sassykg • May 22, 2021

My maternal grandmother was named Josephine but everyone called her Josie. To me, my siblings and my cousins she was called “Grannie McGurran”. She was vivacious and assertive especially by stereotypical grandmother standards.

My grandfather Daniel McGurran was a US citizen born in North Dakota. Hearing about a Canadian offer of free farmland and never one to pass up a good economic opportunity he uprooted and headed to one of Canada’s western prairie provinces, Saskatchewan, to homestead. There he met my grandmother, a girl born in the Canadian maritime province of Nova Scotia. Saskatchewan is known for its harsh winters and exceedingly short summers. Farming certainly worked there but it was not the easiest of enterprises. It took true grit and strong determination to make a “go” of cultivating and harvesting prairie crops.

Josie married my grandfather Daniel when she was fifteen years old and he was thirty four. Shortly after tying the knot my grandmother became pregnant. As Grannie went into labor, my grandpa raced to fetch the local doctor some many miles away. Who knows how it happened? Either the baby came fast or my grandfather and the doctor were delayed. Nonetheless baby John arrived and Grannie gave birth alone at the tender age of sixteen.

At some point Grannie and Grandpa ended up living in Vancouver, British Columbia. My grandfather worked as a carpenter there and they lived near Hastings Street which today is an address you would be best to avoid.

For a short while my mother, father and I lived with my grandparents on a street just off Hastings. We were an extended family because my aging great grandparents, Josie’s mom and dad, lived in the two bedrooms on the upper level of the house. Grannie took care of them, cooking their meals and carrying trays of food and drink up and down the narrow stairs to where they lived. They were ghostlike to me as I saw and heard them rarely. My favourite aunt, Marie, also shared our house. She worked as a secretary downtown and around 5:30 each weekday I would anxiously sit on the porch in anticipation of seeing her round the corner of our street after she descended the streetcar she took to and from work. As soon as I spied her I would give a great cry “Auntie Ree ( as I affectionately called her) is home!”

At the time the Hastings Street district was populated by working class people that currently would be deemed a diverse population. My memories of that neighbourhood are good ones filled with fondness. Our next door neighbour was an Italian woman and she regularly offered me delicacies like light donuts that I later learned are called fritelle. She passed them over the short picket fence between our front yards and enthusiastically offered them to me in her mother tongue. As she handed me the sweets she rapidly spoke in Italian. I smiled broadly and nodded as I pretended to understand.

Another sentimental memory of that Vancouver community was Grandfather taking me for walks down Hastings to a small grocery store where he would buy me an Eat-More bar and pay for chewing tobacco for himself. We joked that my Eat-More candybar was chewing tobacco for young kids.

My grandfather would also regale me with old guy tricks. He had dentures and delighted in letting them drop from his upper palate and enticed me to try to mimic him. Despite trying with all my might I could not dislodge my tiny baby teeth.

Not all my recollections of living in Vancouver are tender. My grandfather died while my parents and I were living in that cozy but crowded Vancouver house. I certainly recall going to church or perhaps it was prayers at the funeral home. Grandpa McGurran was in an open casket and although he looked peaceful I clearly remember desperately wanting to wake him up. I believe it was my very first inkling that life was not everlasting.

After my grandfather’s death my parents and I moved to Winnipeg where my father took a new job with the Otis elevator company. We lived in a young community called Windsor Park near to my mother’s brother, John, where his wife and their eight children, my first cousins lived. Grannie would often visit us from Vancouver and shared her time between the two families.

Josie was quite young when she became a grandmother and the nomenclature “Grannie” was ill suited to her. When she came to stay in Winnipeg all of us kids would pile into our Ford Fairlane and go to the airport to greet her. Beautifully dressed, she would most often arrive in a well tailored suit and matching high heels. Her short hair was jet black and her trademark was deep red lipstick that she could expertly apply even without using a mirror. As she began to age she “supplemented” her dark tinted coif with a black synthetic wig she bought at the Kresge store or what she called the five and dime. Whether intentional or not, Grandma placed that hair piece off kilter with the part well off center and to the right. It drew laughs from the family and we will remember her as vain with a twist!

I was definitely convinced that I was Grannie McGurran’s favourite grandchild. Despite the fact that she had twenty-one grandchildren it seemed to me that I received the most attention and affection from her. When I shared this belief with my siblings and cousins I was shocked to learn that each of them claimed favored grandchild status. Now I realize Grannie was adept at loving generously and equitably.

