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Tuesday, January 10th, 2012, 6.00 a.m.

Sometimes in life we just have to accept the miseries of it. Yesterday was one of those days. I am going to leave it at that except for one bright spot. My son and I reconnected after five years. After only seeing him twice on Skype, each at Christmas when he went home to Victoria to visit family and friends, he spent a very busy five days and four nights in Toronto recxonnecting with old friends here. He has become a world traveller living out of London. Since he moved there five years ago I heared he was in New Zealand, South America, the USA, Dubai, and now has two potential projects on either sides of the world. Who knows where he will be moving next? It was nice that he took the time to drop in for a few hours to see his old man. Our connecting has been fleeting since his mother moved them west to Winnipeg with her new husband some twenty or twenty-five years ago. He left last night at eleven p.m. on the red-eye flight to London, England just before I headed for bed for the best rest I have had in years and now he has just landed, all being well, at Heathrow Airport. Hopefully he got as good a sleep as I got but I do not suspect so. Then again, with all the changes on airplanes these days, perhaps things have improved a bit.

Okay, let's go back to the miseries.....first I am going to make no apologies for all the errors in yesterday's blog. It was a disaster. I started it very early in the morning when I should have been in bed but wasn't. I was too tired to do a proper job of it and all the errors I made seemed to go uncorrected. So after about four hours sleep, I was at it again. trying to sort out the blog mistakes and re-edit.....that was my mistake. I know my own bad habits. When I re-edit a book I have written I automatically start to add stuff. Big mistake! I then find myself with a long piece of writing without the flow of words that I previously had, so I have to go through it once again to get it right. Well, with all of yesterday's interruptions, my blog page sat open for the entire day and somewhere along the way I kept having to answer the phone, then my son arrived, then the management decided to drill out a pipe in the furnace room next door while he was here because it was broken and believe me, I do not know how the workman actually got at it as it was right behind the water heater and he was stretched out flat on his stomach on the cold, damp cement floor.

So, it became time for my son to go because of the irritating noise that made our conversation difficult and as he heads out the door which I am standing at, there is a collision with the guys who make deliveries to me every two weeks. I introduce them and then one says his sister is in London doing the university thing, one thing and another leads to a short conversation between my son and this guy, the drilling is going one, I am trying to listen in but with my lousy hearing I am not catching anything and then finally, everyone depart and he has left for his next visit. Whew! It was crazy!  After all that I had to find where the drilling was happening as I was afraid the vibrations would knock the cabinets which I do not trust, off my wall if it went on for a long time. So far so good. Now I was stuck with a box of stuff I had to then put away. Needless to say, the blog was still sitting there at the time. Finally settling in I got back to it when the doctor's office called. My blood tests were back and the doctor had prescribed a new medicine to add to the bunch I was already taking. I asked, "what for?" She wasn't sure. Turns out this recovery from four years of largely lying on my back, undiagnosed medical issues, four operations and a seperate hospital stay two years ago, all took their toll on me. The body was shutting down as I was trying to find answers. Well, stress repression to me is a combination of three things and has been since my childhood. Sleep, eat too much and lots of sugar. I know I shouldn't but I can't seem to deal with it. I have tried, on and off, for probably 50 of the 67 years I have been alive. End result, full-blown diabetes. So, while I sit here munching on a cookie, I am trying to fathom where I am going to next. Oh, back to my stories....that cookie was in my mouth before I realized it. That is how I gained the last 75 pounds....oops, just caught myself reaching for another. Stopped just in time. End result of yesterday discussion with the doctor's receptionist is that I then got a call from the drugstore assistant, saying she just got another prescription that they would deliver tonight. Also that when the druggist had time, she would call me. So, there I was, waiting for the druggist. That happened, then I fell asleep in the chair and then the door buzzer rang it was the drug delivery service. Another $15 in fees and a tip. These despensing fees are killing me. Thank heavens for the medicare system in Canada. Drugs only cost me $100 per year beginning in August since I am now a senior. Well, that hundred dollars was quickly used up but now all the despensing fees are starting to get to that level too. At least it feels that way.

