Book Launch Great Success

What a great day we had Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 as friends, family, and associates joined me to celebrate the official release of my first book, "Mountains for Maddi." The many smiling faces were testament to the terrific time we had, both in reconnecting with old friends, as well as uniting us in the cause to find a cure to end MS.

The day was a resounding success in book sales as well as in raising money for the MS Society of Canada's aggressive endMS campaign.

Click here to read and see more of the day.

Starbucks Book Signing

Starbucks generously offered me a book signing at the Warden and Steeles Aves location on May 8th, 2009. It was a great success on so many levels. It offered me the opportunity to promote “Mountains for Maddi” which officially launched May 1st. It gave Starbucks the chance to promote their product and support me as a local patron and author. And it furnished the Scarborough chapter of the MS Society with the opportunity to raise awareness of MS within the community.

We had a great time selling books, meeting and greeting the long line of patrons gathered on a balmy sunny Friday afternoon, and kicking off the MS Society’s Carnation Campaign week-end. The Carnation Campaign runs Mother’s Day Week-end to honour the thousands of women who are diagnosed with MS. Researchers don’t know why, but three times as many women are afflicted with MS than men.

Book Trailer Released

Promoting books today sometimes include creating book trailers. Book trailers are just like movie trailers – they’re teasers meant to give you just enough information to whet your appetite. I had a lot of fun writing and producing the trailer for “Mountains for Maddi.”

Barb and Kyle Smith of MS Ontario at the MS Society of Canada's Scarborough MS Walk Kick-off.

Recent Speaking Engagements

Over the past several weeks I’ve had several opportunities to speak within the MS community, as well as to women’s organizations and philanthropic groups. I’m so thrilled to be speaking again, reaching out to people.

Presentations geared toward MS have included speaking about WAMS (Women Against MS) to EMD Serono, and speaking about Diversity in the workplace to BMO. I also spoke at The MS Society of Canada's Scarborough MS Walk Kick-off.

I also was afforded the wonderful opportunity to present GECO to the Scarborough Rotary.

Recent Speaking Engagements Con’t

”Mountains for Maddi” presentations included my speaking at The Salvation Army Scarborough Citadel Women's Coffee Break Hour. I was also able to share a devotional on the topic of “Where is God When It Hurts?” for the ladies who attended.

I’ve just returned from Sudbury where I was able to speak at the local MS chapter’s “Centre of Hope.” I’ll write more about Sudbury in my next e-newsletter.

If you belong to a organization looking for a guest speaker, I’d be pleased to work with your group to provide a time of education, entertainment, and encouragement.

Please contact me through my website or via e-mail at: contact at barbaradickson dot ca.

Fusiliers Found!

Two original issues of ‘The Fusilier,’ the bi-weekly newspaper GECO published during its operation, were found in Ken Bott’s attic. His family has donated them to the Ontario Archives to help preserve GECO’s enduring heritage and I was thrilled to be a part of the historical process. Incredibly, these two issues were not currently part of the archival collection.

I will include pictures, trivia, and articles from these two wonderful relics in future editions of my e-newsletter and on my web-site. One edition was published just after Germany surrendered. There are rare action shots of D-Day. Stay tuned!

“Fusiler: A Powder Magazine” Employee Newspaper May 28th, 1945

GECO Memory - Phyllis Topping

I’m thrilled my historical work with GECO gives me the opportunity to meet amazing people who either were associated with GECO, or who share a common curiosity and reverence in its enduring legacy. The late Phyllis Topping was a GECO employee, and her niece, Nancy contacted me recently to send along a picture of her aunt posed with two fellow GECOites.

Phyllis’ family would love to identify the two women who are with her. You can find Phyllis’ picture on my Ladies of GECO page.

Original GECO Gallery Found!

Thanks to the eagle eyes and curious spirit of fellow GECO enthusiast, Mike Morin, an original GECO gallery has been found tucked behind a building on Manville Avenue.

Like Mike, I had the absolute pleasure in checking out the gallery. Unfortunately it was completely sealed off and in dilapidated condition. I returned a week later to examine it more closely, but forgot my camera. You can only imagine my profound disappointment when I returned the very next evening, camera in hand, to discover the gallery had been razed.

