William Lionel Kipp
Bill Kipp Sr., who served in the Royal Canadian Airforce, would go on to become a prominent funeral director in Paris. He was born in the rural community of Dereham in Oxford County in 1924. His father, Clarence Kipp, was a farmer from Caradoc in Middlesex County. His mother, Stella Melissa Disbrowe, was from Malahide Township, east of St. Thomas in Elgin County. Bill was the youngest of their seven children.
Bill’s two older brothers served overseas with the Canadian Army, but Bill enlisted in the RCAF, probably in Ingersoll or London, though we do not know the exact date. He trained in Alberta, P.E.I. Quebec and Nova Scotia. He first was trained as a Drogue Operator. Probe-and-drogue fuelling is a method of refuelling airplanes while in the air. He later served an air gunner. He was too late to serve overseas before the war ended.
In 1945, Bill married Elizabeth “Betty” Pearl Sutherland of Port Burwell in Elgin County, Ontario. The couple arrived in Paris on a cold wintry night in December, 1947 at the passenger train station that used to be at the top of Station Hill on Broadway Street East. (At the time, he could never imagine that 32 years later he would own the estate of Captain Peter Cox overlooking the train station on the opposite side of the train tracks). He arrived with his wife Betty and the first two of their seven children. Mr. Dale, station agent, suggested boarding at Mrs. Stewart’s house at 10 Jane Street. Several months later, they rented the apartment in the Landers’ cobblestone house on Oak Ave.
Bill got a job assisting the Cummings family, who ran a furniture store, ambulance service and funeral home business. In 1949, at the age of 25, he earned a funeral director’s licence in Toronto. He and Betty then founded the Wm. Kipp Funeral Home. Initially, they ran it from their home at 11 Jury Street where they raised their six children. As both the business and their family grew, it became clear a new location was needed. In 1979, he purchased the historic Claremont home, the former Captain Peter Cox estate and former Bruce Smith funeral home, at 184 Grand River Street North, which his son, Bill Jr., operated after his father retired.
Bill Sr. died in Brantford on June 14, 2023 at the age of 99. He was a long-serving member of the Paris branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. He is buried beside his wife Betty in the Paris Cemetery. A few days after his funeral, his son Bill heard an aircraft flying overhead and went outside to look. It was an Avro Lancaster World War Two Bomber, one of only two such planes in the world that can still fly. As Bill watched, it flew a complete 360-degree turn over the house and then flew back to Mount Hope airport. The next day, Bill was curious and called the airport about the flight. Bil explained the reason for the call, but the woman who answered said it was just part of regularly schedule maintenance. But after a pause, she said. “Or maybe he was just waving goodbye.”
