Uncle Tom had a good sense of humor and enjoyed spending time with family. He was a very smart, kind and stern man. I enjoyed playing crib with him. He was very good at that game and would always play a game with me. He was quick at counting hands and if you happened to miss some points he would help you but then would say, you normally can't do that. If you miss them, you miss them. I didn't get to spend as much time as I would've liked as he lived in Winnipeg but the time we did spend together I will forever cherish. Heaven has gained another angel. He will be missed dearly. 

Only those who are lucky enough to have a twin brother can understand the bond between them and the pain of losing him. In our childhood we did everything together. Tom was born with curly black hair, and I had blond straight hair. Tom was left-handed and I was right-handed. Growing up, Tom was a sports guy and an athlete. He excelled at basketball and football. He enjoyed curling, hockey and baseball and coaching his children on their sports teams. He loved playing cards, cribbage, bingo, billiards and darts. Tom’s sport teams were the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Winnipeg Jets, and the Toronto Blue Jays.  He had an opinion on most sports stories which we discussed often. We used to talk every Rider game and then the next day after the game. Tom would praise and criticize the Rider play and players, and how he thought they played. Tom didn’t hold back.  When Tom, Pat and I were kids, we spent our summers at Lumsden Beach where our parents had a cabin. Our Dad painted a very large sign for our cabin. He named it Uncle Tom’s cabin. We had many experiences playing outside at Lumsden beach. We used to walk down the hill, to the train tracks and put pennies on the track, when we would hear the train coming. We were amazed at how the train wheels would flatten the coins. We used to walk the train tracks to Regina Beach which was approximately 5 miles.  We would stop at a pond and catch frogs during the long walk. Our Dad would drive his car to Regina Beach and pick us up and give us a ride back to Lumsden beach. In the late fall when there were very few people around, we would take our BB guns out and go pretend hunting. We would shoot at birds, gophers, tin cans and glass bottles, anything that moved, to see who was the best shot, while walking through the bush.  We competed often. Tom and I had Leader post newspaper routes for many years. We did our deliveries every day without missing. He would always finish his route faster than I did. Tom won a Leader post contest one year for selling the most “Starts”. Starts was the term for getting new customers to buy the newspaper. Tom won a trip to Ottawa when he was 13 years old. All I got was a lousy pair of pocket binoculars. When we went to school we would walk home for lunch. Most days Tom would hop onto his bicycle and ride 2 blocks to the local convenience store and buy us a coke and a bag of cheezies to eat with our lunch while watching Bonanza or cartoons on the black and white TV. Tom had a lucky streak to him. He often would win Bingo games and poker games when we were kids. We would play with our friends, for money and Tom often won. When Tom was older, he would come back to Regina and visit our mom and take her to play Bingo or to the Casino. Tom enjoyed taking Mom out to gamble and Mom loved it also. When we were kids, we used to ride our bicycles over grasshoppers and see how many we could squash. Some years Regina had lots and lots of grasshoppers. When the city would drive their mosquito spraying trucks down the streets, we used to ride our bicycles in the fog behind the truck.  There were no safety rules back then. I remember when we had gravel roads and wooden sidewalks in Regina. When the city decided to install new concrete sidewalks, we used to watch the city workers tear up the wooden sidewalks and we would look for coins that had fallen through the cracks between the wooden boards. Our Dad’s parents lived in Moose Jaw and we often would go visit on Sundays. I remember playing with Tom on a raft  at a pond (Pete’s creek) near my grandpa’s house. One day I hopped off the raft and Tom floated away from shore. In order to get back to shore, Tom had to jump off the raft and wade his way back to shore. It was funny. During this, he lost his rubber boots in the water. Mom wasn’t too pleased with Tom that day. However, the following year the creek dried up and a neighbor, Pete, found Tom’s rubber boots and returned them. Pete and our dad were best friends when they were growing up in Moose Jaw. We used to swim across Wascana lake from the Observation Deck to Willow Island, even though we were not supposed to. The water was and still has lots of Algae.  We would ride our bicycles to Wascana Park, so we were dry by the time we got home for supper. In high school, Tom was a pretty good athlete. We played most sports together. Tom made the Scott collegiate basketball team as a guard. Tom had a good shot and often would make 3 pointers from outside the circle. I didn’t have as good a shot and didn’t make the team. When we were teenagers, Tom was hired by one of our friends. Karen Kozan got Tom a job with Kozan furniture in Regina. He was the delivery man for them. Growing up with Tom on 8 block Queen Street, we had lots of neighbor friends our age. We played football on the street and also in Kinsman Park. I was the Quarterback and Tom would be my receiver. Tom was a fast runner. We used to practise our football plays on the street. When we had a big group of friends ready to play a game, the other kids would insist that Tom and I had to be on opposite teams. When we played on the same team, we always would win the games. Tom was an expert pinball machine player. Often times he would go to the bowling alley where they had pinball machines. There was this particular baseball pinball machine that you would hit the ball, with the paddle, and you could win more free games when hitting a homerun. Tom would sometimes have over 100 free games, because he practiced, lots. He would let me play some of his free games, but would take back the machine once I used up most of his free games.  Tom was a good pool player and we played the game often. He once had a job at a pool hall, cleaning and sweeping the tables for the next customer. Our friends and I used to go play pool there, and sometimes for free. We had a pool table in our parent’s house so we had lots and lots of practise. Our father made us a back board for target practise. We used to shoot our BB rifles in the rumpus room and compete for who was the best shot. We would collect the used BB’s and use them over and over again.  When outside we used to shoot them at each other sometimes, but always in the back or the bum. Tom started working for the CPR railway company as a Red Cap. He worked in the Regina train station which is now Casino Regina. A red cap is a person that helps passengers off the train and to the main lobby. People would tip him for carrying their luggage. From a red cap he moved into the accounting department and looked after the billing required to ship goods by train. When the train station closed, Tom was transferred to Winnipeg and then to Montreal. His last location was Calgary. Tom moved back to Winnipeg when he retired. I do have regrets for not flying to visit him in Montreal. It would have been a great experience.   