17.1, INTRODUCTION
     When we last spoke of our newlyweds before turning to the story of the TRACS project as related in the preceding chapter, they had just completed their honeymoon in Barbados and Grenada. They of course returned to Montreal and settled down in the house at 220 Sherwood Road in Beaconsfield. The two older children were in process of  leaving home, with Robin at the University of Toronto and Maria out working in B.C.. Jim alone of the three children was still with us, 15 years of age and attending Beaconsfield High School. In dealing with the doings of children away from home it is difficult to always know what they are doing or what their thoughts might be, particularly when one is working from memory over 20 years later. Thus, my views of some happenings might not match with theirs. Once they get away from home they are no longer wholly yours as they progress and build lives for themselves. Of course Fran and I kept in touch with them through visits while we were still living in Montreal but I must be careful in mentioning some of the highlights that I do not represent them in a different way than they themselves would do.

17.2, JIM'S DEVELOPMENT AND DEPARTURE
     With Fran established in the home there was more continuous supervision than there had been in the 18 months since Anne's death so it represented an abrupt change for Jim. He was not doing well at school and it was large enough (1500 students) so that the kids could skip classes by attending home room and then taking off. From home room the kids were allowed to choose a curiculum to suit their needs with them then attending different subjects under different teachers who did not keep separate attendance records. Eventually, when it was realized some of them were skipping classes we did get calls from the school. Part of the problem was that the school teachers were mainly married women who were not able to come in early nor stay late to require extra study exercises for the delinquents nor were we parents able to know what was going on in time to do something about it. Beaconsfield was far different from the same size school attended by Robin in Toronto where any absence or discipline problem would immediately result in extra work before or after regular school hours supervised by a teacher!
     One of the problems was the case where the kids who were skipping classes tended to get into trouble inside and outside the school. Fran's ideas of how to deal with it did not always line up with my own and there was at times three way tension between us. I thought of sending Jim to private school where there might be better supervision, but before I could find a way to act, Maria, who was by then living in B.C. came home for a visit. She was a  mature and sensitive girl for her age, and she could see there was tension so she suggested that Jim could come the coast and live on the ranch with she and John in Mission while completing his high school there. We proposed this alternative to Jim, saying it was to be his choice and that if it did not work out he could certainly return to live with Fran and I. He accepted, so in September we put him onto the plane for Vancouver. from whence, as we shall see, he never looked back, having built a life for himself in B.C.! As to how Maria came to be living on a ranch with John Fuller I will now turn to update you, dear reader on that saga!

17.3, MARIA'S WEST COAST STORY GETS STARTED
     In Chapter 15 I had advanced the story to the point where Maria had gone to visit my sister Mary and had shortly after taken up a job cooking at a dude ranch near 100 Mile House. This was all very well, but she then wanted to stay in the West. When I went out to visit, I found she had become so enamoured of the cattle country in B.C. that she had fallen in love with a cowboy called John Fuller. She was completely taken in by John's glamour as a rodeo rider who had won prizes for his broncho busting. It was too much for an eastern city girl to resist, it was right out of the stuff of Hollywood's western movies! They started living together in the lower mainland and when John got a job as Foreman on a small ranch property called Silvermere on an island near the mouth of the Stave River with an apartment to live in they decided to get married. I was not too happy about it but I went to attend the perfunctory wedding offered by a local Justice of the Peace. Following the ceremony we had a great fish fry back outdoors at the ranch. Mary and Jim Clark were there as well as son Jim and Mary helped cook the salmon on an open grill.
     The marriage started off o.k. as they got some extra income from stabling horses for others and also offering horseback rides during the summer at Cultis Lake resort. They tried raising some cattle on the Island, but they lost out on that because the animals contracted a disease and died. Then the local Indian band decided they owned part of the land and fenced off about half the island. John had great ideas, but they  never seemed to work out. I paid them for Jim's board and also gave them money to buy a number of bicylces for a bike riding concession at Cultis Lake. But, although I believe John was not unkind to Maria, he was no Manager! He wanted to live the cowboy image as it was in the early days and any money that he got was frittered away. Fran and I could see it wasn't working well, but it was not our place to criticize. Finally Maria had to take a job cooking in the restaurant associated with a nearby motel. The ranch island was sold and became a training place for the RCMP. John and Maria ended up living in the tack room of another abandoned ranch property. Maria eventually came to the realization that it was no go, but the final straw was the discovery and meeting with another woman who was still married to John. She then got her marriage annulled and moved into an apartment on her own. She went to the B.C. Technical Institute and studied for the hospitality industry and eventually landed herself a steady job as an agent for Lipton's Tea.
