Ma’ahin Ahmed

Vance was born in Vancouver, and growing up he moved around quite a bit within Vancouver and surrounding cities. In 1961 he moved to New Westminster to be closer to some family members. During our conversation he recounts how he went from a rough childhood and youth to eventually finding some balance in life during his 30’s. When asked what is the most important thing he has learned over time, he says, “I had a very quick temper—not physical, but anger—I used to lose control over my ability to speak and be rational about things when I was upset about something… so I would just walk away from the problem, and move on to another house or another relationship. I couldn’t stop and face it… I’ve learned through therapy, Kurt (his husband) and friends; I’ve learned to be patient; I don’t lose my temper anymore. Ever. I listen and stay involved.”

The escape

Navy dockyards at Bermuda. Credit: dmitri_66/Flickr

As the ship set sail for Bermuda from the east coast of Canada, 17-year-old Vance was convinced that he had left his troubles behind. He had lived in 37 different houses from Vancouver to Surrey by the age 16. He had hopped from one school to another. He had seen his parents get divorced, and subsequently marry other people. He had been a responsible and caring older brother for the rest of his siblings. He had bounced back and forth between his father and mother’s respective houses. He had done all of this for long enough, but now it was time for him to leave. The Royal Canadian Navy was to be the door through which he would escape for the next three years—or at least so Vance had thought as he set off on his first cruise.

In Bermuda, far removed from his past life, Vance found exactly what he had hoped for. He sneaked out of the ship for a few days, and met a man, whom he had quickly, though surely, fallen in love with. They were having a marvelous time together; Vance was in awe at how swiftly his life was changing. Innocently falling prey to youthful naivety, he pictured himself finally living a stable life in Bermuda. Unfortunately, the odds were not in his favour—not yet at least—, and Vance was heartbroken when his friend asked him to return to his ship. Dejected, he returned, only to find himself in more trouble than he was ready to face at that moment in time. Having carelessly left the ship, Vance had displeased his seniors, and all his dreams for a future in Bermuda—or for that matter in the navy—fell apart, as he broke down and told his seniors that he was homosexual. Inevitably, the next thing he knew, he was on board another ship back to Halifax, where he was granted an honourable discharge from the navy on medical grounds.

Moment of Truth

A little ways down the road, now back in BC, Vance had moved to New Westminster to be closer to some family members. He found himself killing time in an attempt to move on with life, when another surprise revealed itself: the girl whom he had been seeing in Halifax came to be with him completely out of the blue. Struggling to figure out his sexuality and unable to normalize his life, Vance thought it only made sense to marry the girl. Besides, he had to be fair to her.

Together, Vance and his wife started life anew, and if anything, out of obligation to his wife, Vance wanted to try his best to sustain their relationship. In fact, he would not have experienced two of his life’s most joyful moments—the births of his sons—if it were not for this relationship. Yet, despite the best intentions, some things are just not meant to be, and Vance’s relationship with his wife was one such thing. As Vance approached the age of 30, he was quickly coming to a significant turning point in life, and the realization that he was not being honest to his wife or to himself was an inescapable moment of truth that he had to confront. Sadly, Vance and his wife parted their ways for good.

At this point Vance was convinced that he needed help to pull himself out of the mess that his life was turning into. Therefore, Vance decided to join six weeks of group therapy at UBC, and in retrospect this was one of the best decisions he made in life. Therapy helped him rediscover his long lost faith in himself and redefine his perspective on life. He walked out of therapy determined to improve his life, and slowly but certainly times started changing for him.

 The guy on the table across the room

Vance had just turned 34, and life seemed to be normalizing. Just then another surprise was lurking around the corner; albeit this time round no heartbreaks or sad goodbyes were involved. Vance was eating lunch at Eaton’s, downtown Vancouver, when he spotted a guy across the room; he looked younger, perhaps in his 20s. Incidentally, they shared a brief moment of eye contact, and after a little while of looking back and forth they introduced themselves to each other. Vance and Kurt, the guy from the table across the room, have now been together for 38 years. Kurt was, and is, a blessing for Vance; he taught Vance how to trust, to be patient and to compromise. Most importantly he brought some much-needed stability to Vance’s life.

