Lifes Essentials

I was driving to Whitby at lunchtimes to keep Karen company and maintain her sanity, she was surviving well, but it was a lonely (and cold) existence and the motel had no facilities.

Therefore, the first electrical device we bought was a kettle along with a couple of mugs and of course, instant coffee. It is surprising how the addition of one little thing makes things seem a lot better, the ability to make a hot drink, when we wanted, was like the discovery of the wheel.

The second electrical device, strangely, was a popcorn popper.

The first impressions of Canada, besides the bitter cold and danger of breaking an ear off when walking to the shops, were that it could only get better when we rented our own place and I was making enquiries to see where we could live.

In the interim however, people at Dowty had gone out of their way to make us feel welcome, Reg Creed, who helped us a lot in those first weeks, invited the pair of us over to dinner with his wife Jackie, Steve Rotheram, an ex-APPH employee, also invited us over one night to their house in Oshawa, a night that changed things dramatically for Karen.