Oh! I forgot. somewhere along the way. that great blog was wiped out when something suddenly shut down the computer for just a second, like a hiccup. Guess who lost all the attempts of corrections which I was just about to post....life isn't fair sometimes, is it.....so, if you think yesterday's blog needs further corrections, so do I but I worked on it so much and lost so much time and effort that I am just going to leave it as it is to show you what my writing demands of me with my LD problems. That, combined with my senior years, is not helping me. So, no apoloies for yesterday. It is what it is. I just have to totally revamp my life to get a few more years out of it. Heck, something else to worry about. So, to hell with history. The baggage is all packed and I am moving on. Today is the first day of the rest of my life so I am going to do what I have to do and get myself back to the living again....finally. The recovery is otherwise going well and the weight will start coming down soon.......maybe? I am already starting to give away all the white carbs I can no longer eat and I have baked the last of my pies or cakes forever....I think?

Now, I have a new set of goals. Get the weight down, get more exercise and get the house in order and get on with the editing. Then, life will be better and maybe I will be able to control my weight by diet alone. That should be interesting. I have never been able to do that before and nothing ever scared me enough to do it. Even my current situations don't seem to be doing it. Life's a bitch, ain't it!

Have a great day, it's the first day of the rest of our lives. I will. Maybe not, I think I have to go back to bed and catch a few more winks because I am starting to yawn.....zzzzzz....................ZZZZZZ...        ....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.             

Monday, January 9th, 2012, 12:05 a.m.