For a long time, Vance and Kurt had to go through the unfortunate experience of being unable to openly declare their relationship, but as long as they had each other and a supportive family, Vance was content. Fortunately, the dawn of July 8, 2003 was the end of living in a closet for Vance and Kurt. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s efforts to reform marriage laws in Canada had finally come to fruition, and following Ontario and Quebec, the BC Court of Appeals passed a ruling for same-sex marriages to be made legal. Soon afterwards Vance officially tied the knot with Kurt, and was overjoyed to have his father by his side as his best man.

Summary

The protagonist of our story, Margaret, is a ninety-year-old retired teacher who enjoys keeping every tiny memorable item she’s gathered in her life. Those photos and small objects are regarded by her as part of her life. They describe in detail the whole interesting life story of this great mother of four children who grew up on a farm in British Columbia. One object is a hand-made hat she made herself; the hat is now seventy-five years old. Margaret collected all her neighbours’ signatures and their favourite colors when she was about sixteen years old. She then embroidered these names on this hat using lines with different colors. Although it is quite aged, it still looks nice, owing to its owner’s good care. Some of her other treasured objects include an insignia from her father and a locket with photos inside from her mother.

Early years as a child

Margaret was born in a large family in September , 1924. Being the only girl in her family, she has three elder brothers and a younger brother who is four years younger than her. Unfortunately, the eldest child in this family died in his age of fourteen, when Margaret was a pretty young girl.

Both of Margaret’s parents came from Scotland and settled in Ottawa, where they gave birth to all their children. When the Great Depression swept over the whole North America, Margaret’s father lost everything like everyone else in the city. In her age of six, the whole family had to move away from Ottawa to find a new place to live in. This was when they finally found a farm that could accommodate all the family members after a long trip.

Attending school in her new neighbourhood

After moving to their new home, Margaret started her life as a student in local schools following her two elder brothers. She was such a hardworking student that she pushed herself to learn more and more, which made her stand out from her peers. When she was in grade seven, some people was considering closing the school she was attending and opening a new one two miles away. Since the new school would be six miles from Margaret’s home and would not offer grade eight courses, the kids in her neighbourhood would not be able to go to school anymore. However, the administrators needed the current school to have one less pupil in order for them to close it. By holding a test that was a level higher than their current grade for all students in Margaret’s school, they had Margaret pass the exam and she was promoted from grade seven to grade nine directly. Now having one less pupil in the original school, the administrators managed to close it and opened a new one as they expected. Margaret did nothing for a whole year after that and skipped her grade eight works. She still feels guilty now about writing the test, as she could have stopped them closing her school by doing nothing during the test. After the one-year gap, Margaret went back to her new school where there were only eight students and one teacher who made up the entire school.

During War time

When Margaret was about to become an adult, the Second World War started to affect Canada, as it stood on the Allies’ side. Her two elder brothers left home to join the army. They stayed overseas and didn’t get the chance to go back home until the year 1945, when the war was ended with the victory of the Allies. Starting from that time, Margaret  had to become a farmer and took over all the work from her brothers as her younger brother didn’t care about these things. During these days, she struggled a lot for what she got and she her mother was her only companion on the farm.

Farming life

Margaret spent most of her life living in a farm, thus she doesn’t remember much about life in city. Nevertheless, her knowledge about farming can always surprise a lot of people who hear these old stories.

Most of the houses on her farm were built using wood as the main material. They had a chimney on the roof and were surrounded by so-called snake fences, which were also built with local logs. Door and windows were installed on the walls where there were saved blanks for them. The neighbourhood also shared a wooden sauna house where people took their bath. A wooden gate stood at the entrance of the farm where Margaret and her younger brother once took a photo together as they were playing around. Margaret’s room was on the second floor, facing the side with the front door of their house. Their water supply was provided by a water puller from a nearby lake directly.

On her farm, which was known as a family farm, Margaret’s daily activities mainly included hay cutting, making haystacks, and bridge binding. They used to make their own ham and bacon with what they  harvested from their farm. They also used to raise up a couple of pigs and feed some chickens every year. There was several cows on the farm that provide people with plenty of fresh milk. In winter, when snow covered everything, Margaret and her brother would play snow plow to have fun.

