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Note: He was born in Toledo while his father worked there, and so was an American citizen. He then went to Windsor and then Collingwood and later to Toronto, where his father had a big house in Rosedale. Still a child, they eventually moved to Windsor again, because there were real estate prospects. Will apparently had the "Evans nose", which is actually the "Smith nose", since Mabel and Bea Preste both had this nose.
As a child he took piano lessons and had the habit of tapping his foot to the beat. His teacher did not like this, and stood on his feet to prevent him from tapping. He then quit piano lessons because of the strictness of the teacher. Betty remembers him playing guitar and mandolin.
He was bald as a "billiard ball" for much of his adult life and he was a successful real estate investor and dentist. He graduated from dentistry from the University of Detroit and went to Red Deer, Alberta because no one was there. During university, he had been a purser on the D&C boats (he collected ticket money on boats going from Detroit to Cleveland, overnight). His father had wanted him to be a mechanic. Fred said he was not going to marry before he made $20,000, which he did accomplish. He became engaged to Lulu, a school teacher, in Red Deer and bought a house there. She was out there because of her parents. Then he decided to go back to Ontario after selling his house (but he never lived there, only at the hotel in town). Returning from Red Deer he went to Windsor and then got married in Cleveland, where Lulu was visiting her aunts. They then went to Toronto and lived with Lulu's aunt (and her husband) and he attended the University of Toronto for one year to get his license while Lulu went to a technical school and learned cooking.
Then he set up a practice in Hamilton. He didn't like the city, because it was too hot, and so they went to Kingsville and set up practice. This is where Betty was born in 1915. Before March 1917 they had moved to Walkerville, where he eventually settled down. Then in about 1922 they moved to Toronto and he had a practice on Yonge St. near Sheldrake (in North Toronto). [At about this time he employed a maid, Ellen, who was a Barnardo girl from England.] They lived on Glengrove Ave. East (later called Glengowan Rd.). The man to whom he had sold the practice in Walkerville wasn't paying the bills, so Will had to move back there and resume practising there. They didn't want to sell the house on Willow State Cres. to the person who just waited to see the first offer and then top it. So they sold to the first people with the lower offer (the Fosters). At first, he just went back, but then his family followed him. He had a new house built on a new street, retired in 1934, and moved out of that house in 1940, when they moved to Windmill St. in Grosse Pointe because of the Foreign Exchange Control Act, which made non-U.S. residents turn over their assets at low prices. This is how Cameron ended up in the American Air Force. The Evans family was apparently friends of the Martin family, whose later son, Paul, became Canada's Prime Minister. During the Depression the Evans family was always relatively well off, partially due to the steady stream of rental income from Woolworth's and the United Cigar Shop.
Growing up in Windsor, he once raced by bike from Windsor to Toronto. One time, not racing but on a bicycle, when he was riding in Windsor's waterfront, he had a serious accident, crashing at a curb and fracturing his skull. Because of this, he never allowed his children to have bicycles. He didn't like hammers or any other tools; his wife had to do stuff with hammers. His daughter Betty recounts that he was very good at making shadow puppets against the wall (a testament to his wonderful sense of humour), and that he also liked watermelon. The death of his lone son Cameron in France during WWII was very hard for him and he was said to have died "of a broken heart" two years later, although the official cause was pneumonia. He died intestate with an estate worth several hundred thousand dollars.
He didn't like to wear his glasses and as a result didn't drive often and had to sit in the front row of movie theatres, which he enjoyed attending. He drove a McLaughlin Buick touring car.
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