Tom was a handyman carpenter type. He built his own garage and rumpus room in his first home in Regina. He built Mom a nice deck on her house. He also helped me build my fence and garage. He helped his neighbor in Winnipeg building a deck. Terry was his neighbor and close friend. They used to golf together and sit around Terry’s swimming pool in the summer. Tom loved playing the card game “Crib”. He was a quick card counter and he had his own sayings when playing a hand of crib.  For instance, When he counted his good hand, he would count 15 - 2, 15 - 4,  3 makes  7, 3 more makes 10 and  a pair makes a dozen,! Cousin. Another one was 15 - 2, 15 - 4, and there aint no more, brother. Tom bought a new car in 1972, a Ford comet with a V8 engine. We used to drive a few blocks from home to Regent swimming pool and race our cars. McKinley avenue was a long road with very little traffic, so it made a good racetrack.  Tom enjoyed dressing up and playing Santa Claus at Christmas time. He was Santa for the CPR social club Christmas parties. He also played Santa at Grandma’s house for his children Robbie and Elaine and all their cousins. Allison, Willie, Sol, Robin, Raymond, Lisa, and Alyssa. He had them fooled for many years. When Tom came to visit or when Pat and Larry visited him, he always had a bag of candy that he would secretly give to Alyssa. He would tell Alyssa not to tell her mother because he knew Pat would not approve. Alyssa never mentioned this until she was much older as an adult. I can see Tom smiling at this, now. Tom liked his desserts.  He loved grandma’s chocolate brownies smothered in butter. He was a cinnamon bun and donut lover. Tom always had treats waiting for Gemma and Brady when they dropped by his place. He always had packs of mini-Oreo cookies for the kids. I remember Tom telling me that when he worked in Calgary, during coffee breaks, he would go outside to have a cigarette smoke and a donut with his coffee every morning. He liked to joke about his extended coffee breaks. He didn’t mind going over the 15-minute time limit. Tom liked coaching when Robbie started playing hockey at age 5. He continued coaching and driving him to the hockey rink until Robbie was 15. Tom was the biggest fan for Elaine, Carly and Robbie’s slow pitch teams. Tom went to all of their games and was the score keeper. Tom was overjoyed when Brady and Gemma were born. He would tell me stories of them often. He was happy that they were involved in playing sports. When Tom went to Carly and Rob’s house for dinners, he would always feed their dog and cats from the table. Tearing up meat into little pieces for them. They all watched the Riders play and he cheered the team on, with the Green is the Colour song. “Green is the color; football is the game”. He loved that jingle. Elaine told me about the time they used to go to church on Sundays’. This particular Sunday the Rider’s were playing football. Tom never liked missing a game. The preacher was a little late starting his sermon and spoke longer than usual. Tom was irritated that he missed the kick off to the game. He said the preacher did this on purpose and he never went back to church after that. Tom liked playing cards and he knew most games and the rules. He used to follow Sol and Robin on the internet, when they were playing in Las Vegas Poker tournaments. Tom would keep me up to date on their winning and progress during the tournaments. 10 years ago, or so Tom, Tammy and I drove and pulled my boat to La Ronge where Pat and Larry had their cabin. We went out fishing a few times because Larry enjoyed showing us the scenery and lakes in the north. One day my boat wouldn’t start, while out on the lake, during the fiddling around with the motor, I lost my fishing rod. It got kicked out of the boat some how. Then a rain storm hit us on the lake. When we got the boat to shore, and loaded onto the trailer, my rubber boots were full of water. I remember sitting on the van floor while Tom pulled the boots off me.  We went back to the cabin to dry off and had a few laughs. Tom enjoyed golfing. He liked to play in Regina at the Par 3 courses and sometimes the big courses. He played a lot in Winnipeg with his friend Terry. He dreamed of being a golf course Marshall, when he retired. One day when we were younger, our family drove out to my Uncle John and Aunt Mary’s farm near Zehner, Saskatchewan for a visit.  Our cousin Steve took us outside to show us the farm yard.  My uncle had big stacks of hay bales for his cattle. Steve took us out to an old haystack, where he had made a fort and tunnels in the stack. We explored and played for awhile. Tom wanted to start a small fire with a coal oil lantern, so Steve helped him. Once we got the fire started all was fine, until a brisk wind carried some sparks to the haystack.  OMG, we couldn’t put it out, so I left and ran back to the farm house to tell Dad and uncle John. I was out of breath and tried telling them the haystack was on fire and Tom and Steve were there. My Dad and Uncle jumped out of their chairs and ran out of the house because they thought Tom and Steve were trapped inside. They thought I had said that the boys were inside the stack, but they were not. We singed the hair on our arms, heads, and eyebrows while trying to put the fire out. We were not able to put the fire out. Luckily everyone was ok, and especially that my uncle didn’t mind losing the haystack. It was an old stack and he had other fresher stacks to use.  He wasn’t mad at us Whew! What a lesson 2 city kids learned on that farm that day.  What an unbelievable huge fire it was. I have a Twin memory of my brother Tom. We were in grade 6 at Wascana school and it was the first day back to school after easter break. During easter break the school’s janitors would wash and wax the floors in every classroom. When Tom went to class that day, there was a bully type kid in his class. When Tom was walking to go sit in his desk, this bully came up behind Tom and kicked his feet out from under him on the newly waxed slippery floors. Tom came crashing down and hit his left front tooth on the wooden desk top, breaking his front tooth. The dentist installed a silver cap over the broken tooth. As you can imagine, it didn’t look that great. During the winter in the same year, I was playing hockey at an outdoor rink and was speeding along the ice to score a goal, when I was tripped by another player. I fell on the skating rink and broke my front tooth. I had to get a silver cap placed on my right front tooth. So here we were, twin brothers, with twin silver tooth smiles. Money was tight in our family, so we were very thankful that Mom and Dad, had the silver caps, replaced with white caps the summer before starting high school. Another twin memory was many years ago, I was hit by a car while riding my motorcycle. I broke my right foot in the accident. During my recovery I would talk to Tom on the phone when he lived in Winnipeg. He told me the same time of the accident, that he developed a severe pain in his right foot and couldn’t understand why his foot all of a sudden started to hurt. A few days later he learned of my accident. I believe this is called channeling. When Tom retired from the railroad, he used to laugh and joke that now he has the best job he ever had.  Retired. Thanks, Tom, for the great childhood memories.   Rest in Peace Grandpa, Dad, Uncle and brother.    We love you.