Snake Fence in Interior BC. Credit: James Stones

Life changing event

When Margaret’s husband died in 1957, her life changed a lot. Being the mother of four children, she was left along to find a way to raise them up and earn them the chance to get well educated at the same time. She managed to achieve her goal by putting her best effort into everything that she could do. Works like milking the cow and driving a car made it possible for Margaret to earn her family a living as the only labor in her family.

Closing

Margaret moved to New Westminster in 1960s to work there. She lived in Port Coquitlam but had her job in New Westminster. Margaret enjoyed her life a lot in this oldest city in Canada. Currently belonging to two writing groups, she is a very active writer whose stories and poems tell the old memories of her past life several decades ago. She can write almost everything quite well, therefore she seeks challenging topics to write about. In the meantime, Margaret is also making a chart for her family, which is quite similar to a family tree. She records the names, relations, and addresses of her relatives and sends everyone a copy so that they can know where others are living and maybe pay a visit if possible.  Her retired life seems to be very happy and enjoyable for her.

Renne Jin

Summary

Jassy was born in New Westminster ninety-six and a half years ago. Since the moment she was born, Jassy has lived in New Westminster, a nice, quiet, and friendly place that she likes. She has four children and a granddaughter who is teaching grade eleven physics and math in an international school in south China. Her other granddaughter, who is younger, is here in New Westminster, and her grandson is a machinist.

Childhood

Old Kettle Valley Line
Credit: Mark Faviell

As an innocent kid around seven years old, Jassy used to stay with her cousin, who was living close to the Kettle Valley Line, three years in a row. Her uncle, Max, helped with the construction of the railway line, which was actually a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The route was named after a novel of Shakespeare because the engineer as the supervisor was a big fan of Shakespeare. There were a lot of tunnels along the whole route whose core portion started in Hope and terminated in Midway. Together with another sister, Jassy and her cousin, Jessica, had a lot of adventures there. Once they even witnessed a mother bear and her cub standing still not very far from them, which was a quite scary experience for them. The three girls would also go and pick small wild strawberries that grew right on the ground and were easy for small kids to reach. These natural fruits tasted sweet and could be used to make strawberry jam. Somewhere in the mountain area, there existed many big steps with ordinary ones on the side on which one could walk up. For little Jassy, it was very difficult to deal with those steps with large spans in vertical direction; they also left a deep impression on her. The girls also got the chance to ride a speeder on the railway track by pumping a handle up and down to keep it moving.

Work

A Mosquito Plane in flight, 1942

When she was around twenty, Jassy worked as a worker at the Canadian Forest Product during the Second World War. Her job was to manufacture plywood, which she considered quite interesting. There were about two thousand employees in total who were working for the factory. Plywood was manufactured in a long assembly line, therefore different workers were assigned different tasks to complete. The raw materials, which were pieces of wood, got packed and stuck together using glue. Finished plywood was shipped to an aircraft factory to be used to manufacture Mosquito planes, which were preferred by a lot of pilots. It was also in her factory that Jassy met her future husband, who was a worker as well. Her husband always sent her jewelry and perfumes as presents, which meant a lot for Jassy.

Deepest impression

In Jassy’s memory, one event that left the deepest impression on her was getting married and having her own family, which was a big deal in her life. She also considered marriage as life-altering, because that was when she had to get used to not being single anymore and had to raise a family with her partner.  When she first got married, Jassy told her husband that she would like to have six children, and he responded that he would do his best. They eventually ended up with four, a number that Jassy considered to be enough for them.

Life changing event

The most dramatic and largest change in life for Jassy was the death of her husband when they were on vacation. It is not hard to imagine that she was really shocked at that time. Fortunately, Jassy’s daughter, who was twenty-one, was with her when the tragedy happened. Since then, Jassy’s life changed a lot. She lost touch with a large group of people who were perhaps much more close to her husband than she was. However, she still kept on working because the money her husband left for her was not enough for the whole family. Jassy used to live in a big house with a basement, bedrooms on the first floor, and toilets upstairs. It was quite inconvenient to go to toilet because she had to first go upstairs and then downstairs back. After repeating this process only by herself for a long time, Jassy realized one day that she could get herself a better place to live in. Therefore she sold her old house and came to her new apartment where she has been living up till now. The apartment is also Jassy’s favourite place because it is right across the Century House and could not be more convenient. All the rooms are on one floor and there is an elevator that carries people to high floors. Bus stops and parks are also quite close to the building. Since Jassy likes green, those conditions are quite ideal for her and she is now enjoying her life after retirement.