As Josie entered her late 80s it became necessary for her to move into a long term care facility in a suburb of Vancouver. “Auntie Ree” and two of my cousins lived close by and regularly checked up on her so she continued to feel family love and support. My husband and I visited her there while on a west coast trip. As we entered her tiny room we spied her fast asleep on the single bed with her head propped up on two pillows. We could not help but smile as we noticed what lay beside her on the white pillows. The black synthetic hairpiece she relied on to keep up appearances was but three inches from her sleeping head!! Perhaps she purposefully positioned it there for easy access at a moment’s notice!

The COVID pandemic has wrecked havoc with many of our most vulnerable. In particular, long term care homes have been disproportionately affected by COVID. Here in Canada my sister, Margaret Ann-Gillis, is the Canadian head of an international organization that advocates for seniors. When the pandemic hit she was one of the first to publicly voice the horrors of many long term care facilities pre and post COVID. In her role as the president of the International Longevity Centre Canada she brought focus to the need to radically address the sorry state of facilities for the aging. Several people in one room sharing bathrooms, staff shortages and bad working conditions are unacceptable examples of challenges facing care facilities. The latest issue concerns the fact that many residents in care have been fully vaccinated yet are denied the opportunity to eat and recreate together.

My understanding of aging is shaped by my family experience not the least of which is witnessing my grandmother attentively caring for her parents in her own home. I was not taught to distance my elders but rather to feel a part of an extended family. Grannie McGurran was a person to be reckoned with who was not afraid to speak her mind. It well may be that her tenacity inspired my sister Margaret-Ann to determinedly advocate for older people.

My nature is to push back on the unpleasant aspects of aging. However : Aging is a privilege! Celebrate longevity!

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage rage against the dying of the light.” Dylan Thomas

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The Way We Were: A Boomer's Journey Through Changing Times

