His retirement years featured some painful moments with the death of his mother in 1934, and not being able to make it to her funeral, the death of his wife — whom he had married in 1914 — from a heart seizure in 1963 and the death of his youngest child, Joan Franklin, in 1976 due to a heart weakness brought on by stringent dieting in her days as a figure skater.
Kljub neuspehu je bil nato izvoljen v odbor za parke Vancouver Parks Board.