Life after retirement

Since her retirement, Jassy has always felt that she belonged to Century House. She volunteers and does light exercises which are good to her health. Her life is very rich and colorful every day. Jassy has lots of personal interests such as hiking, playing sports, and making her own clothes. She used to go to different places like the North Shore to hike with friends on Fridays and Saturdays when she were still capable of hiking. Because of the pain in her knees, she had to give up this main interest a few years ago. She also played golf and tennis, roller skated, and went swimming when she was younger. As her circulation system gets worse when her age increases, Jassy has had to give up more and more sports that she is quite interested in. However, she is still quite active. She enjoys walking and used to walk two miles decades ago. She is also willing to make clothes not only for herself, but for her kids and grandchildren, though many of them would prefer buying them from a store directly.

Closing

Jassy likes to travel in Canada, USA, and Europe. When she was capable of, she did travel and had been to a lot of countries. Her footprints can be found in France, Italy, and other European countries. She also took bus tours in different states in the USA. Nevertheless, Jassy has never been to Asia before. She learned something about China by exchanging letters with her granddaughter, who writes letters in Chinese while Jassy replies in English. When Jassy was young eighty years ago, she was so busy and did not get much time to travel; now she has plenty of free time, but her body cannot afford long journeys any more. She would like to suggest that young people should start to do the things they want to do right now, like traveling or other interests, and not to wait until there is plenty of time for them to do so.

Renne Jin

Summary

Catherine Mendoza is a retired teacher who had taught English for the most of her working life. She started to live in New Westminster since 1981, which was about thirty-four years ago. Attracted by the traditional style of architectures here, she also thinks this is a great place to live because New Westminster is a nice and quiet community. Besides, life in New Westminster is also convenient since everything is quite close to people’s homes. There are also some lovely gardens here, which are Catherine’s favourite places. When she retired five years ago, her life had changed a lot compared with how it used to be in the past. However, she is still quite busy working as a volunteer at the Century House and the library. These very enjoyable experiences are quite different from working, and she sometimes feels like retiring from retirement. Having more time to look after herself, Catherine also goes swimming twice a week and does some exercises if she has time.

Childhood

When Catherine was a little girl, she was quite stubborn and naughty. Her father used to take the whole family out to go walking around and to see the beautiful landscapes in the countryside near their home. Once, when she was about four or five years old, he took them to a rocky hill which was ideal for hiking and scrambling. There was an old observatory on the high top of the hill. Half way, when Catherine was hiking and climbing, she stopped to sit down on a rock and told her parents that she was waiting for the bus. This place was actually quite far out of the bus loop, but she just sat there and claimed that she was waiting for the bus. Her mother came by and encouraged her not to give up at this point. Finally, though Catherine doesn’t remember how they managed to do this, her family persuaded her to continue the trip and they finally arrived at the top of the hill. It was a quite clear and also ridiculous memory for her.

Life changing event

Just like other seniors who have experienced a lot, Catherine has had plenty of life-changing events; upon reflection, she found that her most important one was the death of her husband, which had changed her life in a completely different direction from what she had expected. Her husband passed away from cancer only a couple of years after they got married. Always being a romantic person, Catherine had thought her future would be getting married, having children, and building her own family– everything that an ordinary woman does in her life. However, the ideal path suddenly crushed in the real world. With the money her husband left and the insurance she got, Catherine made a brave but unregretful decision to buy a house for herself; she could not think of anything better to do with the money. After this, she made up her mind to travel to Japan and stayed there for some time. She also learned a lot about herself in this experience. She is always an independent person and she proved that she could do things by herself quite well. Besides, Catherine also got stronger and gained an insight into different ways people live in the world.

Five years in Japan

One of the most important factors that contributed to Catherine’s decision to leave for Japan (or in other words, to physically get away from Canada), was the death of her husband. Meanwhile, she is also fascinated by Japanese culture, which is hugely different from the Western countries that Catherine had once visited before. Therefore, thirty-five-year-old Catherine bought herself an open-ended ticket and went on her journey with no job and only one contact.

