David Lee “Swede” Peterson, a.k.a. Mr. Dave, died peacefully May 12, 2022 in Vancouver, Canada, his adopted home for 23 years. He was 83 years young.
Dave was born on August 1, 1938, in Des Moines, Iowa and grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts, near Boston. His father was a lawyer. He was the eldest of six children. According to his younger sisters, he was a big shot in high school, excelling in basketball, baseball, track and academically. He played saxophone in a garage band and was featured as "Boy of the Week" in a Boston newspaper.
He was a member of Winthrop House at Harvard College from which he received his A.B. majoring in social relations as a member of the Class of 1960. He received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1963 and married during this time.
Instead of practicing law, Dave became interested in "saving cities," a concern which dominated the headlines during that era. He completed a master’s degree in urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley in 1967.
Dave worked on planning projects in California and across the United States. He was a planning director in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. He also worked in China, Japan, Southeast Asia and Baghdad. He bought his first computer in 1981 and led the effort to incorporate computer applications and the Internet at many of the organizations he worked for. For a while he was "the Internet guy" on a talk radio show in Atlanta. He also consulted, wrote and presented on the emerging field of telework and telecommuting long before everyone was working from home.
In his spare time, he played tennis, went cross-country skiing, rafted the Grand Canyon, climbed Huyana Picchu (sister of Machu), starred as an extra in the “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”, ran a half-marathon and had his VW "magic" bus egged by uranium mill workers at an anti-nuclear protest in Utah.
In 1998 Dave went to Vancouver, Canada, to rekindle an old flame with Devon Knight who soon became his wife. Dave joined Devon's event management company where they both worked until retirement in 2014. Dave loved Vancouver and Canada and became a citizen in 2017. He and Devon explored British Columbia, Canada, and the world together. They were known as D & D or the dynamic duo.
Dave took delight in finding out about others' interests and then following up with tips, related articles and event alerts. You could never mistake his excitement for what he had discovered and his hope that you would share it with him.
Dave is survived by his wife, Devon Knight; sisters Martha Gouin (Roland) and Marilyn Guarino (Al) in Florida and Nancy Crovetti in Iowa as well as his nieces and nephew and his grand nephews. Dave was pre-deceased by his parents, Clarence I. and Greta Wilda (Capps) Peterson as well as his brother Alan and his sister Elizabeth Ghaffari.
There was a celebration of remembrance on June 30, 2024 in Vancouver. You may wish to contribute to one of the organizations Dave supported including Swing Left, the American Civil Liberties Union, or the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. Or just give directions or a museum suggestion to the next tourist you encounter.
