Obituary: Norm, driven by love of the river and our city's heritage

 Norman Frederick (Norm) Hubbard, MBE

About seven years ago when Norm Hubbard was last interviewed by the Chronicle, he reckoned he had about another 10 years' work to do before he can "knock off".
Sadly he did not see that decade out as he hoped, passing peacefully at Wanganui Hospital on February 9.
Norm's passing breaks another link in the city and district's historic chain because in his lifespan he achieved so much, and most of that dedicated to preserving or restoring the history of Wanganui and the Whanganui River.
His name is synonymous with the river. Even the Rees St house he lived in with his wife Verla has dress circle views of the river.
The Hubbards shifted to Rees St more than 40 years ago, first living at No12 then shifting to No15 in the early 1990s when Norm bought the section, excavated it and built a two-storey home that gave them even more spectacular views of the Whanganui River.
Born in the city, he was brought up in Wanganui East, getting his primary schooling at Wanganui East Primary and then Wanganui Technical College. As a teenager he started courting Verla and they would attend dances in the city on a Friday night. But the next day Norm would be on his bike, pedalling into the Parhihauhau to go hunting.
His passion for hunting later saw him made a life member of the Wanganui branch of the Deerstalkers Association. Before that association was created he belonged to the original Wanganui Hunters and Stalkers Club, which operated in the 1950s.
Yet despite that strong interest in hunting, Norm developed into a strong advocate for the environment.
He argued for the creation of a 10km non-commercial fishing zone around the entire New Zealand coastline and abhorred any prospect of commercial fishers taking eel or whitebait from our rivers and streams.
He developed such a knowledge of the bush around the Whanganui River that he served with the police search and rescue teams for 25 years.
He trained as a carpenter and that was the trade he stuck with four decades. It was a skill that he was able to utilise in very specific ways.
It was in the restoration of historic sites that Norm assumed a major role. These included the rebuilding of the Anderson home at Pipiriki, which became the headquarters of the Wanganui River Reserves Board.
That was followed by two years of solid work on the Kawana mill, near Matahiwi. For that effort he received a Historic Places Trust certificate.
In an interview with the Chronicle in 1981 he recalled that the mill project was a "tremendous challenge".
"There was only photograph to go by. It meant the piecing together of the whole place, putting myself in the place of the miller and working out how it all operated," he said. "There were lots of different pieces to be made."
It was Norm's unswerving and selfless work in the field of restoration that saw him awarded an MBE in 1981.
His hunting trips mainly took in areas around the Whanganui River and it was his finding of old Maori old hangi stores and pa sites in the bush that fired his interest in the history of the river.
He forged genuine friendships with, and earned the respect of, iwi and Pakeha alike.
In more recent years, Norm was one of the key figures in the summer nature programme, developed largely through the efforts of Ridgway Lythgoe when he was working in the Department of Conservation Wanganui office.
His lifetime contribution to conservation and tireless effort for the community's benefit earned him a community conservation award.
Making the award, the then DoC Whanganui area manager Bryon Fawcett said thousands of people had travelled with Norm on summer programme trips.
He said "people like Norm are a huge repository of information and help to the department" and that "without such community contributions our work would be so much harder. We're fortunate to have him as a partner in conservation".
Outspoken when he felt the need, Norm always had a dry but sharp sense of humour, best exemplified in a letter to the Chronicle in 2004 about giving up smoking.
He had been smoking since 15 years of age and as a keen hunter he found that it was a comfort away in the bush or mountains somewhere, in a sleeping bag with fern branches over your head to keep you dry.
He recounted a 1965 trip into a remote valley off the Milford Track hunting wapiti.
He made camp but in a few hours the heavens opened and a storm, lasting three days, which meant all his clothes and gear were soaking wet. Wisely, he had left some clothes and a bit of food halfway in, about a seven-hour walk from where he was, so he headed back down the valley.
"On arrival at my spare supplies camp, the first thing I did was light a good fire to dry my gear. My sleeping bag was also wet but I needed a smoke badly, so here I was with a soggy wet handful of tobacco trying to dry it out in front of the fire, "he wrote.
"I looked at my wet sleeping bag and thought: 'You silly bugger!' I should have been drying that instead of the tobacco, so threw the tobacco into the fire and have never had one since. Easy eh!"
Until triple by-pass surgery forced him to take things a bit easier, Norm chaired the Wanganui Historic Places Trust and was later made a life member of the NZ Historic Places Trust.
He had a passion for the city's buildings too and loved the heritage architecture. Some buildings he was instrumental in saving from the wreckers' ball but he maintained a pragmatic outlook on progress all the same.
"Not everything lives forever. Everything dies in time," he once told a Chronicle reporter.
He was always realistic about the prospects of some of those buildings, acknowledging that without money to preserve them, without an economical use, heritage preservation is not always possible.
"We all want progress but when we can keep our heritage buildings at the same time that is fantastic," he said.
He was at times a member of the old Wanganui River Reserves Board and also served on the Wellington National Parks and Reserves Board.
Not every city has a Norm Hubbard but those that do know the value of their contribution.
He is survived by his wife Verla, two daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren.