Alistair Collis Obituary, Cause Of Death – The Individual Playing the Piano We will be conducting a celebration of life for Alastair at Carnell’s Funeral Home, which can be found at 329 Freshwater Road, on both Sunday, March 5, and Monday, March 6, from 2:00 to 4:00 and 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., respectively. The funeral service will be held on Thursday, March 9 at 2:00 p.m. at St. Paul’s Anglican Church, which is located in Harbour Grace.
The service will be held in his honor. Althelstan Lockyer Collis moved to Trouty, Trinity Bay, to live with his mother’s side of the family, the Lockyers, following the untimely death of his father when he was still a little child. In spite of the fact that Althelstan had terrible tunnel vision his grandson Alastair likened the condition to “looking down a lead pencil” when he was a young man, Althelstan traveled to Montreal in order to study voice, piano, and organ for a total of five years in that city.
Alastair described the condition as being “like looking down a lead pencil.” According to Alastair, the individual in question possessed a baritone voice that was reminiscent of Luciano Pavarotti’s. In 1910, after relocating to Harbour Grace, he bought a piece of property on LeMarchant Street and immediately started a shop there where he repaired and tuned pianos. Because of the town’s developed public infrastructure,
which included water and sewer lines installed fifty years before those were installed in the capital, Althelstan believed that Harbour Grace was the ideal location for him to launch his music business. This was due to the fact that these lines had been installed in Harbour Grace. Athelstan, on the other hand, had a nomadic lifestyle; throughout the course of each year, he traveled all around the island while working for extended periods of time repairing pianos.
Nonetheless, despite the fact that he suffered from severe near-sightedness, he was still successful in his endeavors. Alastair recalls a story that Athelstan’s good friend Max King used to tell very frequently in the issue of Decks Awash (1982) titled “Harbour Grace.”