Classroom in Japan.
Credit: Naosuke II

Catherine was quite scared when she first arrived in Japan. Suddenly she was surrounded by a different language and people who looked different. At first, she stayed in her room in a hotel for about four or five days. But after that, she realized that she had to make an attempt to explore the country; therefore, she decided to get out of the hotel room. Starting with a walk down to the hall and then back into the room, Catherine kept trying–it was almost like being a baby again, but at last she got used to living in Japan. She finally went outside and managed to find a job in a private Japanese high school with the help of a lady who turned out to be a friend. During her five years in Japan, Catherine usually came back to Canada in summer to get away from the terrible Tokyo heat and then went back in September. This was quite a memorable period for her because she got back into the profession that she had before her husband died. Before she went to Japan, she had been teaching in an elementary school for about eight years. These years struggling in Japan also taught her how to survive in a society where everything was new and no one understood you. As a result, she learnt that you should try to make yourself understood by others and build communication with them to survive in a new environment.

Shinjuku alley, Tokyo
Credit: Kevin Poh 

After her time in Japan, Catherine discovered that she really missed the familiar environment and the sense of being in Canada, which were the things that she really wanted in her life. Therefore she came back to her homeland five years later. She also decided that she would continue to pay visits in Japan– she wished to know more about the culture, the music, the art, and so on. Small but exquisite items were another factor that keep Catherine fascinated about Japan. Small items found in markets like old traditional combs and paper fans could be so beautiful that one would definitely want to take them back home without no hesitation. Of course, there existed some aspects of the Japanese culture that Catherine did not like, but what she had discovered was only the surface of the fascinating culture. She would be quite willing to go on exploring the Japanese culture in her free time.

Life after coming back from Japan

After Catherine came back from Japan, she found that she was interested in teaching English as a second language due to her teaching experience in Japan. She became quite fascinated by the whole idea and went back to Simon Fraser University to finish her degree. In order to graduate from her fourth year in the university, forty-year-old Catherine took back her old student number from almost twenty years ago, which was sixty-six. She started to study hard in libraries, pulled up her GPA, and earned herself better grades. Though she really felt being old among students who were around eighteen, she managed to focus on her courses again as she did decades ago and ended up with a Bachelor in Education. After this, Catherine gained the chance to continue being a teacher teaching English as second language instead. When she visited the learning center, she met her second husband, which she was something she was not expecting. She never thought that she would get married again; after that one day, her life path changed a lot. Now, Catherine has been married for twenty years; she had continued with teaching until she retired five or six years ago. For the last fifteen years of her teaching career, she learned a lot about different cultures and earned a lot of precious memories with her students from various cultural backgrounds all over the world.

Her advice to her twenty-year-old self is that, first, she should trust herself. Second, she does not need to worry so much, neither about her future life nor about what other people think.

Most meaningful present

Catherine’s career as a teacher not only earned her a lot of memories and experiences, but also earned her the most meaningful present that she has ever received. She has received a lot of presents from her students. During the last part of her career, she was teaching English at a beginner level and her students were mainly new immigrants who were scared and afraid because they hadn’t been to school for a considerably long time. These adult professionals were quite scared and did not want to be in the class. Catherine’s job was to help them with their learning process and build their confidence in using English to perform daily conversations. Apparently, she performed her duties quite well. One group of leaving students pooled their money together and bought a special picture for Catherine. Their leader, a lady who was an immigrant, chose this as a gift because she thought that when students first came into class they could not fly. But after Catherine taught them some basic skills, they learned quite well and gained the confidence to fly, just like the white swans flying in the picture. Catherine picked this picture to be her most meaningful present because she could recognize the student leader’s choice from the picture. She also likes the first nation totem-poles on the picture as part of the decoration in the background. The student leader stood out from all Catherine’s memorable students and her story about the picture is deeply impressed in Catherine’s mind. Catherine does not miss other details and daily routines about her career; however, she misses the contact with her past students very much.