I have been unable to find another surviving gallery. This gallery may have been the last remaining gallery that was part of GECO. Sadly, another part of GECO is gone forever. More poignantly, another part of Scarborough’s history is gone forever…

GECO Workshop and Tunnel Tour Resounding Success!

What a great evening we had on June 24th. Over twenty eager GECO enthusiasts met at the Scarborough water tower, then headed to an original GECO building for a tour of its tunnel system. With hardhats, flashlights, and cameras in hand, we climbed down a wooden ladder, via a trapdoor in the floor to wander in wonder through the surviving tunnel. With all the rain we’ve had lately in Toronto, rain boots came in handy too!

It was great to put faces to the many people I’ve met through my website. Each had a reason for being there that night – past GECO residents, descendants of GECO employees, videographers interested in capturing GECO’s history on film, adults who played in the tunnels growing up in Scarborough, and the curious who have grown to love the enduring legacy that is GECO.

Stay tuned for more of this great tour on my website and in my next e-newsletter!!

Every Step Matters

Some of my fondest memories of being associated with the MS Society of Canada, and in particular the Scarborough chapter, are participating in the yearly MS WALKS.

Recalling my first walk experience in 1993, I was still in the initial stages of my journey with MS, and in a bad flare-up. I was far from well. But I was determined to walk, gimpy legs and all.

And every year since, it is an honour to be involved, either walking or working behind the scenes, ready to do whatever needs doing, joining with thousands across this great nation of ours to raise money to beat MS.

This year on behalf of WAMS, I walked for the first time in over a decade. I also had the privilege of blogging for the MS Society’s Every Step Matters campaign. If you’re interested in reading the posts, you can find them toward the bottom on the left hand side of the page.

WAMS

This past spring, I had the privilege in joining WAMS – Women Against Multiple Sclerosis. WAMS was established in 2005 to offer professional women the opportunity to network with other women while supporting fund-raising initiatives for MS research. I’m thrilled to be a part of such a dynamic and growing group of ladies. Membership costs only $100.00 per year and there are several ways to get involved: attend regularly held networking receptions, attend and/or fundraise for the WAMS Gala Luncheon, and participate in Team WAMS in the annual MS Walk. You can learn more about WAMS here.

MS Ambassador

This year I also had the opportunity to become an MS Ambassador. Ambassadors work within our communities increasing awareness of key MS Society social policy issues such as continuing care, access to drug therapies, transportation, accessibility, and disability-related supports.

In April, we travelled to Queen’s Park to meet with MPPs from across the province. We asked for their help in three key areas:

• Continue to invest in supportive housing to help people with MS remain in their communities.
• Provide access to all drug therapies that have been approved by Health Canada for people who utilize the Trillium Drug Program or the Ontario Drug Benefit Program to access vital but expensive therapies.
• Financially support the EndMS Research Campaign by partnering in current and future flagship research initiatives.

I look forward to a long, successful tenure as an MS ambassador! If you’d like to get involved, please contact MS Ontario at 416-922-6600.

Kittens of GECO’s Building 67

In March, 2008, a small group of GECO enthusiasts trolled the tunnels of the GECO ruins, and we discovered a litter of kittens and their terrified mother. We had startled their dark, cold silent existence with the sharp rays of our headlamps and our voices reverberating off the frosty cinder-block walls.

The mother skittered away, abandoning her babies. We poked our heads in what once was Building 66, a small utility room during GECO’s operation, and discovered her litter on a icy slab of cement tucked behind the rusting door.

She had given birth to four kittens. Tragically, two were dead, the other two on the verge of joining their siblings. One wasn’t moving, the other was lethargic, mewing pitifully. While we didn’t know much about veterinary medicine, our hearts told us that unless the two surviving kittens found warmth and milk quickly, they, too, would die shortly, perhaps in the next few hours.

We hoped Mom would return and we’d be able to rescue her as well, so we left the kittens and took our tour.

When the tour was finished we hurried back to the small vestibule. Their mother hadn’t returned. Worse, the two forsaken kittens were near death.