So sorry to hear of cousin Tom’s passing! I always remember his laugh and going to visit him in his house in Regina! RIP Tom! Thoughts & prayers Elaine, Rob & Family!🙏🏻

So Very Sad to hear of Tom’s passing. Sending Deepest Sympathies to the Newton family. May you find Comfort in your Memories 🙏

sorry to hear of tom passing remember him as always jolly and up beat my sympathy to all the family

So sorry to hear of Tom’s passing….he always had a story!  Think of him every time we’re watching the Riders….RIP.   Pat and Ken Foot (CPR)

Deeply  saddened to learn of Tom’s passing.  A friend for decades, back to the Regina CP days, he was a great guy, such an incredible sense of humour.  He will be missed by all who knew him.

Uncle Tom & My Dad's 50th Birthday Celebration (L to R: Allison, Lisa, Uncle Tom, Raymond, Elaine)

My Dad & Uncle Tom - twin brothers 💞

I am deeply saddened of the loss of my Uncle Tom. 😔 Life is just so precious. I wish he could've met our sweet baby Linden.  We loved playing crib together as shown below at our last family reunion. You will be missed so incredibly much! ❤ 

Rest in Peace Uncle Tom.  We have fond memories as kids at your place, both here in Regina and when we would travel to Winnipeg for visits.  We will continue to keep you and all of your family in prayer.  Eternal rest grant unto Tom, oh Lord.  Amen.  

Tom enjoyed playing Santa at Christmas time ❤

Tom boating with his father ❤

Skating on the backyard rink ❤

Tom and his son Robbie

Tom, Carly and Robbie

❤ Mom's kitchen ❤

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Learning to throw with his left hand

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Only those who are lucky enough to have a twin brother can understand the bond between them and the pain of losing them. In our childhood we did everything together. Growing up, Tom was a sports guy and an athlete. He excelled at basketball and football. He enjoyed curling, hockey and baseball and coaching his children on their sports teams. He loved playing cards, cribbage, bingo, billiards and darts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders and the Winnipeg Jets. He had an opinion on most sports stories which we discussed often. Tom passed too soon and he will be dearly missed. I have many fond memories of my brother.

Love this picture of Tom. He was so happy that day