Happy Birthday Sis

Today January 7 is my sister Barbara’s birthday. I won’t mention how she is however it one of those birthday’s that is a milestone so I hoping that she is going to have a great day.

She lives in Quebec, Canada a few miles outside of Ottawa, Ontario the capital of Canada. She has lived there about thirty years after living in the Vancouver, British Columbia for several years. She works as a paralegal and this may be her last year working before retiring. She has two grown sons Ken who lives in Montreal and Connor who is Ottawa. She lost her husband Bob about six and half years ago.

Barb met Bob while she was a graduate student at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington. They were married a couple months before I graduated from high school. They lived in Tacoma well as Gig Harbor for a few years before moving to Vancouver. They moved to eastern Canada when Ken and Connor were a few years old. Ken and Connor went to school in Quebec. Barb, Ken and Connor all can speak French well as English.

Bob grew up in Canada with a brother and sister. His father Ken was in the Canadian Air Force so they travelled all over Canada and then Ken along with his wife Betty settled in Lakewood which is south of Tacoma when he retired after being stationed at McChord Air Force Base.

Our mother grew up in Canada before coming to United States after World War 2. She spent a couple years in Paris France. Barb was born in Seattle while my brothers and I were born in Tacoma. Barb spent some time with our grandparents in Edmonton, Alberta as a small child so she knew Canada very well so when meeting Bob they decided to move up to Canada it was a very easy for her.

Barb is eight and half years older than me so she went off to college when I was around nine years old. She went to University of Oregon in Eugene and majored in political science. I don’t have a lot of memories of being real young so I don’t remember Barb’s teenage years much at all. I have known her more as an adult so it is different than most sibling relationships. I do have some flashes where she took my two brothers and me to the movies. Our parents really weren’t into going to movies. I am not sure how a teenage girl felt about dragging her much younger brothers to the movie but she did.

I do remember our family going to visit Barb while she was a college student at Oregon. Our dad really being into sailing he would race the Thistle boat he had on the lake near Eugene.

Another time I remember well was after she graduated from Oregon and before going to University of Puget Sound she was working at a record store in Portland, Oregon. She brought home a record of the Beatles album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Being a young teenager at the time I asked her how I could become a member of the club. Now looking back that was somewhat funny.

I remember to her and Bob’s wedding along with the births of Ken and Connor. They are both born in January as well. They were both born in Vancouver, British Columbia. Actually Connor birthday is tomorrow so happy birthday to him as well and Ken is on the eighteenth. My brother Dick and I spent a few occasions up in Vancouver on separate occasions. Dick ended up living in New York after he graduated from college so he would visit
Barb and the family on holidays. I visited them there to a couple Christmases. Another story at another time; so I toast Barb for her birthday and we here in Gig Harbor are  thinking of you.