     When the ranch was failing, and after graduating from Mission High School Jim went to Simon Fraser University. While I paid his tuition fees he worked in the summers on various jobs such as in a local shingle mill and as a "chokerman" in the coastal woods and at the northern end of  Harrison Lake. He lived in low rent places such as the cottage shared with some other students on Cameron St. in Burnaby. The rent was low because the property had been sold to a developer, and the place did not even have the power connected to it so it was like the boys were camping in a house! Both Maria and Jim showed a lot of grit and initiative in fashioning their lives in these critical happenings! They were like B.C. pioneers in their own generation. Fran and I both feel we owe a lot to Maria and John's providing a home base for Jim to get started in the West and we are sure that while it may not all have been the most satisfactory experience, he learned a good deal about how the other half lives; things he would never have been able to learn from a comfortable middle-class home in suburban Beaconsfield!

17.4, ROBIN'S GRADUATION AND WORKING LIFE LEADING TO B.C.
     As mentioned earlier, Robin remained in Toronto when Anne and I moved to Montreal in 1969.
He was attending the University of Toronto and taking Electrical Engineering. He worked during the summers at various jobs such as CNR trainman running north out of  Toronto and a summer back in Montreal where he worked in the Stores Dept. at he main CN shops and a summer in the Express Dept. handling L.C.L. freight.  As I visited Toronto from time to time in connection with TRACS I was able to keep in touch. He always was upbeat and interested in many things including the Queen St. milieu where he at one time lived in a room above a store.
     When he graduated in 1973 as a BSc.(E.E.) Fran and I were able attend his convocation ceremonies at the University of Toronto (see photo). We also enjoyed treating him and a lady friend to a nice dinner at an old favorite eating place, the Old Mill. It did not seem long before he obtained a job with  Burroughs, a then well-established computer company He worked on a successful project deloping a mini-computer system useful for laundry businesses and quite a few of them were sold. This plus other work resulted in his getting the award of  a nice pen and a trip to Mexico. However, the lure of The West got to him as it did for the other two children and he first went to Calgary where he worked for General Electric's computer division. They  were building data bases to service the oil exploration industry.
     But Calgary was not far enough West, so like the others he moved on to Vancouver where he took the Master of Business Administration course at the University of B.C.. During his summers in B.C. he went tree planting where he got to meet people who were sort of like part of the counter culture. He took me on a 3-day canoe trip starting from Gibson's Landing and visiting various spots and islands where there were some people he knew. Seeing how the counter culture people lived on these island spots was quite an education for me. Among other things we could camp out at nights and in one spot we were able to harvest oysters which we ate for supper and for breakfast. I had to laugh at the fact that he produced a nice bottle of wine to wash them down with. He must have done it for me as I don't believe to this day (2000) that he drinks much other than the occasional beer.

17.5, DEATH OF MY FATHER, NORMAN TIVY
     Having updated some of the doings of the children it is necessary to report on the death of my dear and respected father, who passed away at Rivers Hospital on Feb. 2, 1973 at the age of  90.
As I gave an outline of his life near the beginning of these chronicles I will not repeat it here.
Though I was still living in Montreal I was fortunate to be in Winnipeg in connection with my work on TRACS and took the time off to go to Rivers. I was aware that he was not well and that he was  in the hospital. I drove out in the morning, and while Mother, sister Mary and I were eating lunch, the doctor phoned to say "there has been a change in his condition". We went over and there he was, in the room that the Rivers Branch of the Canadian Legion (of which he was a long standing member) had fitted out and he was very quiet. However, mother said that Bob was here, and he spoke which seemed to say that he recognised my presence. He later sank into a sort of coma and died at about 4:30 p.m.. The intern attempted to revive him with the electric starter, but it was of no avail. Mother simply said, "I guess it's all over for him", and that was it.  Three days later we buried him in the family plot on the hill, following a crowded service in his dear old Anglican church. As a small tribute to his life I asked the minister to include the Nunc Dimitus in the service. It begins, "Lord, lettest now  thy servant depart in peace". It seemed to me that it was a suitable recessional for this great, yet humble servant who emigrated to Manitoba as a young man and gave so much to that province, to his country during World War I,  the town of Rivers, to his job at Canadian National and last, but not least to his family!