Learning disabilities first affected me in grade school but I did not know anything about them. In fact I did not learn about my own until I was about 50 years old and self-identified after reading a Reader's Digest article written by an LD teacher dealing with LD students. I was tested at the University of Toronto in an ongoing study which confirmed my suspicion. I had gone to a split high school for no better term after graduating elementary school where there was no contact with girls unless you knew them from outside of school. They occupied the other half of the building, a duplicate of our side. I liked the High School of Montreal because I worked in the cafeteria, had swimming classes in the school pool, gym classes, got on every sort of school team and even ran cross country with my brother. I also got to take woodworking, metal working and auto mechanics along with typing twice a week. If you ever saw an old movie in which a news reporter was typing up his article on an upright typewriter, you will know what kind of machines we used. Yes, they were the original ones purchased and installed in the school around 1895 and they still worked extremely well having been regulary oiled and repaired as required. Besides, how much damage could my small hands do the typewriter. My little finger on my right hand was not strong enough in those days to even press the letter 'p' down so I was constantly doing a Dr. Spock greeting on my keyboard as I stretched the next finger to that key. Well, I failed high school that first year with 58.9%. The pass was 60% in subjects and I needed a 65% average. I was dumbfounded. So, the next year I went back to Grade Eight and it was more of the same except I was able to learn a bit more since I already knew a lot of the stuff. This time my typing skills went up to 82% from 60% and I averaged 62.8% for the year. I did not make the pass mark of 65% but they allowed me to go to summer school and I got through to Grade Nine. Still, I got to try a lot of different things like a session on the trumpet. I passed that course but did not continue into Grade Nine as I had been moved up to a Grade 9C class with lots more math and harder subjects. My marks dropped to 52.4% and I could not explain it. I guess I was just worn out from all the trying to get good marks with out any success. That was the year that I was transferred to a new school named Malcolm Campbell High School in St. Laurent I am not sure what the area was called. Anyway, it was near the Autoroute and a nice new building for the coming crowds of babyboomers born after the war and the slow learning types like me who had got behind. I was doing my second year of grade nine there but only achieved 61.6% with all the destractions and my teacher did not let me go to summer school that summer thinking I needed to learn for once and for all that I needed to work. He did not know anything about learning disabilities back then and probably needed a lesson. Not many teachers did, but those who did were a great help to me along the way like one French teacher and a grade four teacher who taught me in elementary school. I remember them for that. They were able to teach me where otherwise I might not have learned anything. Here I was, a summer off and time for some fun, a broken neck and months wearing a collar while I could do nothing else but learn. My parks shot up to 70.9%, a first for me, but also because all I could do was learn that year and with two previous years of plugging my brain with knowledge, I just improved upon that and finally got it all in. For the following year I asked to get into an advanced math class thinking it is where I should be. They put me in 10D, higher than the 9 H and 9I which I had experienced earlier. On August 18th, I was rushed into hospital and over the next three months I was in and out of hospital, nearly died, and did not get back to school until December 1st. Even then I was very weak. My parent paid my math teacher to come and tutor me at home but it was not enough to give me enough knowledge and practice to retain stuff as I should as my body was not reacting well and I ended up back in hospital along the way. Finally on the road to recovery I tried to catch up but it was almost impossible leaving me that far behind that I got only 49.7% for Grade Ten, about the right mark for missing three months of school and not being able to catch up. However, I did not let that deter me. I left school because I had spent 6 years there, gone through a broken neck and a kidney removal and a lung collapse along the way after they extracted 250 ccs of liquid from it. Not a happy time but such was my life. By the summer of 1963 I was working fulltime and enrolled in Sir George Williams Evening High School in the fall. It was a YMCA venture in Montreal that had allowed thousands like myself over the years to get an education at night while going to work during the day and allowed us to decide how many courses we could handle at one time. Classes were 2 hours long generally, one night per week or two nights per week in the summer. From 1963 to the end of the summer of 1965, I attended a total of thirteen highschool courses going up to 3 nights a week for four hours per night at one point. There was always homework and little time to play. Fortunately, I had met a young lady at a YMCA dance and we hit it off. She and I would date for the next three years once a week and spend summer vacations together when we could get the time together. That ended a year after I moved west to Calgary but was fun while it lasted. She was a lovely girl. Nevertheless, the environment at night school suited me and i graduated with a 70.5% average, enough to get into Sir George Williams University at age 21 just as my grade school mates who had got that far had graduated. My high school education had taken me a total of eight years to complete. And it did not stop there, it went on with my night classes at university and then when I came back from three years in the west to complete the degree I had just started when a promotion had taken me west. It was a nice break for me.  In any case, my education did not stop there. It continued on and off for the rest of my life until I had done enough and could no longer afford it. I did not overcome my learning disabilities and they plagued me in a lot of different ways throughout my life and still do while I am typing this blog but such is what I have to contend with to survive. After 4 degrees and a banking fellowship I feel I spent enough time in school, did things I needed and things I wanted to do well. The only thing I noted is that as I matured so did my marks and they kept rising as the years went by. After the age of 50 all of my university courses were mainly Bs and B+s with an A here and there. Over those years I completed a total of fifty individual courses....it was a long but an education road. Combining that with my good and bad life experiences, it is material for another book maybe....what do you think? Naaaaaw, maybe not, the others aren't finished yet and I am in my 68th year of life. Phooey!               

Sunday, January 8th, 2012,  12:10 a.m.

It is just past midnight and I am still thinking about the entire bunch of asparagus that I ate for supper. With almost five years of limited activity due to arthritis and many related problems plus two hip replacements, I am not considered pre-diabetic, meaning that my body has been shutting down because of the prolonged period of recovery from the issues, including an attack of gout, an inherited thing, I gather, all of which comes down through my father's side of the family along with my learning disabilities. Well, that means a severe diet change and a need to fill half my plate with veggies, a quarter each of certain carbs and then protein. It will take me a few months to get the weight down but such is life. Well, last night I cut up all sorts of veggies and did a wok type of fry up. I ate so many veggies I was afraid of the outcome but I have survived it okay. What I did not eat, I left in the pot and added x-Christmas turkey bones...just in time too. Now I have an interesting soup which I will dig in for lunch tomorrow and possibly through the next few days.

Tonight was asparagus night. I ate the entire bunch I had bought at the store, trimmed the edges and cut them in half to fit the pot, added some water and margarine and the end result was a fantastic beginning to a meal. I cannot believe I ate the whole thing. Asparagus was my father's favourite and I remember we had to watch it grow so as to cut it at just the right time.  Towards the end of the season, some sprouts just got too tall and we left them to grow out. I barely remember what the asparagus looked like in our vegetable garden but the image of the mature stock remains with me to this day. Life can be like that, can't it?

