A Bizarre Museum in Florence Italy

“Ooooooooooooo!”   I heard a chorus of horrified exclamations as a group of Italian schoolchildren entered the Zoological Museum in Florence.  It housed one of the most interesting and bizarre assortments of artefacts I’ve ever seen.

Of the museum’s three collections the most fascinating and eerie was one of anatomic waxes created by artists in the 1600s to help medical students study the human body and learn anatomy without having to actually touch a cadaver.

There are ten rooms lined with case after case that display wax bodies and body parts. The bodies have been split open and all the veins, blood vessels and fat are detailed.

Perhaps most intriguing are 38 models showing how a baby develops in a mother’s uterus during each stage of pregnancy. Modern-day medical experts are amazed at the accuracy and detail of these models that were made over four hundred years ago.

The nearly two thousand wax pieces painted in bright reds, greens and yellows have a sort of macabre beauty about them.

Whether you are walking by a bony hand, its skin torn back so you can see the tendons, muscles and blood vessels; or a model showing in minute detail what a fallopian pregnancy looks like; you can’t help but admire the skilful artist who created these waxworks.

It is clear Clemente Susini; the sculptor who moulded and painted all the figures is still admired by artists today. On our visit to the Zoological Museum, we saw numerous art students sitting in front of the various displays of human body parts and trying to do sketches of what they saw.

One young artist sat perfectly still staring at a human head. It had been titled sideways and the skin pulled off the skull so all the brain matter spilled out on the table for examination.

There were moments in the Zoological Museum when I felt like I was in the middle of a Frankenstein movie set.        

 The second collection of the museum contains thousands of mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, fish and amphibians. The Medicis, Florence’s ruling family in the period between 1360 and 1737 sent explorers all over the world to collect items for this nature museum.

Some specimens are stored in formaldehyde but many have been stuffed using what are obviously very old-fashioned and primitive methods of taxidermy.

You can see literally every animal species here from the smallest butterfly to a huge sharp-toothed grinning hippopotamus.

 

The last collection in the museum showcases fairly gruesome scenes created in the late 1600s by a wax artist named Gaetano Zumbo. One is entitled The Effects of Syphilis and another The Plague. Each features a multitude of decaying and dismembered corpses.

Little babies lie dead beside their mothers whose bodies rest on piles of human skulls. Toothless, white-haired, naked elderly are splayed on the rocks outside a cave. It’s a graphic reminder of the devastation brought about by disease in the time before modern medical technology.          

As I made my way out of the Zoological Museum a busy, bustling crowd of middle school students entered one of the rooms filled with eviscerated wax cadavers. 

Oooooooooooo they screamed almost in unison horror. Even though I don’t speak Italian it wasn’t hard to guess what they were probably talking about as they walked beside the display cases.

The Zoological Museum in Florence isn’t the easiest place to find. It’s on a narrow winding street and you have to walk up four flights of stone stairs to reach the floor where the displays are housed. It’s worth the steep climb!

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Fair Trade Coffee and Hope For Laos

“Breaking the cycle of poverty in Laos one family at a time.”  That’s the mission of Bolaven Farms.  Last May my husband Dave spent a week on a fair trade coffee plantation located on 410 acres of fertile land on the Bolaven Plateau in southern Laos. 

Child on Bolaven Coffee Plantation Laos

He traveled there with twenty- four of his Hong Kong students to work at digging holes for coffee trees, building sheds and helping care for livestock.

My husband Dave helping children on the Bolaven Coffee Plantation in Laos learn English

Bolaven Farms is a cooperative that uses farming methods designed to sustain rather than deplete the rich nutrients in the Laotian soil. About 100 acres of the farm are devoted to grasses and legumes to restore nitrogen to the soil and provide fodder for livestock. The remainder is used for coffee growing.    