      It was a cold winter's day at the cemetery and the wind seemed even to blow through my heavy fur coat. Brother Bill and my sister Mary completed the immediate family in attendance. The sun came out as a tribute to his life and from the grave site you can see the big bridge of railway he served so well. Though strict at times, he was a great man who cared for his wife and family and though he lived humbly on low pay he was really a happy man at heart and remains an example to us all. The ladies at the church served up a most delicious repast in the church basement after the burial. It was largely attended by the many who knew him, including mother's sisters Ruth and Eva and cousins Iva and Enid Nelson who drove over from Holmfield with Iva's husband, Bill Buchanan. My mother, who was somewhat younger than dad, continued to live on in  the cottage on 5th avenue for several more years, content to remain in the town where she had come as a young school teacher about 55 years before!

 17.6, SOME INTERESTING  TRAVELS
     One could write a great deal aout the travels that Fran and I have made, but I feel I should temper these accounts in the interests of brevity and not boring whatever readers might someday peruse our Odyssey.
      In June of 1974 we motored to Kentville, N.S. to attend the 50th Wedding Anniversary of Fran's parents, Francis "Bun" and Evelyn Toomey. This was quite an enjoyable event which gave me a chance to meet many members of Fran's extended family who attended. This included her Uncle John, Uncle Alden, Aunts Tina and Winnie and  a few cousins like Margaret, in addition to her brothers Ray and Don with their wives Lucene and Kay. (See photo). The highlight was a dinner at the local motel, which was quite a fun affair and there was also a cocktail party at Bun and Evelyn's home at 28 Orchard Road.
     In July of that year we made an interesting trip to England, Wales and Scotland. It was partly business as we wished to exchange ideas on our TRACS system implementation with the computer system team of British Rail who were also implementing a version of  Southern Pacific's TOPS. Bob Arnold was my counterpart in this effort. He was very good to us during our stay and through entertaining us in his suburban home and exposing us to some of England's history made it very interesting. Our visits around London of course covered all the sights we could cram in within the time available. We saw such things as the Tower, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the famous long running London theatre play called "The Mousetrap", the preserved Royal Navy Cruiser, HMS "Belfast" (complete with recording of her part in the action off the French coast during the 1944 D-day invasion) and a cruise on the Thames to visit Kew gardens!
     Our incursion into Wales was very slight, we just went through the tunnel under the Severn River and stayed overnight at the Beaufort Inn, which is quite close to the ruins of Tintern Abbey. I had a memory quirk about this historic abbey based on curiosity ever since reading the poem "Lines Composed  Above Tintern Abbey" while I was in high school in Rivers. The Beaufort Inn was also of special interest in that it was a country inn which acted as a sort of social centre for the locality. We found its bar and pub most interesting in the evening as many of the locals would come to have a pint and get to chat with people like us from many places abroad.
     To get to Scotland we took the train called the "Electric Scot" from London to Glasgow and we visited with  Jim Kesson and his wife who live in Helensburg outside of Glasgow. He was the Civil Engineer on our World Bank team in Argentina in 1968. We were intrigued to learn that at this northern latitude there were a few palm trees as the climate was moderated by the Gulf Stream!  (I will be telling more of  our 1968 work in Argentina in a later chapter dealing with my consulting activities). When we returned to London we took the train to Edinburgh and thence down the east coast rail route via Newcastle. We were sorry not to have had enough time between trains to see Edinburgh and all that I can now recall is a fleeting view of the castle.
     When we got back home from Britain we felt that we had been enriched by the trip. It was perhaps the first part of making a visit to as many places as we could which are part of our Canadian historical and cultural heritage. This would include Ireland, France, Spain, some other european countries. the Holy Land and Egypt. I shall deal with our achievement of these visits later, as we come to the retirement years when we were able to travel more extensively. As I said at the outset of this section, I will try to keep our travelogues brief, but some might find more detail and pictorial interest in looking at the photos we brought back. These are organized in our photo albums which are basically set up chronologically.
     In addition to travels to Britain, Fran and I had a pleasant two weeks in Jamaica in October. We stayed in a resort called "Runaway Bay" where we were able to enjoy swiming in the sea, eating and sunning. A highlight was the railcar journey on the "Governor's Coach" which negotiated the poorly maintained railway to the interior and gave us an outdoor luncheon near the Appleton's rum distillery which we toured. The rum drinks on the train were free and the calypso band travelling with us was quite entertaining so needless to say we had a rocking good time!