While I have my preferences, I cannot think of any vegetable today that I would refuse to eat. That makes things a bit easier. Trouble is that I am afraid to put the veggies in the fridge because of what the cold does to them so I am learning to leave them out for a few days before I use them up. It worked okay so far. When it comes to a diet though, I also have to think which are the best things to be eating and right, you guessed it! Avacodos from Mexico or somewhere south of there. I love my grocery store but wished it stocked more Canadian veggies. Then again, they would be too expensive for my budget so I would have to limited the amount of them I buy. Well,  it is time for bed while the avacado fairy dances around in my head. Now my body gets to vegetate while I am sleeping....I am looking for a stretch of 4-1/2 hours. ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

Saturday, January 7th, 2012  1:45 a.m.

It is hard to believe that my life has gone by so fast. I will be 68 later this year and odds are not in favour of my living beyond age 80 if I look at the things that are against me and factor in the average life expectancies. Nevertheless, I don't let it bother me too much. I just try to do the best I can and keep a positive attitude. I have been to hell and back again throughout my life right from birth. I have also dealt with all sorts of problems, and gone as low as you can go in life but I still survived. Then I look at friends with mental health problems and say to myself, their problem is at the root of things, not in the extremities. I have seen a number of people over the years who have suffered from mental health problems of different natures so I have a good understanding of most of it. I have tried to help where I could but also had to accept that somethings just had to be the way they went. Thankfully, my only mental health problems happened under conditions of severe toxicity due to mould in an apartment I was renting and raccoons living overhead. It took me a month after I left there to fully recover from that one, thanks to my son who allowed me to stay with him at the time. Now that he lives in London, England, it will be difficult to ask for his help again. But I will, on Monday when he drops in on his way home to England after stops in Victoria for Christmas and Toronto to visit old friends. I think he has decided to make England his home for good now that he is in his mid-30s and I wish him well. The last person in our family to have mental health problems that I know about had to be my father's aunt who we called Annie, the wife of Charles McKinley. She had mental problems caused, I suspect, because she could not have any children. Her husband was my father's mother's brother. He died in 1942. An nie McKInley, his wife, was not a blood relative. Life is funny that way, I have outlived a great many friends myself and even been a pallbearer at a funeral. People I remember from yesterday have now been dead for some 25 years. I have one aunt still alive in her eighties but both my father and his youngest brother lived to be 88, my mother to 85. My dad's older brother died at age 80 in 1994 so their lives have been a far stretch from their parents' lives. My father's parents died at age 65 and 56. My mother's parents died at age 54 and 30. Today, those lives could have been extended. While I do not think I will outlive other members of my family, I do think I will survive long enough for my grandchild due in June to remember me. At least I hope so. I like to say I plan to live to be a hundred, give or take thirty years. We never know what life will bring us and even the fittest of the fittest have died of things that were a total surprise to them. When I was in my mid-20s I weighed something like 165 lbs. My dad at the same age came in at around 130 pounds. Kind of tells you that I am a different build from him so a weight of 200 would be good for me....it will take about two years to get there but I think I can make it. I am on my way now, trying to improve my eating habits today. Now if only I could get my body to coincide with the schedule I have in mind. If I could get my body on a regular one, it would help things a great deal. So, now I will have to worry about what to do with all the food I can no longer eat? Never had that problem before....hmmmmmm.      

Friday, January 6th, 2012. 1 a.m.

