Windsor farmer succumbs to cancer at 73
By JENNIFER STEWART Staff Reporter
Wed. May 21 - 10:39 AM
Howard Dill, whose prize-winning giant pumpkins captured the hearts of many, including domestic maven Martha Stewart, has lost his battle with liver cancer. He was 73.

Son Danny Dill could not be reached Tuesday night but in an interview with The Canadian Press in January, Mr. Dill confirmed his father was gravely ill.

Mr. Dill was diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer last fall and was admitted to hospital shortly after Christmas.

Sources close to the Dill family said the famous Windsor farmer passed away Tuesday.

About a month after Mr. Dill was diagnosed, Martha Stewart, who tried to come to Nova Scotia in 2005 to pilot one of Mr. Dill’s giant gourds in the province’s annual pumpkin race, sent her regards to the ailing man.

"Martha sent him a nice letter here not too long ago," Danny Dill told The Canadian Press. "She heard about his condition. She wrote a very nice letter."

As far as the pumpkin-growing world goes, Howard Dill is considered by many to be king.

Seeds for his personal variety — aptly named Dill’s Atlantic Giant — are sold to competitive growers around the world, and his enormous gourds are a staple at the pumpkin regatta, an annual event in which competitors row across nearby Lake Pesaquid in hollowed-out, decorated pumpkins.

Mr. Dill made a name for himself in 1979, when one of his early creations took the top prize in the International Pumpkin Association’s annual weigh-off, tipping the scales at 199 kilograms.

He went on to rule the competition for the next three years, and his wins were chronicled in editions of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not books.

Aside from pumpkins, Mr. Dill’s other passion was hockey.

His farm contains Long Pond, which some claim was the birthplace of the sport more than 200 years ago and was also the site of a CBC Hockey Day in Canada telecast in 2002.

The issue was hotly debated with Garth Vaughan, author of The Puck Stops Here, which made the case for Windsor as hockey’s cradle.

Mr. Vaughan, however, argued that the real Long Pond was on a neighbouring property. Mr. Dill claimed he had evidence that the pond was located directly behind King’s Collegiate, now King’s-Edgehill School.

Windsor town council weighed in on the matter by passing a resolution that encourages local residents, businesses and organizations to use the phrase, "The Birthplace of Hockey" in any correspondence.

Mr. Dill frowned upon the move, saying council should never have gotten involved.

With The Canadian Press

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