Laotian families welcome Dave and his students to the coffee plantation

Up to fifty families at a time live on the Bolaven Farms coffee plantation and are taught how to grow coffee profitably and organically. They are given housing and earn a fair wage for the work they do.  Medical care is provided and there is a school for the children. 

If they ‘graduate’ from the agriculture program at Bolaven, families are eligible for a loan to buy a seven acre coffee farm of their own and can sell their coffee to Bolaven. Workers hand sort the coffee to ensure its quality before the beans are roasted, packaged, shipped and marketed as a fair trade product in other countries. 

Sam Say is the founder of Bolaven Farms. He was born in Laos. He and his family fled the country in 1977 after a decade of heavy bombing by the United States and repeated invasions by the Vietnamese.  The Say family spent two years in a refugee camp before a Mennonite Church in Calgary sponsored their immigration to Canada.

Sam eventually moved to Hong Kong and made a fortune as a commodities trader.  He decided he wanted to use his wealth to help his fellow countrymen and women and so Bolaven Farms was born.

The Hong Kong students made friends with the coffee plantation workers

 Sam Say’s son Christian used to be a student at the international school in Hong Kong where Dave and I were teachers.  Christian played on the basketball team Dave coached. 

Riding out to the plantation

Sam approached our school wondering if a group of our students would like to come to Bolaven Farms to work alongside the people there, befriend them, teach them some English and once they returned to Hong Kong spread the word about the project. Dave agreed to lead the trip.       

Student building a shed on the coffee plantation

The work on the farm was very hard, and not at all what our students are used to.  But they tackled their tasks with determination and energy.

Student housing on the coffee plantation

The students stayed in army barrack type housing and slept on air mattresses under mosquito netting.  They showered communally with the Laotian workers. Every evening they performed plays, dances and songs for the plantation workers and their families. They tried to teach the children English.

Making friends with the children on the coffee plantation

Despite the language barrier the high school students developed a warm relationship with the Laotian farm families and Dave said some of the Hong Kong teens were in tears when it came time to say good-bye at the end of the week.  

Students with Bolaven families

Dave found it inspiring to be at Bolaven Farms.  Unlike many places we have visited in the third world where people living in desperate circumstances seem resigned to their lot in life, the people at Bolaven Farms are filled with optimism.  They really believe they have an opportunity to create a better future for their families. 

My thanks to the International Christian school students on the Laos trip who provided the photos for this post. 

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A Roof With A View

I got a chance for a bird’s-eye view of the heart of the city on Saturday!

As part of the Doors Open Winnipeg event the Arts Space venue at 100 Arthur Street allowed access to their roof top. Visitors were free to walk around and take photos of the Exchange District from a very unique point of view. 

 

This is the Crocus Building which houses the Crocus Investment Company, the Manitoba Conservatory of Music and the Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers. It used to belong to the Ashdown Hardware Company as you can see from the white letters still etched on the brick near the roof top.  Mr. James Ashdown, a former Winnipeg mayor built it in 1905 to use as a hardware store. It replaced an earlier building erected in 1870 which burned down in 1904. 

 

I live in a condo in the Ashdown Warehouse where Mr. Ashdown stored the goods he sold, not only in Winnipeg but all across western Canada. Here is my building tucked in between two other buildings. 

 

The Cube is the focal point of the park in Old Market Square a popular venue for outdoor summer concerts in the Exchange District. The Cube is a performance stage that opened in 2010 and was built at a cost of $1.2 million. During the Winnipeg Jazz Festival and the Fringe Festival the park is alive with performers and people. 

 

The distinctive Confederation Building was built in 1912 in the Chicago style of architecture and was occupied by the Confederation Life Association for over 50 years. 

 

The popular Kings Head Pub and Eatery is housed in a building erected in 1896 as a trading centre for hides, wool and furs. In 1906 it became home to a German language press which published 20,000 copies of the paper Der Nordwestern weekly. After serving as offices for an airline and a radio and television wholesaler it became a restaurant in 1983.