I have the story somewhere but I cannot put my finger on it at the moment. It is a newpaper photo and caption in either a Kingston of Gananoque, Ontario paper. It tells the story of a lost lighter. When Canada first went to war as the Canadian Armed Service Force, It sent a number of ship loads of hastly trained and poorly equipped soldiers to England to take over the vacant Camp Aldershott to provide protection to England as something like 300,000 or more troops had all been sent to Europe to fight the forces of the Nazi party. Unknown at the time was the fact that the war was actually not going well for the British and culminated in the race to get a total of 336,000 soldiers of several nationalities out of Dunkirk, France before the Germans took over. The losses were devastating to the British but had to be endured. In any case, one of the replacement soldiers, upon leaving Kingston where he did his brief 3 months of training, was given a small pocket lighter with a military crest on it by his family. When tht soldier decided after a year in England that he would join the RAF, he turned in his uniform and lost his lighter around the same time. Soon forgotten as one of those unfortunate things that happened in life, the war went on. Back in Canada by mid-1944 and by then having served in 4 distinct group in two military forces, as he was now an officer in the RCAF, he could not wait until the war was over. finally that day came, 2 kids arrrived with his wife from England and they settled into an apartment in  Pendleton, Ontario while they waitied for accommodations to become available in Montreal. Finally that day came, the family added a daughter and a third son and the group of six moved into a new home. The decades past the families left Montreal because of the political situation and settled at Dog Lake closer to Gananoque than Kingston up highway 15 near Seeley's Bay. Inflation took a big chunk out of the money they had set aside to enjoy their retirement. Eventually, now closer to old age, he found himself needing additional assistance to keep the place going. He had heard about special programs for veterans and decided to contact them. When his fiel was opened, there was a note inside saying the Archives should be contacted with any new address. The next thing turned out to be the return of his old lighter which had been found in his jacket pocket when he turned in his Canadain army gear at the end of 1940.  Somehow, that lighter had been found, returned to Canada and held in the Archives until the moment his file was open and a note was found giving his latest address.

That NPAM motorcycle dispatch rider, Canadian signal corps lorry driver, RAF pilot and RCAF administrator with active combat experience as a volunteer, was my own father.      

Thursday, January 5th, 2012, 4:20 a.m.

Time Zones have always bugged me, especially now with the Internet. I cannot figure out who's ahead and who's behind and by how much. I was born in England, around midnight, double summer time or something like that. What's that? I know I was born, and I know I left England at the age of 5 months but don't ask me when I was born if you want the right answer. I cannot give it to you. Each country seems to have a variation on the concept of time zones to fit their own weather patterns. Morning begins at this time and night begins at this time. and what about the poor people who live across the street from the time zone boundary? How do they cope. "I will see you at four, no, that's five...I think? What time is it at your place." At what point are you far enough away from that time zone border not to be affected by it? Yes, I know it was a great improvement on the 1800s and the problems they had but we are now something like 125 to 150 years since the time zones were established. Perhaps it is time to look at the map again? Nothing is set in stone when it comes to some things.

I am very creative in the middle of the night and I have slept an odd schedule for some 25 years now if not for most of my life. I have always pushed the clock, even as a kid when I delivered the morning paper and got up at 5 or 6 in the morning to do my run. Then my father would have to threaten me to get me to go to bed at 11:00 o'clock at night. My time zone is now dictated by what my life is doing that day. If I am tired, I sleep. If I am creative, I write. If I am awake I stay awake. Even a sleep apnea machine does not keep me asleep long enough. They say that the REM part of the sleep is the most important part. Well, most people have problems getting into the REM part. My problems seem to lie in the REM part, not getting to it. So what's that?  It is now 4:37 a.m. and I feel fresh from a hot shower and I am ready to start my day....what am I saying? I have already started my day having got up at 2:50 a.m. It is a good thing I am not married. It would drive my wife nuts. It suits me though and probably won't change all that much now that I am retired. I find it easier working at the computer at night and I am happier without all the sounds of people walking around over my head or walking the stairs in the hall.

Maybe it is my lifestyle that makes me this way. After years of being the guy involved with every organization and doing all sorts of community work, I am back to being a recluse, happier not having the pressure on me anymore. It has given me more time to indulge in the things I really enjoy, genealogy, art, education and especially writing. I remember the long hours and the pleasure I got out of building model cars as a youngster. Those days were my happiest because I did not have someone looking over my shoulder telling me what to do. Well, my retirement is a bit like that but I wish I could afford a housekeeper because my time zones don't allow me to do a good job. Like a lot of guys, the mess can build up around me and I don't see it. At least I do the dishes once a day but otherwise it's like the rest of the housework is in a different time zone, the one I don't go to very often. Years of tough medical situtations and an inability to get around easily have not helped the cause. Oh, well, I will just keep going until the mess disappears or a genie appears to clean it up.....hmmmmmm, now there's an idea! What do you think?