By K Grieve • October 20, 2025
The Way We Were Inspired by a piece called “We are the Bridge” We baby boomers have lived through more change than perhaps any generation before us. Born into a world of black-and-white televisions and handwritten letters, I, like most “boomers,” oddly find myself checking facts on Google, ordering everything and anything online, and FaceTiming my grandchildren from the dock at our lake place, Alexander Point. Most of us “boomers” are well past our 60s and have maneuvered technological change and societal upheaval. We have lived through a century of change - all condensed into one lifetime. We began in an age when milk was delivered to the door, phones were attached to walls, and families gathered around the evening news. Now we live in a world where our grandchildren carry the universe in their pockets and talk to digital assistants as if they were family. I grew up in a Catholic family in Winnipeg, where the rhythm of life followed the church bells — Mass on Sundays, confession on Saturdays, and a firm belief that nuns had eyes in the back of their heads. Faith was as much about community as it was about doctrine; it shaped how we showed up for one another. Even now, I hold on to the parts that speak to compassion, social justice, and the quiet sense that we’re all meant to look out for each other. In those days, Winnipeg felt both small and vast. The kind of place where most everyone in your neighborhood knew your last name and where you were on Friday nights. Summers meant escaping the city and heading to the many magnificent Manitoba lakes or where those of us without lake access went to the free admission community swimming pool. We learned to swim, meet with friends, ride bikes, play tag, and stretch the days long past sunset. It was a world without screens or schedules. Time felt good. Then life accelerated. We watched Kennedy promise the moon and for Man actually get there. Women, including many of us, symbolically burned their bras and then stepped confidently into new careers and public life. We typed on manual typewriters, progressed to IBM Selectrics, and eventually learned to “click send.” The first time I used email, I remember thinking it felt unreal - a letter that didn’t need a stamp. We’ve seen family life reinvented, gender roles rewritten, and communication transformed from handwritten letters to emoji-laden texts. We remember when a photo meant developing film and waiting days to see if it “turned out.” Now we can take a dozen shots before breakfast and (my personal favorite) delete the ones that don’t flatter. Now, my grandchildren can find anything with a swipe of a finger, and they ask Siri questions we used to save for the Encyclopedia Britannica. When they show me how to work a new app or laugh that I “still type with two fingers,” I remind them that my generation invented the personal computer, the protest march, and the peace sign - we’re hardly “not with it.” We watched Elvis shake his hips, Kennedy inspire a nation, Martin Luther King Jr. dream, the Beatles redefine music, and Neil Armstrong “Take one step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” We questioned authority, protested wars, fought for rights, and then, almost without noticing, became the authority. And then, the impossible happened: our Dick Tracy dreams came true. We once giggled at that comic-strip detective talking into his wristwatch; now our Apple Watches tell us when to stand, remind us to breathe, and nudge us toward our daily steps. How were we to know that Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone was a precursor to today’s iPhone? Technology, once the stuff of fantasy, has become as ordinary as brushing our teeth. What amazes me most is how the threads of then and now connect. At Alexander Point, our summer retreat, I watch my grandchildren leap off the dock, their laughter echoing across the water just as mine once did when leaping into the community pool. Different time, same joy. They may post their memories instantly; I write mine down and shape them into stories, but it’s the same impulse: to remember, to share, and to belong. We baby boomers are the bridge between worlds - from the catechism to the cloud, from handwritten letters to video calls, from milkmen to meal kits. We carry the past in our bones and the future in our hands. And standing on that bridge, with a grandchild’s hand in mine and the summer wind off the lake “ruining” my hair, I can’t help but feel grateful to have lived through it all - the slow and the fast, the sacred and the digital, the then and the now. We may not dance like we once did, but we still know all the words to the songs that shaped us. We may scroll slower than the younger generation, but we still want to know what’s happening in the world…and if we pause to reflect, as boomers tend to do, we realize how lucky we are to have witnessed humanity stretch, stumble, and soar. Our phones, those sleek rectangles that never leave our sides, are more powerful than the computers that sent astronauts to the moon. We once shared one rotary phone in the kitchen, its long, twisted cord stretched around corners so we could whisper secrets. Now we carry the world in our pockets and see our grandchildren’s faces light up in real time, oceans away. Then the Internet showed up! What a game changer! It linked the world in ways we could hardly have imagined, making libraries, classrooms, and newsrooms just a click away. It amplified voices that often went unheard and opened up a world of knowledge, opportunities, and connections. But along with these benefits came a lot of noise — misinformation, division, and a constant stream of opinions. We gained immediate access to a wealth of information, yet sometimes lost that essential quiet space needed for reflection. Despite its contradictions, the Internet has transformed how we communicate. It brought us closer together and broadened the horizons of what we could learn — as long as we choose wisely about what we pay attention to. Worse still, the Internet gave cover to cruelty. The anonymity of the Internet seems to grant some people license to say things our generation would never have tolerated in public. We were taught to bite our tongues, to disagree without tearing someone down. Today, behind screens and usernames, too many speak without kindness or consequence. It’s a loss of civility that still startles me - how easily respect can evaporate when faces are hidden. It’s shocking to witness how quickly respect can vanish when people aren’t face-to-face. Even shopping has transformed from an errand to an algorithm. I remember the thrill of department stores - the clatter of hangers and the excitement of the Sears’ Christmas catalogue arriving in the mail. Today, a few taps on Amazon, and a box appears at the door by morning. I still find it astonishing- and a little sad - that convenience has replaced conversation. A. nd somewhere along the way, waiting disappeared. We used to line up at the bank on Fridays to cash our paychecks, and at McDonald’s to order a burger and fries that actually took a few minutes to cook. Now, we get restless if a website takes more than three seconds to load. Groceries arrive within hours; packages appear the next day. What once felt like luxury is now expected. We’ve become so accustomed to immediacy that patience, once a virtue, is now a shortcoming! And along comes Artificial Intelligence— this strange, brilliant new frontier. It writes, paints, answers questions, even mimics voices. Part of me is amazed: after all, it’s just another step in our long dance with progress. But another part wonders what happens when machines begin to “think” faster than we do. Will curiosity fade when answers come too easily? Will we forget how to reflect, to wrestle with ideas, to linger in uncertainty - the very things that make us human? Will one of my protégés marry an AI creation? Yet, through all of it, faith, family, technology, and time, one truth endures: connection. Whether through handwritten letters or instant messages, church basements or Zoom calls, it has always been about reaching out, holding on, staying close. The Wi-Fi at Alexander Point is often spotty, but the sunsets never fail. I watch my grandchildren leap off the “bouncy thing”, their laughter carrying across the water. I remember jumping off the cracked concrete dock that my in-laws had at their cozy cottage at White Lake in Manitoba. My grandchildren post their memories instantly; I write mine down and shape them into stories. But it’s the same impulse— to remember, to share, to belong. We baby boomers are the bridge between worlds - from catechism to cloud, from rotary dials to smartwatches, from handwritten notes to emojis. We carry the past in our bones and the future in our hands. And standing on that “bridge” with a grandchild standing beside me and the lake spread before us, I can’t help but feel grateful for the slowness that shaped us, and the speed that still surprises us.