 

The new Red River Community College Paterson Global Foods Institute will be housed in the old Union Tower Building which is currently being renovated and added on to. The new facilities will have a student residence and be home to the college’s hospitality and culinary programs. I am looking forward to having the students living in the Exchange District and adding to our resident population. The facility will also house a restaurant that will be open to the public. 

 

The Travelers Building was constructed in 1907 as a headquarters for a union of traveling salesmen that was founded in 1882.  It housed offices, meeting rooms, lounges and recreation facilities including a Turkish bath. In 1954 it became the home of federal government offices and in 1976 was redeveloped into a shopping center with specialty shops, galleries and a restaurant currently housing the Peasant Cookery. 

I have been doing lots of walking in the Exchange District since moving here in July and have seen much of it from on the ground. Thanks to Arts Space I was able to get a view from above on Saturday that gave me a different perspective on the neighborhood I now call home. 

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Lessons From the Sydney Opera House

“I like to be on the edge of the impossible”, said Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect who was responsible for designing the Sydney Opera House. On my visit to Australia, I toured the world-renowned landmark. I learned its construction and design was indeed a story of someone achieving ‘the impossible’, but it is also a story of dreams and relationships broken and restored.

The Sydney Opera House is a World Heritage Site because so many of the architectural methods and engineering techniques used to build it were completely new and were created expressly for its construction. Utzon’s design for the building was chosen from 233 submitted, but no one, including Utzon, was really sure a structure of its kind could be built. The tiles on the outside are just one example of the innovation required. They change colour depending on the amount of daylight and the temperature, so they rarely look the same. Most importantly they are self -cleaning. It took Utzon three years to design just the tiles.

Utzon devised and tested sixteen different schemes for making the famous white sails on the building’s roof before he figured out how to cut them from circles of steel. 16,000 workers were required to be on site during the construction of the signature ‘sails’. Utzon by the way did not call them sails. He wanted them to be abstract so each visitor to the opera house could have their own idea what they looked like. Some people say they remind them of waves, a dragon’s back, seashells, or dishes in a dishwasher. I thought they looked like Marilyn Munroe’s white dress in the movie Some Like It Hot when a blast of air from the subway grate blows her skirt up into the air. Whatever they remind you of, those ‘sails’ on the opera house roof took eight years to build.

Ten years after Utzon started work on the opera house a newly elected Australian government gave him an ultimatum. He either had to make concessions in his design and collaborate with government architects so the building could be finished more quickly, or he had to quit. Utzon resigned and the government hired others to complete his work. Utzon never went back to Sydney to see the finished opera house even though he won many of architecture’s most prestigious awards for designing it.

Thirty- three years after he’d resigned someone from the opera house staff approached Utzon to apologize to him and ask for an interview. Would he be willing to let them see all his notes and drawings and would he explain his original ideas so they could be kept for posterity? Utzon accepted the apology and agreed to the interview. Now the Australian government is slowly making changes to the Opera House so that eventually it will look exactly as Utzon planned. They have already replaced concrete outer walls with banks of windows and repainted interior walls with new colours following Utzon’s original plans. Utzon’s son has flown to Sydney to supervise these changes. John Utzon died in 2008 at age 90 but he died knowing that his original ‘dream’ for the Opera House would become a reality in the future.

Seven million people from all over the world visit the opera house each year and 350,000 take a guided tour. They learn all about how the one of kind architectural masterpiece was built. They also hear the story of how the relationship between the opera house designer and the country of Australia was broken and restored because each party was willing to be gracious and forgiving. Both of the stories are inspiring and important.

 

Seeing Royalty

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla were in Regina the last couple days. We drove home from Saskatoon today and stopped at a Perkins restaurant in Regina for lunch. It was hard not to overhear the excited conversation of the two women sitting across the aisle from us.

“So tell me all about it!” , said one woman.

The other replied, “I still can’t believe I met Prince Charles and actually shook his hand and talked to him.”  