So we scooped them up in a warm sweater hastily sacrificed by one our troupe and we headed to the surface.

The kittens – named GECO and Victory for their sheer will to live – were cradled, cooed to, and loved immediately. Their umbilical cords still hung to their furry bellies. It was decided we would take them to the River Street Humane Society in downtown Toronto. We bought milk on the way and fed them via a single drop from our fingertips.

With a final cuddle and coo, they were surrendered to better care.

One of our group, Trace had decided to adopt them, should they live. She visited the shelter when she could and called the days she couldn’t.

Sadly, a week after saving them from their pitiful existence under the ruins of GECO, they died, both within hours of each other.

Our hearts heavy, we knew the odds of their survival when we found them were slim at best. But a part of us had hoped against hope they would rally.

We never found out what happened to their mother. We can only assume she moved on, continuing her feral existence in perhaps another portion of the GECO ruins.

As for the tunnels under Building 67? They were filled in as part of the building’s demolition in June 2008. Another little piece of Scarborough history lost under the crush of the bulldozer and in the name of progress.

NEXT TIME:

• Highlights of the June 24th GECO tour!
• “Mixed Feelings Greet Closing...Regret at the Impending Break” article from the “Fusilier,” GECO’s employee newspaper, May 28th, 1945 just after Germany surrendered.

Teenaged Girl Named “Mother of the Year” by Scarborough MS Society

Claire Colella, a recent grade eight pupil at St. Brendan Catholic School, was two years old when her mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Within a year, the disease had advanced to such an extent that her mom needed a wheelchair.

Now over twelve years later, Claire’s life outside school revolves around caring for her mom and helping her dad and older sister manage the home. She recognizes that when one person in a family gets MS, the whole family ‘gets’ MS.

“At one point, my mom could only move her head,” the shy and precocious teen recalls.

Multiple sclerosis, the most common neurological disease affecting young adults in Canada, is unpredictable, affecting vision, speech, memory, balance and mobility. Its effects are physical, emotional, and financial, and last a lifetime. Every day, three more people in Canada are diagnosed with MS.

There is no cure.

Claire’s French teacher, Helena Joseph, started teaching at St. Brendan in the fall of 2007. When she asked if she could meet Claire’s mom and dad during upcoming parent-teacher interviews, her quiet pupil declined. Helena pressed further and Claire confessed her mom had MS and couldn’t walk. Stunned and overcome with a desire to help in some way, Helena rallied her students and the support of the St. Brendan community.

“Thank God I’m healthy,” Helena says. “I asked myself, ‘what can I do to help?’”

Last spring, her class held a hot chocolate and cookie sale for three days to support the Family Outings group of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada’s Scarborough Chapter. The sale helped raise an incredible $1,500.00 towards programming that reaches out to children who have been affected by MS, either due to a parent’s diagnosis or that of a close family member. Then, this past fall, Claire’s grade eight class hosted a haunted house for Halloween and raised an additional $800.00.

When asked if she has a message to share with other children who have a parent with MS, Claire answers without hesitating. “Accept them,” she says. “Remember that they’re still your family, and treat them like normal.”

Good advice for us all.

May 2009 be the year they find a cure to end MS.

NEXT TIME:

• Barb’s personal journey with multiple sclerosis

In this e-newsletter, we’re going to take a look at the second of ten reasons why Moses is the best guy to learn from, when it comes to managing blended families. If you missed Reason #1, you can find it in the Spring 2009 newsletter on my Newsletter page of my website or on my What Would Moses Do? page.

We’ll also have a look at becoming an evil, wicked stepmother...

Reason #2: Moses Knew When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Head for the Hills...

“And (Moses) saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” Exodus 2: 11b, 12.

Moses, in a fit of passion, killed a man. When an eye witness challenged him, he took off, fleeing to the desert to avoid getting caught. He would have faced the death penalty had he stayed.

While we shouldn’t condone Moses’ less than courageous action in not facing his crime, there is a nugget of gold here.

