Page 56 - Aging Parents - FDCCPublications

PATIENCE, PLANNING AND SUPPORT: REFLECTIONS ON DEALING WITH AGING FAMILY MEMBERS
had designed. Still, he was successful and went on to have a 30-plus-year federal civil service career before his retirement.
I was somewhat oblivious to the challenges of raising a young family in my youth, but I did take note that we were seemingly always on the move. I suspect I contributed modestly to this experience. Though I have no recollection of it, my older brother recalls that at about the “terrible twos” stage very early in my life, I escaped for a short time from our rented suite into the corridors of their Edmonton high-rise apartment building. A few more such episodes prompted a move to a rental home much closer to the ground as my mom resolved that she would no longer be chasing me up and down the corridors.5
This began a life of moves, first within Edmonton and then during my dad’s civil service career, to Frobisher Bay
on Baffin Island, in Nunavut Territory 6, and then down “south” again to the prairies and Canadian shield country, which makes up the Province of Manitoba. There, we
had stints in Winnipeg, Dauphin, and Brandon before settling back in Winnipeg. During much of the time in Manitoba (from 1973 to 1980), I attended boarding school in Winnipeg, which gave me some stability. Mom had attended such a school to keep her from under her dad’s feet when her mom was ill, so it was not as strange for her as it might be nowadays. I shared my mom’s restlessness. Upon graduating from high school, I struck out for the east coast to study for undergraduate and graduate degrees in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before moving to Kingston, Ontario, for law school and Toronto to start my legal career.
For their part, once retired, my parents moved in the opposite direction to the small town of Nanaimo on
5 Her athleticism was still challenged after our move as I do recall her chasing me around the kitchen of the rental house, wooden spoon in hand, because I’d managed to get my hands on the brown sugar jar left within reach. Ultimately, my boundless energy won over her fierce determination to mete out justice – perhaps helped by my constant laughter, which eventually brought a smile to my mom’s formerly angry face. All of which is to say, though rambunctious, mischievous, and quick on my feet at an early age, I was well and truly loved.
6 For readers old enough to recall the first voyage through the Northwest Passage of a ship called the USS Manhattan, my parents knew this was an historic “moment” and so hustled me along with my Inuit friends to the shores of Frobisher Bay at a low tide to bare witness – albeit from quite a distance – to a long black line moving slowly across the mouth of the bay, preceded by a much smaller red line with a white top. The former was the Manhattan, the latter one of our sturdy Canadian icebreakers cutting a path forward.
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