Ma’ahin Ahmed

“Persevere. Learn to love and respect yourself. Basically, you can’t give love until you have some (love) to give, so it has to begin with yourself. And respect yourself despite your blemishes” – Sharon

Sharon was born and grew up in the States, and she moved to Canada in the early 1970s. Having completed her undergraduate with a major in sociology, Sharon came to Canada with an interest in social work. However not being a Canadian citizen, she was unable to pursue that line of career. Therefore she invested herself in getting a degree in education, and subsequently started a career in special education in Quesnel, BC. The article that follows offers a glimpse of some important moments in Sharon’s journey from having a less than ideal childhood to becoming an independent and successful individual as an adult.

BREAKING THE CODE

On a bright summer afternoon, Mrs. Smith opened her door to find the skinny little girl from up the street standing on her doorstep. Little Sharon, in a breezy white frock, hair tied in ponytails, stood there with a wide grin on her face; she held up a bunch of dandelions that she had picked from Mrs. Smith’s garden, and asked Mrs. Smith if she wanted to buy some flowers. Not at all surprised by this routine occurrence, Mrs. Smith walked back in to get some change, and bought her own garden’s dandelions. Little Sharon smiled at Mrs. Smith in gratitude, and then counting the change to make sure she had enough, she gleefully skipped down the street to buy some treats for herself.

Sharon growing up in the States

Having enjoyed her hard-earned treats—pretzels to be exact—Sharon returned home later that afternoon to find her parents talking in hushed voices. One look at her parents, and Sharon knew what this conversation was about. They were moving to a new town. Again. Her father, who worked in construction, had ran out of work, and so he had to find work elsewhere. But Sharon was not the least bit bothered by the fact that they were moving. Having lived in this town for a while, Sharon had seen most of it; for her, it was time to move on anyway.

Moving around had always been an adventure for Sharon. New towns meant going to new schools—she would end up going to 13 different elementary schools by the time she would be in grade 7. As thrilling as frequent change was, with every new school Sharon attended, one thing remained constant: She could not learn to read like the rest of her peers. The alphabet—that seemingly universal set of cryptic symbols with countless combinations—just did not make sense to Sharon. Every time little Sharon opened her books, a new machination of the alphabets unfolded; they danced around in her head, causing inexplicable chaos. Putting up a fight against those mischievous alphabets seemed futile, but predisposed to almost naïve optimism; Sharon refused to let this challenge weigh her down. Just then, the universe conspired in her favour, and in grade two Sharon met a teacher who recognized her problem. Some after-school lessons and a companion—Sharon’s teacher—, who was willing to walk an extra mile with her, finally broke the code of her textbooks.

A MILESTONE ACHIEVED

In 1962, several towns and schools later, Sharon, now a young lady, still quite thin—but tall, 5 feet and 10 inches—walked up the stage at her high school’s graduation ceremony. With each step towards the podium, increasingly vivid memories of the previous two years flashed through her mind. The rheumatic fever; the endless hours of isolation at the nurse’s office while all her classmates were out in the playground; the social awkwardness resulting from isolation; the strangeness of finding someone who believed in her abilities—her music teacher, who encouraged her to participate in singing and plays; in this moment everything of the past seemed so distant and long ago. In this moment, the only real thing was the high school diploma that Sharon was now holding in her hands.

Sharon in her graduation gown, standing beside her mother, father and half-sister

As Sharon and her classmates tossed their graduation caps in the air, a beautiful amalgam of excitement, triumph, and most of all, joy took over her. Sharon was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. Graduating high school was not the end of all challenges for Sharon; however, this achievement enabled her to appreciate her idiosyncrasies, to be confident, and to aspire for more in life.

TO COLLEGE AND BEYOND

Having completed high school, Sharon, owing to her immense hard work and some luck, was able to attend college despite financial constraints. Ironically—or luckily for Sharon—the rheumatic fever made her eligible to enter college through a government program that supported students with physical disabilities. In college Sharon continued to be ever more adventurous, as she went from studying music, to history, to finally graduating with a major in sociology. Initially after college, she experimented with different jobs and towns. Now she jokingly blames her father’s inconsistent jobs, and the subsequent moving around when she was younger, for giving her itchy feet and an always-on-the-move temperament. Eventually, after completing a degree in education she started her career in special education in Quesnel, which rooted her in one place for a while. Although after a while, as expected, Sharon, inseparable from adventure as she was, decided to take a break from Quesnel and travelled to Japan.