17.7, HOME FRONT ACTIVITIES IN BEACONSFIELD
     Having dealt with some of our travels it is time to put in a catch-up paragraph dealing with our lives back home in suburbia. We were fortunate to have so many good neighbors that we could associate with in various ways.We had the Holts and the Tunnels across the street, first the Glinskis and then the Stewarts on one side of us and the Batchelors on the other side. These folks and others in the vicinity were part of the monthly meeting of the gourmet club, when the women took turns  in hosting a special dinner prepared by them.
     Many we knew belonged to the Baie d' Urfe Curling Club which, in addition to curling had a good deal of social life associated with it. I enjoyed getting to know many of the men through being in charge of the Saturday morning "crysta;ls" . This consisted of pickup rinks playing for the club crest etched glassware. All of us got a fair collection of it over time. Another sociable feature was that after our regular evening games it was customary for the winners to buy the losers a drink at the bar. Of course, the losers then felt honor bound to buy one for the winners. On New Year's Day it was the fashion to hold a time honored levee complete with bagpipe music and visits from delegations from other clubs. Perhaps the most remarkable of the social activities of this club was the annual stage show. This was a varied program of music and skits prepared and performed by club members. It made for a most hilarious evening!
     One activity which went on was that of bridge games. These were played at various people's homes and might consist of two tables of four. Playing bridge is one of my great failures, I could never stand getting poor cards and not being able to participate enough in the play; I never learned to enjoy playing a defensive game and one time threw the cards on the ceiling when I lost a double and was assessed 50 additional points "for the insult". I am sure that I got a bad reputation as a poor loser amongst the lakeshore bridge players and my inability to cope with the game has caused poor Frances much distress over the years. She enjoys the game and still (2000) plays fairly regularly with neighboring ladies in White Rock.
     In the summer, we enjoyed some sailing on Lake St. Louis and the Lake of Two Mountains. We never owned  boat of our own other than the little one at Laclu. However, Ken and Lois Stewart next door had a 30ft. day sailer and would often invite us to crew for them. We could go out in the weekend afternoons, sail about, then anchor in a bay to prepare and enjoy dinner. It was really quite a plus to have such nice sailing waters in our immediate suburban area! Ken and Lois were great fun. Politically they were from staunch Conservative families and were very proud of an old solid oak sideboard from which Sir John A. MacDonald had taken a few drinks when visiting some of Lois' Conservative party forbears! I was also able to play outdoor tennis about once a week at the courts near Beaconsfield Station, this having been arranged by Con Bach, one of my C.N. working associates.
      And once every summer, we would get an office group of those reporting to me and their wives and have a garden on our very nice shaded patio in the back yard. They were a great team who handled our success in TRACS and later in other systems and I am still able to keep in touch with some of them.

17.8,  TRANS-CANADA BY CAR
     It is surely every real Canadian's ambition to cross this great stretched out land by automobile. Though Fran and I did nore than one crossing by rail we were caught in the desire to do it once by car. So, for our August vacation in 1975 we set out to make the journey. While we had purchased a new green Plymouth Vanguard in the spring, we kept our old white Rambler for the trip, with the thought we could give it to Maria in B.C. and return home by train.
      It took us nine days to make the crossing, as we stopped over with George Walker at Laclu and with my mum in Rivers for a couple of days. We did about 500 miles in one day but that was too tiring, 300 miles was better. The 500-mile day took us from North Bay to Marathon where we had to go into the old downtown hotel because all the highway motels were full by the time we got there at 9 p.m.. Worse, the room did not have its own toilet and it was so close to the CPR mainline that it sounded as though the trains were going through the lobby! Franny was quite annoyed that we had not quit driving early enough to get into a motel!
     From Rivers we headed west in the beginning of real prairie heat. It got up into the 90's and as the car had no air-conditioning we had the windows down so that it was like driving through a furnace. We stopped in Moose Jaw, Sask. and were directed to a restaurant by a local person. As there was a winery in Moose Jaw we thought we would try some of their white. It was the most awful wine we had ever tasted as most wines we got in Montreal were imported from France in bulk and bottled under Canadian Labels. The wine at Moose Jaw was called something like "Baby Duck"!
