CHAPTER TWENTY

Blindness aside, I was born under a cluster of lucky stars that followed me from the day my parents brought me to the School in Halifax, to right now, retired and teaching myself to write, by just writing. In between then and now I raised a family while living and working for a time in Halifax, Regina, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and now Charlottetown where, under one of those lucky stars, I got to retire.

It wasn’t a planned journey or an obsession to live only in capital cities; it’s just the way it happened. Along the way I found myself in the midst of one exciting endeavour after another, in places made for dreams. I’ll mention a few of them, but for no other reason than to show what potential there is in everyone when doors are opened.

By age thirty, I was sitting behind a desk at the CNIB headquarters in Toronto, just appointed President and Chief Executive Officer for the CNIB, with 65,000 blind and visually impaired clients, 3,000 staff, 100,000 volunteers, and a multi-million-dollar catering business to manage. I recall more than once looking out at the six lanes of traffic on Bayview Avenue and wondering how I had gotten there, all the way from failing Grade Three.

Of course, you don’t rise to the top without a lot of hard work along the way, but more than that, I made the grade because I was full of confidence and youthful idealism, enough to turn heads. I got that confidence at the School for the Blind in Halifax and the youthful idealism, that was just my age.

On the day the Constitution was repatriated in Ottawa, I was there on Parliament Hill, with two pre-school blind children, to present the Prime Minister, The Honourable Pierre Trudeau, with a leather-embossed, Braille copy of the new Constitution.

When the Prime Minister entered the room, he made a beeline for the two kids. In his best suit, he sat on the floor and talked to them about his busy morning with the Queen. The little girl asked him if the Queen had two heads, a fairy tale, I suppose, and with the loud laughter that followed, I didn’t hear the answer.

It rained heavily that morning. I was assigned a seat up front for the repatriation ceremony alongside Bob Stanfield. I thanked him for telling us in Halifax, way back then, not to take “no” for an answer: simple advice but advice that served me well over the years.

On a few occasions, I was in Wayne Gretzky’s home in Brantford, Ontario, sitting at the kitchen table with his father and mother. The Annual Wayne Gretzky Tennis Tournaments that followed those discussions raised millions for the work of the CNIB. I got to meet and have a drink with “The Great One” and too many Hall of Famers to mention. I didn’t see that in the stars when huddled around the television at the School in Halifax, waiting for the puck to drop.

As proud as I was to serve as President of the Institute, I needed a change after three years of living out of a suitcase. At half the salary and few perks by comparison, I embarked on a second career, this time in the federal public service, beginning at the Treasury Board in Ottawa with a staff of six instead of thousands, and a much smaller office. But I got to be home for most evenings and weekends. It took me at least six months to understand the language and work culture of the public service.

Eventually, I moved on to teaching leadership to senior public servants at the Canadian Centre for Management Development. Teaching without notes was not easy in the beginning, but all the practice at the School for the Blind, doing mathematics in my head and creating mental prompts, served me well. I signed up as a member of the faculty for one year and stayed for six.

Ten years later, I was standing proudly on the steps of the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in northern France. I had been there many times before in my new role as Assistant Deputy Minister at Veterans Affairs Canada, but this time it was extra special. It was the 90th Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge and I was there, in charge of the events, and leading a large delegation of veterans, veterans’ organizations, students, parliamentarians, and dignitaries.

I took a deep breath as the Minister and a host of other delegates mounted the stairs of the Memorial for a closer look at the ribbon of names so meticulously chiselled in the stone walls surrounding the Monument: the names of 11,168 Canadian soldiers with no known grave, killed or presumed dead during the First World War.

It was the day before the ceremonies and I was too busy on that occasion to fully appreciate the walkabout. But so far, whether arrangements for Her Majesty the Queen or the President of France, all was going well. There were no phone calls from the Prime Minister’s officer and that was better than good news. Airplanes and helicopters were busy overhead, scanning the property to make sure all was safe and secure.

I was a bit nervous as well, considering the importance of what was to unfold the next day. It had been a full two years of preparation and more than a few challenges along the way, but I knew we were ready and the weather for the next day said so as well: a sunny 23 degrees Celsius, in stark contrast to the awful cold and snow that faced the soldiers on the actual days of the battle in 1917.

And to see as many as 5,000 Canadian students in attendance from schools across the country, and the young children from the Confederation Centre Charlottetown Youth Chorus, there performing the signature piece, “I’m Dreaming of Home:” that was something you never forget.

Weeks earlier, I had lunch with the Queen’s Private Secretary in preparation for Her Majesty’s role at Vimy, and I wasn’t about to miss telling him of the just-in-case dinner my mother made for the Queen, back in 1957, in case her car broke down in front of the house. He was even interested to know what she had cooked and he told me he’d share that story with the Queen—and, if he did, I hope my mother was listening.

I was privileged as well to lead a delegation of Aboriginal Veterans, Elders, native students, the Governor General, and other dignitaries on a ten-day pilgrimage to Europe, to bring home the spirits of their fallen soldiers. The ceremonies and events in traditional dress and drums were breathtaking and unforgettable.

And yet another star overhead saw me in northern France as part of the Canadian delegation to unearth the remains of an unknown soldier, now entombed at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

Of course, I never got to play baseball for the Baltimore Orioles, as I thought possible in Grade Five, but I did get to umpire a few Little League baseball games. And I did okay at it, except once, when I called out “ball four” and the catcher, all of eleven years old, jumped up and shouted, “Mister, are you blind? He swung at the ball!” I left it at that—“ball four,” that is—and sent the batter to first base anyway.

Little wrinkles like that are just part of being visually impaired and I’ve had my share over the years: talking to a sweater, thinking it was the cat; getting on the wrong bus or off at the wrong stop, a lot more than once; or stopping to ask a mannequin for directions. It’s just part of the package: embarrassing when younger, and, when older, fodder for a good laugh.

Today I write books, some that get read and some not. And overall, I’d admit that being visually impaired is a real nuisance at times, but it’s nothing to what it would have been if I had stayed home instead of going to the School in Halifax. As a result, I pretty well got to do what everyone else did, and then some.