This was not his first fight with that disease. While still a relatively young man with a young family, he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and underwent quite radical surgery. Breathing through a tracheostomy, he spoke by swallowing air and pushing it out through his larynx. As a result, his sayings were pithy and his laugh infectious. In the early 2000s, a stroke left him greatly weakened in his right side and made speech an almost unattainable effort. Bill met all these circumstances with determination. As someone said recently, in the idiom of this part of Ontario, “Those McClures: they’re tough, eh?”
Confronted with disease, with its deformity, disability, and degeneration, the fact that Christ purchased by His life, death, and resurrection a full salvation for the whole man brings hope and comfort at this time of grief. For the believer, there is the comfort of being absent in the body, but present with the Lord. For the bereaved, there is the comfort of knowing that all pain is gone. For all, there is hope of a new unravaged body at the resurrection.
Bill leaves his wife Faye, seven children, and nineteen grandchildren. We commend them to your prayers.