Within a blended family, you will face myriad emotions, some of which may be quite contrary to building harmony within the family. These potentially destructive feelings can include anger, jealousy, grief, helplessness, and perhaps even bitterness and open hostility. These feelings are not limited to you. Anyone within the blended family unit, or even within the extended family, can experience acute emotion originating in the loss of family, dreams, and security.

If you come face-to-face against the red-hot ire of tempers run wild, remember Moses.

Run for your life. Head for the hills. Don’t give in to ruinous passion.

I don’t mean leave permanently. Breaking up your second family is not an acceptable option. Running from your obligations, commitments, or not facing your accusers is not the answer, either. Moses, at this particular moment in his life, didn’t do the honourable thing. Learn from him.

What I am suggesting is to take a breather, take a walk, take a shower—anything to help you regroup and calm your mind, nerves, and spirit. When hearts and tempers are less ruffled, go back and make your peace.

Becoming an Evil, Wicked Stepmother

When it comes to taking on the role of the evil, wicked stepmother, let’s clear up a few things, right off, before we explore the intricately complex world of step-mothering.

Firstly: you have a choice. You don’t have to become a stepmother. You do not have to remarry, move in, or even date after your separation or divorce. Step-mothering is a conscious choice we, as women, make with our eyes wide open. We are responsible for creating our blended family.

Secondly: by moving into a blended family setting – whether you marry or not – you, as an adult woman, automatically become a stepmother. Period. As long as children of any age are part of your life or that of your new partner, you will enjoy the privileges (and potentially the sting) associated with your newly acquired stepmother status.

Thirdly: Children don’t have to live under the same roof for you to assume this considerable position. They just have to, well, be.

Fourthly: You have an option – it lies in whether or not you choose to become an evil, wicked stepmother. There is a simple, yet potentially life-changing difference between legally assuming the role, and living the role. The word ‘stepmother’ is a title granted by society. The term ‘evil, wicked stepmother’ is a hard-earned title by a woman who works tirelessly to raise her stepchildren as her own; with a loving, and sometimes firm hand, establishing rules, responsibilities, and natural consequences for the actions of her children and her stepchildren. She cheers for them all, cries with them, guides and mentors them, and chastises and disciplines them (with her partner’s approval and support.)

There’s no way around any of this. When you say ‘I do – take two’ to the idea of setting up house with a new partner, you will be flung headlong into ‘stepping,’ along with every other member of the new family, and you’d better know why you’re there.

Keep the following in mind:

As we head toward the second decade of the 21st century, I see the blended family increasingly becoming the new norm within the family unit. According to Stats Canada, “divorced Canadians represented 7% of the total population aged 15 and over in 2006. In fact, divorce affects more people than what recent data leads us to believe: about 13% of Canadians aged 15 and over had experienced at least one divorce during their conjugal life, and nearly half of them had remarried.”

Children who are members of this divorced population are exposed to the prospect of becoming a blended family, if their divorced parent(s) choose to enter another relationship.

Secondly, add the erosion of societal values to the mix – the ‘if it feels right to you, then it must be right’ mentality – along with the disintegration of personal responsibility, and we, as a global community are set up for a free-for-all within the walls of our homes. Rules (even laws) don’t seem to be acknowledged, let alone followed, and disrespect for authority runs rampant. We need look no further than the daily news to drive the point home. Just recently the news announced the ‘Bathtub girl’ who at the age of 23 was being released from prison after just three years of her 10-year sentence for murdering her mother by drowning her in a bathtub.

We live in a very different world than Ward and June Cleaver.

Thirdly, the children you are parenting and step-parenting bear open painful wounds of having had their first family broken. They’ve suffered one of the greatest heartbreaks of their lives – the disintegration of their first family unit, of the secure foundation they had built their hopes on, of losing everything that was good and true in their lives.

Fourthly, your arrival on the scene represents the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. How can your children, or stepchildren, have any chance to restore their original family unit with you underfoot? As long as mom or dad didn’t remarry, there was a slim chance the children somehow could plead, manipulate, manoeuvre, cajole, wheedle, or coerce their parents into reconciling.

This fourth point, in my humble opinion, may be the crux in successful or disastrous step-parenting. The sooner you recognize the animosity and pain your children and step-children bear, the sooner you can work on dissolving that animosity and pain.

