David Richard Gawley

November 23, 1936 - April 29, 2025

David Gawley passed away suddenly last week in the Intensive Care Unit of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal two days after undergoing abdominal surgery. He was 88 years old.

David was the youngest son of Mae Lape, a German-American from Schenectady NY and Irish-Canadian Fred Gawley, who had met in Detroit and then moved to Toronto during the Great Depression in search of work. The family’s fortunes improved in wartime, and by the time David was in high school, his father was a stevedore and later a ticket agent for Canada Steamship Lines (CSL).

As a high-school student David worked part-time as a library assistant, and then on the CSL boats that took tourists from Lake Ontario to Montreal, Quebec City, Tadoussac, and up the Saguenay River. He graduated from Trinity College at the University of Toronto and trained as a teacher.

He moved to Montreal in 1960 and met his first wife Marjorie Cooper when they were both teaching at Cedarcrest Elementary School in Ville Saint-Laurent. By the time they were married in 1962, David had left teaching and was working at the head office of the Canadian Pacific Railway in Windsor Station, travelling widely on CP business and also on vacation with Marjorie in his beloved Italy and the Côte d’Azur.

In retirement, he took on volunteer responsibilities as treasurer of the Friends of the Westmount Public Library; as an editor at Canadian Rail magazine, at the railway museum Exporail, and on other activities of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association; at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival; and as secretary of the Volunteers’ Association at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, which organized the annual museum ball.

After Marjorie passed away, David was introduced to the writer Linda Leith in 2010. They attended the Museum ball together that November, and he joined her literary press Linda Leith Publishing the following year as Chief Financial Officer. They were married in 2012 and were overjoyed by the love they shared.

David Gawley was a quiet, kind, charming, and thoughtful man who used his considerable skills to support colleagues and friends as well as charitable organizations whose values he shared. He also, extraordinarily, sent a “nightly letter” by email for over twenty years to members of his inner circle.

He had many gifts, among them an ability to find solutions to intractable problems—a talent appreciated by everyone from vice-presidents at CPR to members of his family. He enjoyed discerning a story from a spreadsheet. Above all, he had a gift for bringing people together. He will be sorely missed.

Predeceased by his older brothers Edward and Robert, David is survived by their children and grandchildren in Ontario and upstate New York: and by his wife Linda and her sons Adam Leith Gollner (Zoé Poirier Stephens) and Michael Gollner in Montreal, and Julian Gollner (Annie Briard) and their son Remy Kaslo Briard Gollner in Vancouver.

The family is planning a celebration of David’s life this summer. Please sign the guestbook to honour David here.

In lieu of flowers, please consider making a contribution in his name via Canada Helps to one of the charities he loved best: the Atwater Library or the Canadian Railroad Historical Association.