked up easily with old friends.

"Whenever you saw Bob, no matter how long it had been, he was always happy to see you," she said.

Robert Hungle was 60 years old when he died. His well-attended memorial service was held last Friday afternoon at the Legion.