     We did get cooled off in the motel at night and started out bright and early in the morning. reaching Calgary by night. The following day, as we approached the mountains we had our only bit of trouble with the old car. The heat of crossing the prairies had eroded part of the exhaust pipe near the engine and it came down on the road. I got my overalls out of the trunk and crawled underneath to tie it up with hay wire and we proceeded to Banff where we looked for a garage. Fortunately, it was still early in the day and the garage we took it to still had room to service our needs. We think the owner saw how run down we looked and what an old car we were driving and said he could fix us up. He turned away the very next customer who came, saying he could take no more work that day, that's how lucky we were! To finish the story, he dug out a piece of stainless steel pipe that he had and put it into place within about two hours and only charged us $16.00! What a wonderful example of some of the better things in life before the age of inflation. Now, in suburban Vancouver it costs $70.00 per hour for labour to get your car fixed!!
     It was cooler driving in the mountains and by night we reached Sicamous in B.C.. A stop of interest to me because of  my railway background was the Rogers Pass, so famous in the early days of the C.P.R.. I marvelled at the old right-of way with its 5% grade and the trees along the way were bent over horizontal at their bases by the effects of sliding snow in the winter. When the C.P. was blocked for 6 weeks one winter they had to do something, so the Connaught Tunnel was drilled under Mount Macdonald and the gradient lowered to 2.2%. This was still 3 times as steep as the C.N.line's 0.75% so three times the locomotive power was required by C.P. on portions of their route! Finally, in the 1980's C.P. spent $800 million to build a new longer tunnel to further lower the grade.
     Next day we completed our trip with a stop to view the famous Hell's Gate rapids on the Fraser River. We did not know it at the time, but an old Riversite by the name of Lloyd Moxley ran a restaurant there. He died there some yars later (before Fran and I migrated to the coast), but my cousin Patrick was at his funeral and delivered the eulogy.
     We crossed the river at Hope or Mission so as to proceed directly to Maria and John's  ranch. Miraculously we met Robin at a service station on the way so we had a chat about his doings. Jim was doing well in growing up on the ranch. He even had a girl friend named Paulette Cloutier and could drive an old Studebaker that he shared with another school chum. We stayed with Maria and John and slept in a loft they had in their apartment. Maria had become an accomplished horsewoman, galloping around the place barebacked at full speed! I was never that good with horses myself, only using them for farm work as related long ago. Fran gave it a try, but after she nearly slid off frontwards over the horse's neck while going downhill she gave it up, claiming the horse didn't like her! It was also enjoyable to walk around the island and to swim in the warm water of the lake. A photo taken at the ranch on this trip shows all three of my children together--this was the first time since Anne's funeral that we were all together.
     We also visited Jim and Mary who were living comfortably in their cottage in Langley and with Bill and June in North Vancouver. Their children at this time were all growing up and thriving.
I remember that Jim Clark Junior was building interesting things with his Meccano, a toy which I greatly enjoyed as a child and still collect some for a nostalgic hobby in retirement. June's sister Rita, also lives in the lower mainland, so she came over to the Sunday picnic arranged by June.
     We left our faithful old white Rambler at the ranch, along with our dog, dear Randy (who had been Maria's favorite). Neither Randy nor the car survived very long; a sad thought really for a wonderful dog who came from the East coast and lies in an unknown grave on the West coast of this large extended country in which we live! We took the train home, pausing briefly to see Charles and Nene Armstrong in Edmonton, where we visited the old fort.

17.9,  MARITIME AND BOSTON SAFARIS
     Something which has since become a habit is Fran and I loving to go to the Maritimes in October, not only to visit her relatives and our friends in Montreal but also to enjoy the beautiful colors of the leaves. So this year (1975) we took off in our new Plymouth to tour part of  that country; if you wish you could also say that it completed the Eastern part of our trans-Canada trip where we had done this in August as related in the previous section.
     Perhapas the best leaves are found in Cape Breton  where one can take a drive around the Cabot Trail ands also wander through other parts of that island. On this trip we visited with Hawley and Betty-Jane Cameron who lived near Glendyer. Betty-Jane was a nurse who Fran hd known and who had since married Hawley who made a living raising race horses. We got a bit of flavor about Cape Breton and its distinctive Celtic music when we heard that the local priest had no less than 150 young people who were being taught "the Fiddle". I really love the old Scottish reels and strathspeys which they can rouse you with.
