Category: Visiting the Homeland (Canada)

I had not heard of Thu Tran and his work, but this is fantastic.   I smiled at much of this, nodded knowingly.  You have to live there to understand :-)

And, yes, I love my home town.  And I miss it too.  Mosquitoes and all!

Rev. George Davidson, my friend and retired pastor of Headingley United Church, had some serious brain surgery in October.  They’ve repaired an aneurysm that was threatening, and confirmed that tumour concern was unwarranted, whew.

I had heard that he was still in the Health Sciences Centre, so on Boxing Day after doing a bit of shopping with Eric (did I say “a bit”?  Yikes, spent too much money at Mark’s Work Wearhouse!), I went to see George.  He was sound asleep, and looked very pale and tired.  I decided not to wake him, chatted with the nurses, and they confirmed he was having a rough morning and needed his rest.

When the blizzard abated on Saturday afternoon, I drove back to see if he was up & around.  He was again asleep, but this time the nurses urged me to wake him, so I did.  Was he ever happy to see me!  You could tell that he was tired, for sure, and drifted in & out of consciousness during our conversation.  He was certainly glad for the visit.  I stayed for over 3/4 hour, was good that I went.

I asked George if he’d like me to sneak in a flask of Scotch whisky so we could have a dram.  He said, “THAT is a damned good idea!”  I chatted with the nurses, and they said I could, as long as it was one, and as long as it was well watered down.  Well, it turns out that you are supposed to cut whisky with water anyway, so I decided to do it.

I went to the MLCC to pick up a mickey (12 oz bottle) of Johnny Walker Scotch, but they don’t offer it in mickey size :-(   So had to buy Glenlivet 12 yr old single malt, and it was certainly damned good :-)  I stopped at the dollar store and picked up an assortment of glasses that might serve the trick for drinking whisky in the hospital.  Of course, washed them as soon as I got back to mom’s place.

On Sunday morning, after zooming out to Warren and picking up the B.U.T. battery, I zoomed back, showered & changed, and went down to the HSC with the mickey and glasses.  The nurses recognized me of course, and George had just finished breakfast.  Again he was very glad to see me.  I poured us each a short shot and topped them off with water from the water cooler.  He took a sip of his apple juice and said, “Now that’s good Scotch!”  Later, he took a sip of his milk and said, “Now that’s good Scotch!”  Finally, he took a sip of the Scotch and said, “NOW that is DAMNED GOOD Scotch”   Nice.

On my way out, I asked the nurses if I could leave the bottle behind.  Donna is very strict and straight laced, and would be scandalized if she came around the corner and saw the mickey sitting there.  It might be worth the thirty bucks!  Alas, they said that it would just disappear (be stolen) in the night – so I took it back to mom’s.  I’ll take it to visit George again in the summer when I’m there, and we’ll once again have some DAMNED GOOD Scotch :-)

I’ve since chatted with George & Donna’s daughter, Laurie Dixon, and brought her up to date.  She’s really running hard to keep up with her kids, her job, and taking Donna up to visit George, etc.  She said she would keep me posted.  I hope he improves rapidly – there are no guarantees, but there are precedents for excellent rapid recovery.  We can but pray and wait.