The next time you find yourself in a different time zone, give me a call. I will probably be awake. On second thoughts, send me an email, just in case I am not.  Have a great day, whatever time zone you are in.  

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012  12:05 a.m.

I do not have all the details on the history of the computer but I can tell you of my experiences over the years and the evolution of the computer. I can go back to the 1950s and talk about my father's experiences with the computer. In his day, numbers were important and to keep a large organization of jewellery stores going and provide suitable data required the most modern equipment. As Chief Accountant and Officer Manager he had a team of some 60 individuals processing data and reporting to him. He was the first to introduce a cash register to the main store and then to install the first computer in the head office. It consisted of a wall of tubes that flashed on and off on a regular basis as data was processed. By today's standards, it used technology that the radio industry was about to give up and needed tubes that you might find in the back of early television sets. Nevertheless, the system worked and it worked well. Data was punched on to cards and the cards were fed to a reader which produced a final report and save many accountants hours and hours of work to generate. My sister worked in the input department as a teenager one summer and that was her job. When the computer broke down, the only way to repair it was to bring in farm fruit basket after basket of new tubes and exchange them for the old ones that would be tested and recycled back at the shop. Archaic as the system war, it worked and did not need fancy equipment to be carried around hoping to find the error.

To give you a comparison of how the size of computers has changed, the entire space program was run by the Illiac 4 computer system which took up the equivalent of 4 city blocks to run it. Today that can be done on a couple of desktop computers. How times have changed. 

In 1972 I came to Toronto to work with Burroughs Business Machines. My initial job was to program computers. In those days, the mechanical machines were still being repaired but every attempt was being made to replace them with the Burroughs L2000 machine. Simply, it was a desk with a small computer in it which could be used with cards or paper tape much like the principle of the old ticker tape systems established at the turn of the century. The computer language was called Assembler and to this day is still the basic number system that runs your computer and every computer in the world because it used the numbers 0 to 9. Many platforms now sit on top of that basic system but they just make programming easier once you learn the language. When I learned how to program, it took 8 months until the next had a program came along for me to write in the Toronto Branch on Bay Street. It was a front desk registration system for the hotel up the street. I almost had to relearn how to program again but the final product was produced and it worked well. 

It was about this time that my brother JIm became an instructor at George Brown College teaching math having gained his PhD in Math from Queen's University in Kingston. For a period of seven years he was also director of computer services at George Brown. At home he programmed small screened Commodore Pet computers and learned all about languages. After a failed attempt at running a software wholesale business on the side, he continued on to build, sell and program computers in his spare time. He bought and read just about every computer book possible and to this day has a library that few have ever hope to acquire. Now he is qualified to teach computer languages. To get that qualification required a 95% pass and he did it with a number of different languages. 

In  the mid-1970s while I was taking night courses at York University, I was introduced to the email. Long before it became the vehicle of the Internet it was the vehicle of the University which allowed me to leave messages for my professors who were on the system. When I went back to school in the early 1990s to wait out the recession, I just happened to be there when the university connected up to the Internet. It was a thrilling time and initially only included north american webpages, generally created by young students with a computer knack. It was the time of the dot. com companies where millions were made by owning and selling the dot.com addresses of the big names like McDonalds, GM, and many other firms which had been cornered by those in the know.

My first computer cost $2275.00 back in the nineties. My latest, a rebuilt unit cost about $200. It works fine. My first printer bought in 1995, an HP 4L lazerjet printer cost $750 and it is still working. Today, HP sells lazer printers for $30 on sale. Times have certainly changed just as the Internet has changed the world. Me? Well, I just got older, wrote a lot of books and retired. After all, old computers never die, they just keep on computing.

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012, 1:45 a.m.