Upon returning from Japan, Sharon did not feel at home in Quesnel anymore. She considered some other options and had meant to move to Coquitlam for work, but instead she ended up in New Westminster; or as she put it:

               “I found myself getting lost; and I drove into Sapperton. I thought, ‘this is like a nice town’. So, I decided to try New Westminster”.

Ma’ahin Ahmed

“You need to keep that… child-like innocence… you want to see the world around you with new eyes sometimes” – Patricia

Patricia excitedly considers her life after retirement as a clean slate; a chance to start over and do things that she missed when she was working full time. She likes to attend the Sunday morning productions by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, to tend her garden, go on walks, and look at flowers. Most importantly she has her old companions—her books—in which she has always found a gratifying retreat; a good psychological thriller always strikes her fancy.

The article that follows is an attempt to capture the significant moments of Patricia’s childhood in Ireland, and how she moved to New Westminster. Additionally, the story shares a little bit of Patricia’s experience in psychiatric nurse training.

From Belfast to New Westminster

It was the late 1940’s and Christmas celebrations at Patricia’s childhood home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, were in full swing. One of her aunts had gift wrapped the turkey’s head to prank the children. There were gales of laughter as soon as the surprise was unwrapped and the merriment only grew as kids chased each other around the house with the turkey’s head passing from one hand to another. Little did they know that just a few years later they would be celebrating Christmas on the opposite sides of the Western Hemisphere. Yet what was once hardly imaginable, started sinking in as the new reality of Patricia’s life as she celebrated her 13^th birthday with her mum and brother in 1953, on board a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She was on her way from Belfast all the way to the Western end of Canada, to settle in New Westminster. Her father was waiting for them. He had gone ahead to prepare the family for a new life in Canada.

The question of why her parents chose to settle in New Westminster was, and remains to be, a mystery, since they had no connections in the city. However it was evident that life would not be the same anymore. Of the fairly large and close-knit family they had in Ireland, Patricia could only bring along fond memories with her to New Westminster. For a relatively shy adolescent the cultural transition to a North American life was gradual and challenging. Nonetheless, as months turned into years New Westminster eventually became home. During this time, many letters to and from Belfast helped retain valuable relationships, and connected Patricia’s family to their past. In fact some of those bonds remain to this day, albeit letters have now been replaced by telephone calls.

The beginning of a lifelong career

On a hot mid-summer day in 1958, the sun beamed at the vast stretch of gardens of the Essondale Hospital, an institute for mentally ill patients, when a bus came to a halt near a tuck shop. Patricia and her mother got off the bus, squinting their eyes; they looked around to grasp their surroundings. The patients, a motley crew dressed in all sorts of dress and garb from hats to overcoats, were roaming about the lawns and pathways. Her mother by her side, Patricia, somewhat nervously, started making her way towards the building where her interview, for a program in psychiatric nurse training, was to take place. As the two walked towards the buildings, the noise and yelling increased. Peeking at her mum from the corner of her eye, Patricia could tell that her mum just wanted to grab her arm and take the next bus back home. However, getting trained at the province’s largest mental health institute was too good an opportunity to let go, so her mum stuck by her side. Having been successful in her interview, Patricia started a new chapter of her life as a student in the Psychiatric Nursing Class of 1958-1960 at Essondale School of Psychiatric Nursing, which was re-named Riverview Hospital in the late 1960’s.

Now, sitting across from me, Patricia carefully lifts her graduation photo. She looks at her 20-year-old self, who is smiling with a bouquet of red roses in her hands, and she smiles back. Then we both travel back in time; it is early morning and we see the girl in the photo, rubbing her eyes, slowly coming out of bed. She puts on a starched and meticulously ironed blue tunic, pins on a stiff white collar and a little white bib. Then putting on a flawlessly polished pair of white shoes, she walks out, closing the door behind her; she is ready for the day. The rest of the day passes by in a flash as the trainees walk in and out of wards, checking in on patients, performing their regular duties, and jumping to attention as one or another doctor walks up to them. When the day ends they all walk back to their residences; tired from the day some of them are quiet and others are sharing stories of the day. The girl in the photo walks back into her room, and as she finally crawls into bed, Patricia and I come back from Essondale Hospital, and I see Patricia smiling at the thought of the challenging, yet very special two years in training that prepared her for a life long career in Psychiatric Nursing.