My husband Douglas and I moved into a lovely red brick Victorian home in the hamlet of Millbrook when our firstborn was 10 months old. The house was in excellent shape and featured a wraparound porch, a white picket fence, and about a half acre of property. Pretty much the ideal North American family home.Continue reading “Won’t You Be My Neighbour?”
Tag Archives: personal reminiscence
The Song Remains the Same
I’ve always felt sorry for people who do not regularly listen to music. Very rarely does one encounter situations which wouldn’t be improved if accompanied by a song. I find music can turn simple contentment into unbridled joy, especially when I dance and/or sing along. Heartache becomes more poignant, but also somehow more bearable, whenContinue reading “The Song Remains the Same”
Good Fences make Good Neighbours
I was born at the tail end of the baby boom, and there were scads of children on my street. We played massive games of British bulldog, red rover, tag, and hide and seek. Our neighbourhood was our well used playground, and thus we knew it like the backs of our hands. We had aContinue reading “Good Fences make Good Neighbours”
The Land of Kiwis
I got married on December 2nd, 1985, and my new husband Douglas and I headed out on a world tour of indeterminate length on the 29th of that month. We bought special tickets from American Airlines which allowed us half a dozen plane trips over the next 12 months provided we always headed west. ThisContinue reading “The Land of Kiwis”
Portugal
The ancestors on both side of my father’s family came from Sāo Miguel, the largest island in the Azores. The Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal, is an archipelago comprised of nine volcanic islands situation in the North Atlantic Ocean about 1,400 km west of Portugal, and about 1,900 km southeast of Newfoundland. It enjoysContinue reading “Portugal”
Holiday in Spain
Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, and it is world famous because of the enormous rock rising up from its centre. It sits on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, the only entrance to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. This unique locationContinue reading “Holiday in Spain”
Rock the Casbah (Cont’d)
Douglas and I stayed put in our hotel the next day waiting for the antibiotics to take effect. We only had two days left on our car rental, but it didn’t make sense to rush because we would have to pull over every half hour to find a bathroom if we left too soon. MyContinue reading “Rock the Casbah (Cont’d)”
Rock the Casbah
Morocco is an ancient and fascinating country situated in the northwest corner of Africa and bordering both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. It was a protectorate of France from 1912 until 1956 (a fact you already know if you’ve ever seen the movie Casablanca) and many of its inhabitants still speak French toContinue reading “Rock the Casbah”
What if We Went to Italy
My husband Douglas and I spent a month travelling around Italy in the spring of 1985. We didn’t have any sort of plan other than wanting to visit my maternal grandfather’s grave at some point. He had been a lance corporal in the Loyal Edmonton Regiment and was killed in August of 1944 on theContinue reading “What if We Went to Italy”
My Old School – The Continuing Saga
I taught at Dr. Ross Tilley Public School in Bowmanville for the first five years of my career, and last week I touched on how difficult and confrontational the school community could be. This sort of environment had its upside, however, in that it created an us vs. them mindset which forced the staff toContinue reading “My Old School – The Continuing Saga”
Random Samplings 