Her companion asked, “Did you talk to Camilla too?”  

The woman replied, “I didn’t, but I talked to people who did, and they said she was just so charming and warm and personable.”  

The other woman sniffed. “She might have been nice, but I’ll still always like Lady Di better.” 

The women’s conversation made me think of two experiences my family has had with seeing royalty. 

In 1939 King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth visited Canada. They took a Canadian Pacific Railway train through the Western provinces. In this photo they are greeting the 60,000 people who turned out to see them in Melville, Saskatchewan.

The train also stopped in Watrous, Saskatchewan and it was here my mother saw the royal couple. Here is the story in her own words. 

One of the highlights of my school career was singing for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. In 1939 they were on a coast-to-coast tour of Canada by train and were scheduled to stop in Watrous, Saskatchewan for a few minutes. There were hundreds of children at the train station from many different schools in our area. We were all lined up along the tracks.  Each school was assigned a certain place where we had to stand. There were ropes set up along the track and we had to stay behind them. Our teachers had all taught us the same song to sing for the king and queen. It was a song that had been especially written for that day.  The train stopped and the King and Queen came out on a little porch at the end of the train to wave to us and listen to us sing.  After we finished singing they took away the ropes that had been set up along the track and we all dashed up to the train to get as close as we could to the royal couple. I thought I might be able to touch the Queen’s dress.  I remember I ran up to the train but there were so many people I couldn’t get close to the Queen.  When I turned around I couldn’t see the other kids from my school or my teacher and I thought I was lost.  I was actually quite scared until I finally spied someone I recognized in that big crowd and was able to rejoin my class.  I remember the queen was wearing a blue hat that day

I also saw the Queen once. Our current queen Elizabeth was visiting Winnipeg in 1959. She drove through the city in a motorcade. 
In 1959 I was in grade one and my Dad was an intern at the St. Boniface Hospital. Queen Elizabeth’s motorcade was going to go right past the hospital. The streets were lined with people and it would have been hard for a little girl like me to see with such a crowd all around. So my Dad took me up on the roof of the hospital and from there I had a great birds-eye view of the Queen as she drove by waving her hand.

I’m not really a royal watcher. Personally I think the monarchy should be abolished. But the royal family members are celebrities and there is a certain excitement in having seen one of the famous royals in person. 

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Early Morning Walk in Saskatoon

It has been cold and rainy in Saskatoon the last few days, but this morning I woke up at 5:30 and the sun was shining so I decided to go for a walk. Saskatoon is a beautiful city and I tried to capture some of that beauty with my camera lens. 

Affectionately known as ‘The Bez’ or  ‘Saskatoon’s Castle’ the Bessborough Hotel opened in 1935. Named after the Earl of Bessborough, Canada’s 14th Governor General, it is one of the grand railway hotels built to serve Canada’s rail passengers in style as the Canadian Pacific and National Railways expanded across the nation. 

 

The trees provide a leafy canopy over the brick walkway on Spadina Crescent which winds along beside the river. 

Sculptor Bill Epp’s likeness of Saskatchewan military Metis leader Gabriel Dumont who together with Louis Riel led the 1885 resistance against the Canadian government forces at Batoche. 

Canada goose out for an early morning stroll along the river bank. 

 

This 1949 Bristol double-decker bus which was in service in London till 1965 is open from April to October. According to a Star Phoenix article it was originally a fish and chip vendor but it now sells a variety of refreshments at the corner of Spadina and 21st street. 

 

1999 sculpture Musicians on Spadina Cresecent.

 

Pink blossoms on Broadway Avenue. 

Mural of children on Broadway Avenue by artist Denyse Klette. 

This funky teapot was in the window of McQuarries Tea and Coffee Merchants on Broadway Avenue. 

 

Spring tulip in a yard on 13th Street East.

 

Buskers a 1999 sculpture by Kevin Quinlan on Broadway Avenue.

 

Steeple of St. John’s Cathedral on the South Saskatchewan River. 