Sometimes, the stories in families get all mixed together and in a hunt for fame, a connection is made with a famous person. I had that thought for a number of decades in the person of Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish writer. Now it has to be understood that research can do one of two things, either promote further research of find the truth. My study of Sir Walter Scott came from trying to pinpoint the family connection. It went something like this. My Great Aunt Margaret Scott Carswell, a spinsiter throughout her life, descended from an Errington who was descended from a Scott received her middle name along with a family inheritance that ended with her own aunt, all a result of an ancestor who wanted the famous name of Scott to be handed down through the family in the absence of a son to carry it on. Well, that was okay so far until my research led me astray. In searching for the name Scott, I came across the name Jobson and the end of a line. It seems that Sir Walter Scott II, the son and last to carry the SIR in the title, married a Jane Jobson of Lochore. There was my answer, except that I did not have the answer as to which uncle had made the pledge of money to carry on the task.

I must have read a dozen books about Sir Walter Scott and his life history trying to find that answer. Along the way I came across the name of a favourite uncle Walter Scott who farmed just across the border in northern England, what is now part of the New Forest, a large national park in the area laid out by the purchase of old farmland. My trail went cold until I found a family of Jobsons in New Zealand researching their Scott connection. Together we came to the conclusion that the Walter Scott I was looking for was the same Walter Scott who farmed in northern England. His son was also a Scott but married a Jobson and he would have been the Scott trying to carry on the family name.

Now, tell me this, if you found the name Scott in the family, a daughter-in-law named Jobson, and a close Scott family friend named Fergusson who brought the two together, would you not think that we were somehow related? We that was the story that had me hooked for decades but like the true researcher, there was just not enough for me to connect the dots. Now that my distant cousin in New Zealand has done that for me, the lines can be drawn, except for one thing, how is it that we all share the same names and timelines and vicinity? Maybe there is some more direct connection between Sir Walter Scott's family and mine. Maybe a little more research needs to be done to find what I read at Scott Library at York University and see if we cannot connect our Walter Scotts by the common farm name.... hmmmmmm. Connections between families for purposes of marriage usually came from who you knew back then. Did the Scotts know the Jobsons and did the Jobsons have a suitable cousin recommended by the Fergusson? The total mystery has not yet been solved. The journey has not ended.

Monday, January 2nd, 2012, 3:40 a.m.

Today's story is about the missing sister. Gladys was her name and she was born on about October 1st, 1914. Fortunately, she was born five days before her parents were married. Many a young woman found themselves in a family way just after their boyfriends had departed for boot camp. Both of the young people knew that they might only see each other once more before the young man went to war. They were in love and it was enough for them to make a family out of a disaster. Married on October 5th, 1914 at St. Aubins by her family minister where he was at boot camp,, Wilhelmina Degerlund did not see him again until after WWI was over. By then, James Leonard was a changed man and four years older. Returning home, he moved in with his wife and resumed family life. My own mother was born in 1920. 

Throughout the war Wilhelmina Degerlund cared for her daughter and worked as a social worker for her church. I am guessing that part of her job was to visit the poorest of the poor in St. George in the East, part of the London Docks area of the city in England. While her husband was away working in the stock brokering industry she c ontinued with her work, not knowing that at some point she had contracted TB from somewhere. It would take her life in 1926 at age 30, too young an age at which to die. This left James Leonard with two young daughters, a job and no one to care for the kids. That task was taken over by his stepmother, a once-widowed mother of nine kids. I recall my mother saying that there were three daughters and a bunch of boys around all the time. For a period of about five years, my mother and her sister lived with the grandmother. Along the way they met the various women hoping to capture the heart of this up and coming stockbroker. Gladys came to care for one potential stepmother while her father decided to marry another. Home with her father, she had taken over the house and was acting as the housekeeper in absence of a mother. After they married, he found that his eldest daughter, then fifteen, was too much to handle and he sent her off to work and to live with one of her aunts.

My mother was ten years old when she last saw her sister around 1930. It was on a road trip with a friend. Her sister followed her home on the bus to see that she made it okay but that was the last time because her job as a assistant to a greyhound trainer took her away from the city for the most part. Eventually, in 1838, she would marry this Irish trainer but all my mother knew by then was that she had not seen her sister for eight years.

