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Stuart's lifelong interest in the organ began in his teens and continued with the construction of a home organ, frequent correspondence with organ lovers and builders on two continents, an apprenticeship during winter months with a Toronto organ-builder, and frequent visits to the Casavant factory in St. Hyacinthe, where he was known to several generations of staff spanning most of the past century.

His interest continued into adulthood, during which time he also successfully ran his own grain farm, chaired his local school board and managed a difficult transition from one-room to modern schools. He organized and trained a local pipe band ("because we needed one") and raised a family of four beautiful daughters with his wife, Mary.

In 1955, he purchased the organ of Grace Church in Winnipeg, which was slated for demolition, and installed it in a specially-built addition to his farm home. At the time of its construction in 1907, it had been the largest organ west of Ontario.

Stuart moved to Victoria in 1971 after a brief stint in business in Vancouver. Some years later, the organ followed him to his Rockland home, which also gained a music-room addition complete with functioning bell tower - another musical passion. During the following decades Stuart and the organ installation received visitors and players from around the world. He was an avid and personable host whose hospitality and bottomless-punchbowl parties were legendary.

In the early nineties, the instrument was significantly expanded with the addition of a new solid-state console, a positif division, and new reeds manufactured by Casavant to the specifications of the great pre-revolutionary organ builder Francois Clicquot.

For many years, Stuart's music room resembled a workshop, strewn with organ technician's equipment, stray pipes, the results of pipe-metal casting experiments, and seventy years' worth of organ journals. Yet it was also part of a home, and bore strong traces of visits from grandchildren was well as those who, like the writer, visited often to share a convivial glass and play music - from Buxtehude to long-forgotten gospel hymns - far into the night.

All of this represents only a glimpse at the passionate interests this truly eclectic and gentlemanly man was capable of embracing. He was an avid reader with a degree in History, and familiar with both the Cree language and his ancestral Icelandic from his earliest childhood (and subsequently several others), a sly wit, a master raconteur with an encyclopedic knowledge of western Canadian history (much of it from personal experience), a successful amateur winemaker, an enthusiastic cook and recipe collector, a loving and conscientious father.

To this writer he was a second father, an older brother, and above all a fast friend. He will be missed by lovers of the organ across Canada and by all those who have delighted in his company for eighty-one years.