 

Spirit of Youth is a sculpture created by Bill Epp for the 1989 Canada Summer Games. It is on Spadina Crescent. 

 

Back home after my walk. 

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What Are People Saying?

I was excited  Geez magazine posted a link to my post about Taking A Consumption Sabbath. 

My friend Bill said my door theme  post made him think about all the doors he’s passed through in his life but also about the front door of his house which always sticks no matter what he does to fix it. 

One of the other women in the  grade three class photo I included in my post about the old Kornelson School in Steinbach wrote to say she remembered our principal climbing up the fire escape outside the building to ring an old hand-held bell to call us in from recess. She could still recall the squeaky sound the oiled wooden floorboards made as she walked the steps leading to the second storey. Two other readers had memories that were very different about Miss Kornelson the school principal whose photo I featured in the blog post. 

The most popular blog post this month was about my parents diamond wedding celebration.  One of my readers, Patricia Penner, reposted the story about my parents anniversary on her Facebook page. She said my Dad had been the doctor who delivered her and removed her daughter’s tonsils. Patty also worked as an educational assistant in my classroom at two different schools, so she feels like she knows our family. 

My lament about no coffee house for sitting and relaxing in my Winnipeg neighborhood led to a response from a fellow Exchange district resident who suggested I try Parlor Coffee at 468 Main Street right across from the Passport Office. She likes their mandate. They invite you into their shop not to bury your nose in your electronic equipment or your study books, but rather for you to connect with old and new friends which helps to encourage neighborliness in our area. 

My post about an old radio program Children’s Party struck a chord with a couple readers who wrote to tell me what their favorite features on the show had been.

Cendrine Marrouat wrote to me after I did a post about the blogging workshop I took with her. She created a link to the post on her website. I instituted three of the tips she provided immediately and in the next week had my highest ever number of views for a blog post and also a record of nearly 2000 views for the week. However some readers took exception to Cendrine’s suggestion I develop a niche, or one particular topic for my blog. They said the precise reason they read my blog is because it is eclectic and covers such a variety of subjects. 

My third most popular post this month was about children’s author  Maurice Sendak. I was pleased my cousin Tim shared it on his Facebook page. 

My Mother’s Day post called What Does Your Mother Do prompted a number of readers to write and let me know about the many important roles their mothers fill.

I was pleased Dora Dueck the author who won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year award in 2011 took time to comment favorably about my writing after I wrote a  post about my decades as a columnist.

Thank you again readers for taking the time to read and comment on my blog. I appreciate each one of you.

Super Foods! What Are They? What Can They Do For You?

Can 30 SUPER foods really change your life? According to a new book by Lucy Danziger,  the editor of SELF magazine, they can.  The DROP 10 Diet book published in 2012 claims  what we eat is just as important as how much we eat.

 I’m continually looking for ways to be fit and healthy and keep my weight down. Living in Hong Kong this seemed much easier. Perhaps it was because I didn’t have a car and walked everywhere, or because food portions were smaller and food choices were healthier or because the general population was soooooooooo much thinner and trimmer than in North America that you were inspired to try to fit in appearance wise. 

I’ve learned over the years what works for one person when it comes to maintaining a fit and healthy body doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. You really need to come up with an individual plan. So I’m always on the look out for new ideas. Here are some I noted as I read Lucy Danziger’s book.

There are 30 Super Foods that trigger calorie burning, curb hunger, help deter over eating and stymie fat production. They are also good for you in hundreds of other ways which the book outlines in detail. The book also gives you lots of recipes that use these foods. Those super foods are……………..

almond butter, apples, artichokes, avocados, blueberries, broccoli,cherries, coffee, dark chocolate, edamame, eggs, goji berries, quinoa, pumpkin seeds, popcorn, pomegranates, peanuts, parmesan, olive oil, oats, mushrooms, lentils, kiwi, kale, sardines, steak, sweet potatoes, whole grain pasta, wild salmon and yogurt. 

