Obituary: Dunrobin farmer Leo Muldoon became the face of the 2018 tornado

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Dunrobin farmer Leo Muldoon was outside, moving hay with his tractor, when the freshening wind began to rattle a sheet of tin on his barn roof.

It was late on the afternoon of Sept. 21, 2018: The final day of summer was warm and humid — 27 C with thunderstorms in the forecast — as a cold front pushed in from the northwest.

Muldoon decided to fix the roof before the loose tin caught the wind. He fetched a hammer, nails and a ladder and mounted the hay barn.

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Set to his task, he did not see the dark tornado bearing down on him until the last moment. He made for the ladder, but it was too late.

“I went up, a big gust came, and I was down … and that’s about it,” Muldoon would later recount from a hospital bed as he recovered from seven broken ribs, two collapsed lungs and a head injury. “I came down a lot quicker than I went up.”

Muldoon’s survival became emblematic of a day that was both disastrous and miraculous. No one in the National Capital Region was killed by the EF-3 tornado — one of the most powerful to ever hit Ottawa — even though it tore apart homes, uprooted trees, lifted cars, folded hydro poles and flattened barns.

Muldoon returned to his two farm two months after the accident and was behind the wheel of his tractor days later. He was awaiting delivery of a new John Deere tractor when he died at home in May.

He was 83.

“He wasn’t much of talker, but he was pretty good with the one-liners,” said Adele Muldoon, his wife of 53 years. “He could always think of something to say to make people laugh.”

Born Sept. 18, 1940, Leo Joseph Muldoon was raised in a farmhouse with 11 children, no electricity or indoor plumbing. Purchased in 1856 by Irish immigrant Patrick Muldoon, the farm had remained in the family ever since, although pieces of it had been sold.

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The youngest boy in the family, Leo Muldoon quit school after Grade 8 to farm with his father full-time.

“He really laid it on pretty thick sometimes about how hard he had to work,” Adele remembered.

Muldoon met Adele McEvoy on a sleigh ride in Dunrobin in the late 1960s. McEvoy was then a 19-year-old teacher at the local, one-room schoolhouse, and, as she climbed into the sleigh, she heard some of her students plotting to cause her trouble.

To be safe, McEvoy slid towards the centre of the sleigh, close to the driver. He put his arm her waist and said, “If you stay here, you’ll never be pushed off the sleigh.”

She would marry the sleigh driver, Leo Muldoon, several years later.

“He was just such a kind and thoughtful person,” Adele said, “and everybody liked him, everybody. From the time I met him, I can’t think of anyone who didn’t get along with him. He was always friendly and outgoing and helpful.”

The Muldoons would have three children, all girls. Muldoon taught them to drive a tractor and chauffeured them to all of their many lessons: horseback riding, piano, dance, figure skating, acting and soccer.

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“He supported us in whatever we did,” his daughter Melanie said.

Muldoon earned a reputation as someone who always lent a hand. His neighbour said her car once became stuck in the snow, and Muldoon appeared with his tractor to pull her out before she could even open her door.

A devout Catholic, he always declined being paid for his assistance. “He would always just say, ‘Pay me in prayers,’” his daughter Mackenzie said.

Muldoon had a quick sense of humour. He once tipped back in his chair at a friend’s home and crashed to the floor.

In the silence that followed, Muldoon reached for the bottom of the table. “Looks good under here,” he said.

Asked once how he to learned to fix so many farm machines, he said it was “by breaking them.” Asked why he liked to play euchre four times a week, he said it was “for the exercise.”

Even when the 2018 tornado left him lying on the ground, his sense of humour did not abandon him. With his wife waiting alongside him for the ambulance, Muldoon asked Adele to make sure the windows of his tractor were closed to the rain. She reported back to him that the tractor didn’t have any windows left after the tornado: only the rear one had not been smashed to bits.

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“Well, is it closed?” he deadpanned.

The tornado took out a barn and a shed and damaged the family’s old, abandoned farmhouse to the extent that it had to be torn down.

Two months ago, fire struck the rebuilt barn. It destroyed most of Muldoon’s farm equipment, including his truck and tractor.

The family thought it would finally force the family patriarch into retirement, but instead, Muldoon ordered a new tractor.

“He was forced to take a little holiday because all his equipment was gone,” Adele said, “but he had made plans to work the fields this summer.”

Andrew Duffy is a National Newspaper Award-winning reporter and long-form feature writer based in Ottawa. To support his work, including exclusive content for subscribers only, sign up here: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe

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