Tony (Antonio) Biefeni-Olevano

Dad started his life in Rome, Italy with his two sisters Margarita and Vincensina, and his brother Giovanni. In his early twenties he met a feisty young German woman, Annemarie. They married, had two children while still in Rome…first Antonella and then Stefano. In 1967, the family moved to Regina, Saskatchewan (nobody had the Internet back then and they didn’t know about winters and snow). 

When they first arrived it was during Buffalo Days in Regina and they were amazed and excited that the clothing worn in Regina was like what they had seen in westerns. They immediately went out and got boots and hats and were all set to fit right in. In fact, dad had talked at the time about thinking he needed to go and buy a gun too. Next thing they knew, a few days later Buffalo Days ended and everyone was back to normal and they were perplexed as to what happened. The Western city was no longer. Regardless, they settled in and had one more child, a son, Mauro, in 1968. 

Life in the prairies was a bit of culture shock for our family and for anyone who came over to our home who would be treated to pasta, pizza or some random assortment of prosciutto and cheeses along with the chaos of an Italian/German household.

Fifteen years after they got together Tony and Annemarie split up and each went on their merry way, managing to remain friendly with each other. As a single guy, Dad loved to tell jokes and shoot the sh** with his friends over coffee, which is how he met his current partner, Serina at one of their frequent haunts. She knew it was love when, on a date, he was standing outside waiting for her and smoking a cigarette. A man came up to him to ask if he could bum a cigarette and dad told the guy “I don’t smoke” as he took a puff. It was a laugh that clinched the deal. They got 35 years out of that. 

Dad was a bit of a renaissance man. He knew a little bit of everything, dabbled in a little bit of everything and he worked at a little bit of everything. His jobs included being a draftsman back before computers when you actually had to draw on paper. He worked for the Department of Natural Resources. He sold real estate for a period of time. He started his own business, ABO Drafting and Computing, which was going well until the housing crash around ‘80 which took the business down, but he kept going. He even built a house where we lived for a few years. For our house he hand-crafted some wood lighting fixtures that probably would have been popular on Etsy had it existed back then. Eventually he started installing flooring and brought his son Mauro into the business with him to try to teach him how to be a hard worker. It took some time, but he did eventually get through to him and they worked together for many years…the best memories he has, Mauro now says.

We will remember his hand-made “white” pizza, cutting the cheese jokes, his wheezy laugh, the dad jokes he would tell a million times and still laugh, and that he could never pronounce the letter “h” so we wouldn’t know if he was saying air or hair. Speaking of which, his hair went through many transformations in his life, some of them by nature. In our childhood, we will remember the Super Mario mustache which dominated any group photo we took. You couldn’t miss him.

Inventor! He worked for years on a contraption in the basement that was meant to be a perpetual motion machine, built with large powerful magnets. Even though we know that conservation of energy dictates that it can never work, it came close! It was intriguing to watch it run. 

Protective? He loved and protected his family at all cost (in particular his special girl Antonella) who when he answered her call, his voice would get noticeably cheerier and sweet. Not quite the same for the boys, but we were ok with that as we knew he loved us (almost) the same.

One time when the police came looking for his child (names withheld for legal reasons) for some minor infraction, he hid their shoes and said they were not there. When another child got involved in another minor offense and was to spend the night in jail to teach them a lesson, he was standing outside the door when they were released and never even mentioned the offense…knowing that this lesson was enough to ensure it never happened again (it didn’t). When he found out one of them “borrowed” a small steam roller with some friends for a joy ride over a foot bridge, he quietly showed his disappointment in that child’s judgment. He somehow was able to maintain a calm in these situations that taught us more than an earned and expected berating or spanking would have ever been able to teach.

Fashion sense? He had clothes that were older than his youngest son. Style was in his persona, not in his clothes or in material things. His character, calmness, humility and good humour were what he wore. He didn’t care about having stuff and although he would never spend money on himself, he was always the first one to pick up the tab during family dinners out, which was usually to Peking House on Rose Street. He would sneak off the “bathroom” and pay the bill surreptitiously before anyone else. We caught on to this ploy and it became a game of who could get to the “bathroom” first. He was always generous, even when his children were adults with their own careers, he would always want to pay for everything. If all he had in this world was $10, he would not hesitate to give it away.

Technology?  “Fugget about it”.  He once stayed at his son Mauro’s place in Winnipeg and when the automatic Espresso ran out of water and beans at the same time, he proceeded to fill the beans container with water which created a little bit of a mess and almost a need for a new machine, but ultimately a good laugh for his family. We would have weekly video meetings and for the first 2 years he would always spend the first 20 minutes trying to figure out how to hear us or for us to hear him. 

As a Nonno (Grandpa)?  He, without fail, would always remember his grandkids birthdays and $50 would appear in the mail for them (even his adult daughter would receive a signed cheque in the mail on a birthday or at Christmas until well after she had her own child). When he was with his grandkids, you would likely find him teasing them, laughing with them or hanging out with his granddaughter on his lap playing Candy Crush. 

Resilience? He rarely, if ever, complained. If you asked him how he was, it was always “Good”. Even when his health started declining somewhat a few years back, he wouldn’t go see a doctor or complain about it unless you really prodded him then he might say he had a slight back pain or shoulder pain. He was tougher than we knew and it was only near the end that it got the better of him.  

Antonio leaves behind a lot of people who love him dearly and miss him greatly, and will do so until we see him again in whatever time, dimension, reality, multi-verse. This includes his devoted partner of over 35 years, Serina (sons Derrick, Patrick and Alex). His children Antonella (Peter), Stefano (Dominga) and Mauro (Tasha). Grandchildren Aaron, Michael, Alex, Marco, Devon and Addison. His sisters Vincenzina (Alberto) and Margarita (Farris) and various cousins, nieces, nephews. 

Papa, you were suddenly gone on June 30th and it is an instant for you until we are together again, but for us we will have to first suffer your loss and eventually enjoy happy memories of you until our time when, in an instant, we too will be together with you again. Ci vediamo presto papà carissimo!!!