Some exercise tips I got from reading the book were………….

Use the Tabata protocol for exercising. Developed by Izumi Tabata, a professor at Ritsumeikan University in Japan this method suggests doing 20 seconds of exercising, or 20 repetitions and then resting for a count of 10 and then doing another 20 and so on up to eight sets. I’ve been trying this with my weight machine exercises at the gym and I am able to do more than four times as many repetitions using the Tabata protocol.

Mix up your exercise. Don’t do the same things  everyday.

Wear flattering exercise gear. It will inspire you more than baggy sweat pants and an old T-shirt.

Exercise to music. 

Some life style tips I got from the book were………….

Weigh yourself everyday. 

Don’t eat after 8 pm. 

Write down everything you eat. 

Get 8 hours of sleep. 

SLOW DOWN when you eat. Make your meals last at least 30 minutes. 

I took the DROP 10 Diet book out of the library.  It definitely has some good ideas that I’ve either started trying or plan to try.

What next? I plan to take a list of the 30 super foods with me every time I go grocery shopping and make sure plenty of them are in my shopping cart when I go to the check out counter. 

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I’ve Been A Newspaper Columnist for Decades

I’ve been a weekly columnist for a regional newspaper The Carillon for almost 27 years. I got the job quite by chance. I was an elementary school teacher in 1985, on maternity leave after the birth of my second child. I was having trouble settling contentedly into the role of full-time homemaker. My older son was in grade one and at school all day. My baby slept a lot. I was looking for an interesting challenge.

An opinion piece in The Carillon deriding daycare got me riled. My six-year-old had spent several happy years at a community daycare centre and my brother was a daycare director. I wrote a spirited rebuttal to the editor. Not only did he print my letter, but he also said he liked my style and asked if I’d be interested in having a regular column in the paper. I agreed to try.

Writing my first few articles was a frustrating ordeal. I sat despairingly for literally days in front of the typewriter – wondering what to write about and trying to develop a ‘voice’ for my column. I did dozens of rewrites using copious lengths of correction tape. It was often just hours before my deadline when I’d finally take my column to the newspaper office on Main Street.

Nearly 1500 columns later I’m still on the job. I rarely wonder what to write about now. I always have dozens of possible ideas jotted down in the small notebook I keep in my purse. After decades of practice and the help of my computer I usually finish a column and e-mail it to my editor in three or four hours.

I went back to teaching after my year of maternity leave but I always managed to somehow find the time to write my column. It’s called Viewpoint. There were years when the demands of two active sons, multiple community involvements and a busy career made me consider giving my column up, but I never did. The chance to reflect on what happened to me each week in a public forum became a reassuring ritual that helped my life make sense. I couldn’t let it go. My sons are adults now with jobs, partners and homes of their own and I’m still writing Viewpoint.

Unpacking boxes that had been in storage for years while we lived in Hong Kong I came across a stack of large brown envelopes filled with some of my old columns clipped from the newspaper over the years. I slid down to sit on the floor and began to read.

“I have 57 mosquito bites on my left leg” my eight- year old announced when I picked him up after a week at camp. His sleeping bag was soaked, due to a rainstorm and a leaky tent. I wrote a column in 1987 about my son’s first experience at camp. He had worn the same underwear all week. His pillow had lost most of its stuffing in numerous pillow fights. He had hundreds of mosquito bites. “I had the best time Mom,” he said. “I’m going back next year for sure!”

In 1998 I wrote a column about the death of my grade seven teacher. Miriam Toews gives a moving portrayal of her father Melvin and his struggle with depression in her book Swing Low.  Melvin was my teacher, many years later my teaching colleague, and eventually my son’s teacher. Trying to explain his tragic suicide to my teenager who had always respected and liked Mr Toews wasn’t easy. My son and I attended his funeral together. I wrote a column about Melvin’s memorial service and his positive impact on the life of our community.