Faith, Found and Misplaced

By K Grieve • May 12, 2025
My mother Marjorie ensured I grew up Catholic - deeply, thoroughly, unmistakably Catholic. The kind of Catholic that meant school uniforms, fish on Fridays, and Mass every Sunday whether you wanted to be there or not. But more than rituals and doctrine, what stayed with me - even now, when I’m no longer a practicing Catholic - is the former Pope Francis’s heartfelt call to justice, unity and looking out for the persecuted and forgotten. Those are still part of me, even if my church attendance record would suggest otherwise. I went to an all girls Catholic school, and as I recall, it was in grade 11 that I first ran afoul of my faith. Sister Agatha (pseudonym) taught us religious studies that year and she gave us an assignment to present an aspect of faith to the class. Now I can’t claim that I was a regular reader of Time magazine. But somehow I came across that publication that posed the question “Is God Dead?” on its cover. Perhaps I saw the cover of Time on a newspaper stand in the grocery store. Whatever! I somehow managed to notice the publication’s headline asking “Is God Dead?”. That sounded unabashedly provocative and at that stage of my life , I was steadfastly taking any opportunity to provoke. In light of that, I asked myself: “Why not give a talk that caused a bit of a stir? My topic was solidified: “Is God Dead?” I was naive not expect it to spark recrimination, not to mention bigger questions about change, meaning and permanence. I spoke to the class confidently and with determination, as if I really understood the topic. Waxing poetic, I somehow managed to mention some well known Jesuit priests, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Phillip who were antiwar activists and who came to to be part of a Catholic movement know as liberation theologians. (There is much more the the Berrigan brothers’ story. If interested read “Disarmed and Dangerous:The Radical Life and Times of Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, Brothers in Religious Faith and Disobedience”) To say the least, Sister Agatha did not think I was being clever. She was outraged. The next day she approached me in the hallway. Menacingly wagging her finger in my face, she declared I was in deep danger of losing my faith. She followed up with a phone call to my mother reiterating her concern. I was straying from the path. I might be forever lost. My mother - actually to my surprise - rose to my defense and stood up for me. She told Sister Agatha that I was thinking, questioning and engaging. “Isn’t that what faith should be?” she pronounced. “If belief can’t survive a teenager asking questions, maybe the problem isn’t the teenager. WOW!!Thanks Mom. That moment has stuck with me my whole life — not because of the challenging repercussions but because I learned what it is like to hold both tradition and curiosity in the same hand. To cherish where you came from, even as you dispute some parts of it. And despite all my doubt, despite my distance from the Church, there is one Catholic habit I have never shaken: Praying to St. Anthony. You may have heard of him? St. Anthony. He is the patron saint of lost things. You lose your keys, your wallet, a ring, an earring - you pray to St. Anthony. “Tony, Tony, look around, something’s lost and must be found.” I have endless stories of how praying to St Anthony for lost objects has mysteriously recovered the misplaced. The most recent incident involves my husband who for three days could not find his passport. Searching everywhere, retracing his steps, Ross was stymied. He carries what I call a “murse” aka a man purse. Consumed with retrieving his passport, Ross called everywhere he could remember where he had been with his passport. Interspersed with that, he kept rechecking his murse - like about 4 times. At this point I intervened. Pray to St. Anthony I told him. And I insisted he promise to donate money to a charity of his choice. Failure to pay up results in St. Anthony striking you from his “list”. “ So I was thinking $25.00” Ross said. “No way,” I replied. “A passport is worth at least $200.” It was not long after this conversation that Ross took one last dive into his murse. He came to me with an Cheshire Cat on his face. The passport was found! I have no logical explanation for this phenomena. But I have story after story where I swore I had looked everywhere, given up hope - and then, sometimes minutes or even months after that whispered prayer, the lost object was found. A necklace under a rug. A set of keys in a pocket I’d checked five times. A photo wedged between pages. Coincidence? Maybe. But I keep praying. And things keep showing up. That’s faith, in a way I think. Or maybe it’s just hope expressed differently. Either way, I find it comforting. So no, I don’t go to Mass every week. I don’t memorize encyclicals or make religious retreats. (Although I can, to this day, recite almost all of the Baltimore catechism-including listing the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost). But I do believe in social justice. I believe in community. I believe in standing up when someone tries to shut you down. I believe in mystery, and ritual, and that strange feeling when something lost is found again. And I still reach out to St. Anthony when I’ve misplaced my car keys. Some things, it seems, you never really lose.