So, why would a woman ‘step’ up to the plate to build a blended family, mothering someone else’s children who, on a good day, tolerate your presence, and, on a bad day, might secretly wish you would go away, cold and lifeless in a wooden box?

The answer is simple, yet truly profound.

You step up to mothering your children and stepchildren in a blended family environment because you long to restore some sense of stability in their lives. You desire to help them grow into strong, independent, well-adjusted, happy adults. You want to prove to them that there is goodness in the world still.

Perhaps you, as a human being, desperately need to prove this to yourself as well.

And somewhere deep within, you hope to demonstrate that the title ‘evil and wicked’ doesn’t necessarily apply.

This last point may take years – perhaps decades of life... and love to prove.

The big question remains... Are you up for it?

NEXT TIME:

• A quick test to see if you have what it takes to ‘step’ into a blended family.
• Reason #3: When It Comes to Emotional Baggage, Moses Shopped at Satchels Are Us.

Ah, yes, my back page...the page where I share events or experiences that have helped me see the world in a different light.

If We Only Understood

I found the following poem in a Bible owned by my late mother. According to the note accompanying the poem, she had recited it by rote in Sunday School during the early 1940s while she was still a young girl growing up in the quaint fishing community of Musgrave Harbour, Newfoundland. “If We Only Understood” examines the heart of man and his inner struggle between good and evil, and the way his fellow man should react to the decisions the struggling man makes.

If you’re holding a grudge, or have a relationship in your life that could use some healing, read on:

If We Only Understood

Could we but draw back the curtains 			Could we judge all deeds by motives,
That surround each other’s lives; 			See the good and bad within;
See the naked heart and spirit,				Often we should love the sinner
Know what spur the action gives. 			All the while we loathe the sin;
Often we should find it better, 				Could we know the powers working
Purer than we judged we should; 			To o’erthrow integrity;
We should love each other better, 			We should judge each other’s errors 
If we only understood.      				With more patient charity.					 


If we knew the cares and trials, 	    		Ah! We judge each other harshly,	
Knew the effort all in vain; 				Knowing not life’s hidden force;
And the bitter disappointment, 				Knowing not the fount of action
Understood the loss and gain – 				Is less turbid at its source;
Would the grim, eternal roughness 			Seeing not amid the evil
Seem – I wonder – just the same? 			All the golden grains of good;
Should we help where now we hinder? 			Oh! We’d love each other better 
Should we pity where we blame?   			If we only understood.			 


Attributed to Alma Steele

The Life of David Cragg

How do I introduce David Cragg? The task seems too immense, almost too sacred somehow. He wasn’t royalty, nobility, a great discoverer, or any of those other distinctions that sets one man apart from another.

In fact, David could claim no spectacular accomplishment at all. He was just an ordinary man, living and loving, like the humanity around him. He took a wife, had eight children, and worked to feed his family. He experienced profound joy and suffered great sorrow – things that all mankind encounters and endures.

What makes David Cragg’s story so incredible lays in three simple, yet jaw-dropping facts. Firstly, David faithfully diarized his daily life from the tender age of eighteen until just before his death over forty years later. Secondly, I have a copy of his diaries. And thirdly? David was born in April 1769, four months before Napoleon Bonaparte made his entrance into the world.

From the minutiae that made up daily life to sweeping world events, David recorded it all. He chronicled day to day weather reports, and his growing displeasure in the pettiness of his church. He wrote about the impact of the Napoleonic Wars to the tragic consequences of the Industrial Revolution. He recounted the devastation caused in his family by a grand consumption, scarlet fever, and the dreaded lake fever.

Widowed and penniless, David sailed from his beloved homeland with his children, enduring a harrowing trip across the Atlantic, and emigrating to Upper Canada in 1833.

I still marvel at this unbelievable opportunity, to not only read about his life, but to sneak an intimate glimpse into the world as it was over 200 years ago.

I started out stating David was an ordinary man.

I take it back.

David Cragg was an extraordinary man.

NEXT TIME:

• Muddy York, June, 1833: What shocked and amazed David when he disembarked at the docks of Toronto