In 2006 my husband and I sponsored a refugee family from Rwanda. They shared our home for the first three months after they immigrated to Canada and I think we learned more about Rwanda than we would have if we had visited the country ourselves. I wrote a column about the family’s difficult experiences during the Rwandan genocide and the way the friendly people in our neighbourhood helped make their adjustment to a new country easier.

I’ve always been intrigued by what interests my column readers enough to make them talk to me about Viewpoint. Surprisingly many people were genuinely shocked when I revealed in a column that I rarely made my bed and considered doing so a waste of time. I couldn’t believe how many women approached me to commiserate after I wrote a column about the difficulty of buying a Christmas gift for my son’s new girlfriend. In one column I debated whether a woman in her mid-fifties like me should consider getting a tattoo. I was surprised with how many readers in my age bracket confided they had considered tattoos as well.

Reading my old columns. I relived for just a moment- the time I met Senator Sharon Carstairs in a public washroom, the day I realized my youngest son had learned to read, my kayaking whale watching trip in Johnstone Strait, the excitement when a pregnant guest at our older son’s wedding went into labour, the Saturday I got on the Jack Farr Radio Show and the Christmas I almost killed myself by being over-confident on the ski slopes at Banff. Re-reading my columns made me realize what a vital part of my life writing them has become over the years.

People often ask me how long I plan to continue writing my column. I thought maybe starting this blog would serve as an alternative, but I have to admit even after all this time it still gives me a little thrill to see my column in print each week. I have no plans to stop being a Carillon columnist yet. 

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Walking For Connie

My cousin Connie died in 1997 due to complications from multiple sclerosis. She was diagnosed in 1979 and struggled courageously with the disease for nearly two decades.   Connie was a talented musician and soloist who performed in a professional choir and in musicals.  After obtaining a degree from the University of Manitoba she became a teacher.  She was married, working at a private girls school in Toronto and had just made plans to begin a master’s degree in history when she found out she had MS. 

On Sunday, May 6th some twenty-five of Connie’s family members–cousins, aunts, her Dad, sister and niece, and even a great-niece, participated in the MS Walk in memory of Connie. We raised over $1,500 for the MS Society. I was so glad that for the first time I could join the team because I was no longer living abroad. 

My cousin Connie and I were born just nine months apart and she was my first friend. 

We played together.

She came to my birthday parties. In this photo Connie is on my right

We sang together. Here we perform carols at Christmas for our grandparents. My sister Kaaren is to Connie’s right and in the front are my cousins Albert, Bernie and Robert.

Connie is right in the middle of a clutch of cousins in front of the Christmas tree, when we are about ten years old. Connie was the eldest of 17  cousins. During her years with MS,when her mobility was compromised and she couldn’t go out much, she used her time to start a family newsletter to keep all of her cousins in touch with each other so we would be aware of what was going on in one another’s lives. 

At Connie’s funeral we cousins formed a choir and performed a song called The Great Storm is Over.  I was privileged to be asked to give a tribute to Connie during the service. Connie’s parents my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Dave had requested Connie’s memorial service be a time in which we truly celebrated her life so I talked about the many positive ways Connie had influenced me. Felt markers were handed out at the cemetery and we could write messages to Connie on her coffin before they lowered it into the ground. As they did so, a bouquet of balloons was released into the air.  

I thought it was appropriate that colorful balloons surrounded Connie’s team when they took our photo at the University of Manitoba’s Max Bell Centre just before the walk began. Along the route I got a chance to walk beside many different members of our family and invariably at some point our conversation included memories of Connie. 

I’m so glad Connie’s niece Caryn organized a team for the MS Walk. She deserves a great deal of credit for her initiative and her dedication to her aunt’s memory. I’m already looking forward to next year’s walk. I hope even more family members will join us as we raise money to help end a disease that not only impacted our family in a devastating way, but continues to cause heart-break in thousands of other Canadian families. 

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