Columnists
Take a moment to find a moment
Where were you when? This is a great summer to play this game. On July 20, fifty years ago, LOML and I had spent the weekend at the cottage with a couple of close friends and were heading home on the 401. Along the way, the news of the moon walk hit the airwaves. Without any discussion, we pulled over to the side of the highway, got out of the car and looked toward the sky. As we did this we realized dozens of others were doing the same thing. No, we didn’t think we’d see anything (you never know), but we knew we were experiencing a moment in history. A quiet, warm evening in July, with the radio turned up as history was being made. Later in the summer of 1969, LOML and I got married. No one stopped along the side of the highway as we drove away in a vintage Citroen.
In another moment in time, I was a little kid and my mom was frantically trying to make a phone call. It was probably the first year we had a telephone in the house. It was getting dark outside. Mom hadn’t told us to get ready for bed and she was pretty strict about bedtimes. She sounded worried and complained about a bad connection. I remember hearing the rain pounding on the house and being told to stay out of the basement. My younger brother and I wandered to the front room window and watched as our neighbours from the lower end of the road waded out of their house and moved toward high ground. I was excited because it looked like a lake was forming near the railroad tracks. I didn’t know we were in the middle of the flooding brought on by Hurricane Hazel. My father had struck out, in the Rolls-can-hardly, to pick up our aunt who was a student nurse at Humber Memorial Hospital. I’m sure my Mom was afraid he wouldn’t be able to get home. Most of the rest of the story I know from news stories and the photographs of the destruction. I do remember the tension in Mom’s voice and the flood waters inching up. I remember Dad, with Aunt Nina, finally pulling into the driveway and my mom crying. Years later, my younger brother, LOML and I decided to jump in a borrowed car and go to Expo 67. We had purchased our “passports” through the mail, saved money from our part-time jobs and headed east along the 401. We didn’t really know how to get to Montreal, but we had a blast when we figured it out. Space exploration was all-the-talk at Expo ’67. We had no idea we’d be on the same highway, two years later, looking up.
On September 11, 2001, I was at home trying to make sense of a meeting I’d just had with my superior, the CAO. We hadn’t seen eyeto- eye on an incident. At that particular moment I couldn’t imagine anything more important than resolving our differences—my way of course. I had left the office and headed home. I needed and wanted wanted advice and called my OMA advisor. She was crying (not for my dilemma), and told me to turn the television on, then she hung up. Every channel carried the same story and absolutely nothing that had transpired in that meeting could eclipse what was going on in New York City at that very moment in time. I cried for the people in New York as I sat and witnessed another moment in history.
In the 1990s, LOML and I packed our bags and our kids and headed for a major trip through Europe. We purchased a brand new Citroen in Paris and headed out to explore Switzerland, Belgium and France. We learned that “comfort stations” on European autoroutes aren’t always comfortable. We took turns listening to each other’s favourite music. I learned to love the music our teenaged sons enjoyed and we all learned to keep our opinions to ourselves when it was the sevenyear- old’s turn to pick the tunes.
In my life I’ve experienced so many “moments”, not all of them historically significant. This summer, take a moment to find your moments.
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