     We did of course have a visit with Ray and Lucene and their family in Bridgewater and a visit to Kentville and nearby Hall's Harbor, a romantic place for Fran and I! Also Don and Kay were still living in Kentville so we got to see them and talk to Don about the Dominion Atlantic Railway. We have made so many trips to both east and west coasts since Fran and I were married, that I have dsifficulty recalling just where we went or what we did on any particular trip. Fortunately, our photo albums, which are in chronological order give us some guidance, and I hope that most who read these annals in the future may also be able to leaf through the albums to see how people and  places related to each other at the time.
     In addition to our many visits to the Canadian Maritimes we made a number of trips to Boston. In addition to Fran's Aunt Nell, who had lived and worked there most of her life we visited Charlie and
Camilla Glover who lived in Dedham. Camilla was a long time friend of Fran's going back to student nurse days in Halifax. She was originally from Havre Boucher in Nova Scotia. Charlie had been in the U.S. Navy during the war so he and I had something in common. Aunt Nell was living in a home, as her hysband George had been dead for some years. There was also a cousin Elizabeth who lived in another suburb of Boston. She also was a widow. It is interesting to note these family connections living in what was called the "Boston States". A great many maritimers over the years have migrated to New England; Fran's own mother's parents had lived there for many years and Evelyn grew up and went to school there before the family returned to Nova Scotia.  This is the reason why Evelyn, although born an Acadian never learned to speak French! We always found Boston to be an interesting city. Because its existence goes back to pre-revolutionary  days it has a great deal of American history and many of its streets and buildings still have more character to them than does your typical modern U.S. city. This means of course that the street layout in the older parts was quite irregular and we sometimes got lost while driving. On one occasion we had to ask a policeman for directions and we got a response in a brogue which told us he was the typical friendly Boston Irish cop! We enjoyed visiting historic Faneuil Square and taking canoe trips with Charlie on the Charles River. Also we got quite a kick out of  taking Aunt Nell out to a restaurant; she had worked much of her life as a waitress, incuding quite a number of years at the Harvard University Club so she knew the good places to go. Mostly we liked dining at Anthony's Pier 22 where we could get great sea food and enjoy watching the harbor activity. Nell was a feisty person who enjoyed a drink and we always found her company entertaining. Charley and Camilla were also great fun, they loved to sit out the evening with a case of beer and "shoot the breeze". Driving through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachussets to get to Boston was also a pleasure as the scenery was very nice, particularly in the fall.
     Fran and I got to go to a special party in the fall  of 1975, the occasion was the 50th Anniversary of the Royal Victoria Hospital where she had served as a nurse and a supervisor for 22 years before we were married. She had fun introducing me to her former associates including a number of doctors. She was so key to the Women's Pavillion where she had worked that the one concern I had in her getting married to me was that she had such a popular and productive life going for her at the hospital. I was very happy to feel that she had transferred to Beaconsfield and done a wonderful job of becoming accepted by all of our neighbors because of her happy and upbeat nature!
     In June `76 we were able to take in some of the sights presented by the Interntional Summer Olympic Games being held that year in Montreal. Not being tat interested in all of the different sports my main recollection is of the closing exercises which we took in in full. The spectacles of performers and dance circles and costumes presented at these things are truly magnificent and the crowd enjoyed it thoroughly. A distraction not on the program which immediately grabbed everyone's attention was the sudden appearance of a bare naked man streaking while a large scale women's dance routine wasa going on. It was to the credit of the girls that they were able to continue their complicated routines in spite of his streaking among them! Eventually, the authorites led the man off, but not before Fran grabbed the binoculars to have a better look, ha! ha!
     Another occasion which would take us to the Maritimes was the annual C.N. employees bonspiel. I would put in a team from our office and it would provide a winter break for us to go there and stay in the C.N. operated Boanaventure Hotel which we both liked. Because I was the department head I undertook to skip the team, but my play was not really good enough to skip and in order to win at least one game I turned the skipping over to Murray Bain who had the requisite skills. The social part was what I really enjoyed because it gave me a chance to see many of my old associates remembered from happy days as part of the railway in Moncton!
     I had started this chapter thinking I could take the tale up to 1983 in it. However, I have found much more to report than I originally thought so even though I have just reached to the end of 1975 I think I should start a new chapter. Besides, we are now near April,  2000 and with income tax to do I may not get back to these memoirs for a while. It will take at least one more chapter to bring us up to Feb., 1984 when I retired from my full time job with the railway.