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One day a few years ago, Ryan Stewart was sitting in his family cottage on Mosque Lake, near Ompah, north of Sharbot Lake, admiring the handiwork of his grandfather, whose hands built the cottage in the early 1970s. Ryan looked at every joint, beam, post and board, and wondered how Stanley Fields managed such a feat on his own. Ryan, then about 40, decided to pen a letter to his grandfather, thanking him.

“You are truly the greatest generation this country has even seen,” he wrote. “Gramps, I make every decision in my life with you on my shoulder. I always think to myself: what would gramps think, what would he do?

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“My moral compass in life has been set by you.”

But Stanley Clark Field’s own compass always pointed in a single direction, to the place where you always came to the aid of those in need, without waiting to be asked; to where there was very little grey between right and wrong; to where work was important, and work that helped others even more so. It was a lesson that his father, a fireman, instilled in him from a young age, and an ethos he carried with him for every one of his 101 years.