In 1990 I decided it was time to start looking for my aunt. My mother had mentioned her on occasion but never said much. The war came along in 1939, she signed up as a WAAF in 1940, was posted to Scotland after the Battle of Britain as an officer in 1941 and met my father. They were married in 1942 and my brother was born in 1943 in Harrogate Yorkshire where he had been posted next. I came along in 1944 and by early 1945 we were all living in an apartment in the village Pendleton, Ontario, where he was the Station Adjutant and commanding officer of the RCAF No.10 Early Flying Training School. Two more kids came along in 1947 and 1948 while we lived in Cartierville, a suburb of Montreal. Thoughts of the sister were put aside for the future.

I first did a bit of genealogical research to verify that there were actually four Degerlund bothers as she suspected. Sure enough, the records of births for St. George in the East produced results. I then thought to myself that if the family was still living in London I should be able to find one of them. After all, I was now looking for a grandson, and with uncles, I should be able to find at least one. I contacted my mother's step cousin and asked her if she would be kind enough to see if there was a Degerlund listed in the London phone book.

Yureka! She wrote back with two names and addresses. I wrote to both of them immediately. A few weeks passed and I received a lettler from on of the individuals. I will never forget the line that began with " I have contacted your aunt through your cousin....."

 From that moment on the correspondence began. Little had I thought about the fact that her life went on too. She had married, had two sons and was living in Eagle, in Lincolnshire in Northern England, the same shire out of which my father flew Lancaster bombers on raids over Germany. During the week of my parents' 50th wedding anniversary I stayed at the lake with the parents making preparations for the family gathering. ON the Tuesday before the weekend event, I decided I would stun my mother then with the news, not knowing what it might do to her at an event organized in their honour. She was absolutely dumbfounded. Part of the surprise gifts for the evening of the special event was the presentation of a cheque that would allow them to go to England that fall and visit with the sister and her family. The following summer, the sister came to Canada and stayed at the lake. They would correspond for the next decade and family would occasionally meet but nothing was more satisfying to me than knowing I had come full circle and filled in the blanks for my mother. I knew not knowing what happened to her sister always bothered her. As she left the room that evening with letter in hand, she turned to me and said, "you always knew." I just nodded.

January 1st, 2012    12:07 a.m.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

I thought I would start off the new year with a blog. My neighbour beat me to it with a fireworks display. Either that or someone fired off a gun about a dozen times or so. Sometime in the coming weeks I will begin my diet in earnest. Until I get that all under control, my concentration will be on decreasing my daily intake so that I am not eating every two hours. That will be the hard part as I seem to have gotten myself into that frame of mind. The turn of the calendar means I will have to do a painting or two as I have promised myself over the years, at least one painting per year. Last year I did three or four. Unlike a lot of artists who buy ready made canvases I make my own, staple them together and give them a few coats of Gesso before I settle down to paint on them. My mother was an oil painter although most of her painting was done on short drink glasses and consisted of colourful Canadian birds, Christmas gifts for friends. They did not look too great after they had been used and washed a number of times but I never said anything about that. To my knowledge, Mum only painted one complete painting. ...oh, and there were a couple of thinks with ducks on them to hang in the house by the lake. I really do not consider them as works of art, although they are exactly that. I, on the other had have probably created some 3 or 4 dozen pieces of art, from a plaster cast to soapstone carving to printmaking and painting. It has been a fun journey. This is the year I have to do something with a Mayan touch as according to the Mayan calendar, this is the year the world comes to an end. I know things have been bad lately but a 4.2 earthquake on the Rictor scale is nothing much.

As an artist it is important to have some credentials. I was a student of Arthur Lismer of the Group of Seven painters. He taught art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art when I was a youngster so that along with half a dozen studio art courses at York University's Fine Arts program gives me great credentials. All that and a dollar fifty will get me a cup of coffee.

 To all of you who are seeing the New Year in with a late night party, have a great time, I am going to bed.