Condolences

• June 24, 2021

  Foster Ben

  Hello Kelsey and Rae-Anne thank you for everything you did for Mark. RAMBLING MEMORIES OF A FRIEND! by Ben Foster. It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of my good friend Mark Fenn. Mark was involved with the early days (the 1980â??s) of Next Generation Reforestation (N.G.R.) at Goodfare, Alberta. This was a tree planting company formed by a group of friends who gathered near where I lived and farmed. They were good hard workers in the summer planting season. Then in the off season (winter) they hung out at the farm (The Good to Fare Ranch Co.) Sometimes they even lived in my old trailer there. We became good friends involved in many projects usually centered around mechanical breakdowns and repairs. I remember several motor changes and U-joints being done in severe winter conditions in tough poor conditions of having only a large cook tent stretched over a vehicle and a round wooden floor with an olde air tight wood stove as the only heat source. In the mornings we would start the fire, then go for coffee and come back later hoping the stove would have taken the frost off the wrenches in our make shift workshop. Mark was always into music then with cassette tapes being the media at the time. He played Martha and the Vandellas and Tom Waites,etc. One time a large pet sow pig we had named Saffron got into the tent over night knocking over some parts before settling down in front of the dying heater. She crunched thru a pile of the cassette tapes. Maybe she liked the sound they made. Mark drove an aqua green Ford 4X4 truck then. Another time we were in a rented warehouse in Grande Prairie where we changed out a van motor. It was warm inside & we camped and lived in the shop for many days while the temperature dropped to -40C outside. There were several of us. It was Christmas time. We had no money. I remember Mark and I went to Marks Work Wear and bought a bale of socks (a pack of about 6 pairs). We wrapped them in