1

vintage years:

YOU MAY not approve of this, but P’'m hijacking © today’s column for my own agenda because three days ‘from this writing Iam going to kiss off my 77th year and

"plunge into my 78th.

- This is no big deal, I quite agree. but an item presented in this newspa-

- per back in April — garnished by a

very touching photo of an elderly

lady getting a kiss from her 17th

grandchild — persuaded me to this “self indulgence. The lady pictured .

was not just any old elderly lady,’

. this. was Hazel Gilmour, achieving’

_ the 100 mark: Bravos to her, coupled

" with best wishes for as many more |

“as the lady.cant ‘take. ,”

‘What was equally arresting w were, o

the observations that accompanied . the photo,’ made by our provincial

“health officer, Dr. John Millar, about -

longevity, and particularly as applied to us here on the North Shore.

: It has beep established, ‘you see, by a recent survey, that residents of ° the North Shore can anticipate a life <span 79 years, This i is very good,

i said the doctor. ~— the residents of

Richmond are the only group that

ean expect to better that as they've

- achieved a statutory span of a full- -

bodied 80. It’s all flat land out there, |

I suppose that helps.” Anyway, the good doctor offered “a variety of reasons for d1is presum-

- ably generous figure we're flaunting. -.One thing, we don’t suffer from a lot -

°+of industrial pollution over here, our

incomes are generally sufficient and * we're considered to be clean living, - getting lots of exercise Tunning ‘up_ our hills. We also feel safe in our “homes, our rate of criminal activity vis dow. °

" out that our bracing environment ‘doesn't give us a license to smoke and drink. All very well, this is good “news if you're, say, 30...

Hf, like me, you're just coming on

.78 and you learn that 79 is the end

‘of the road, well, it’s a different horse, eh? Because I'll tell you, I'm

"not ready yet.’

* There's still an awful lot to remember and record so that all you and I had will not just go up in day-

. dreams. What we’ve come through,

-and what we've seen and suffered

and applauded and endured, all the

. Stuff that made us the way we are, it

shouldn't just become hearsay, or

. discarded as old news, or fairy tales. . A's really extremely improbable

that anyone will ever again see a

‘ month’s room and board for $25,

which is what I paid during my year

at Vancouver Normal School ia

1936, My stepfather sent a cheque for $30 cach month, the extra five bucks expected to stretch to cover anything | should need beyond food and shelter. But a movie was only a dime, the street-car was hulf that as | recall, you could buy a really big gooey chocolate for a nickel.

The thing to do was to walk a lot and let your hair grow,

| We all, at our age, have to face

“He added a rider to this, pointing ~ |

the possibility we won't last (lf that

nest birthday, of course, | was one of

those miserable children who gets bilious all the time — 1 was always having to be taken home where | could be sick. And at age 12, rheunsatic fever attacked me at a time in medicine when the only known treatment was bed-rest. Total bed-rest. | missed a full year of

- school and all my friends moved on

to higher grades before me. It was like changing towns.

However, I find the older I get the tougher I get (which is usually true of any cut of mieat)-so | survived to go skiing cross-country, to teach school in pathetic hamlets, to see the day we'd give up Red Seal records on the Victrola in favor of a radio set. :

We went calmly about our busi- ness as men went to the nioon and people began to take for granted the most complicated extensions of their

BD he SOLA EC RD LR TO

.

iories

lives in the shape of computers.

We're so rich in our experiences and our memories that we can't just let them evaporate, We have to hug them to us, if only just to act as buffers to the world we have now.

We were here when a fot of the stulf around us hadn‘t been invented, and we smile at each other occasion- ally, thinking “we could have done without a lot of it"

Some fellow on the television was describing a new computer tech- nique designed to “read brains.” Spare me.

Whither privacy? We've got to preserve it, one way or another, :: Writing'may be. tiring but the tape recorder gets everything, your laugh- ter, your tender feelings, your indig-

nation, and you don’t have to worry about punctuation.

Think it over. Your young people- would be delighted, and broadened. The perfect gift,

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“UNITY IN DIVERSITY WEEK” 1995 November 05 to 11.

Members of the Baha'i Community “of West: Vancouver have brought to my attention the concept of “Unity in Diversity”; and

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