Quilt Mania!

Quilt Mania, with Sue Aylesworth

When I was about eight or nine years old, an old Singer treadle sewing machine appeared in our home. My sister showed me the basics and off I went, just sewing pieces and bits of fabric together. I ordered my first piece of new fabric from the Eaton’s catalogue and I was hooked. Because I was a rural kid with no income, I had to figure out how to make things from other things. And I still love to do that.

As an adult, I toyed with home decor and upholstery and sewing clothes. I took my first quilting class in 1996. A couple of years later, I accepted my first retail job at the local quilting store. What could be better than talking about fabric and quilting all day? I’m pretty sure Phil thought I was doing volunteer work because I never seemed to make any money there.

In 2007, I found myself unemployed and missing the quilting and retail scene, so we took the plunge and we opened our own shop, Quilting Confections. I worked the day-to-day and Phil handled all of our technical needs and heavy lifting. We had a fantastic 10-year run and then accepted an offer to sell the business to a long-time employee. The agreement was that I would continue to work in the store for another year and Phil would continue to service sewing machines until there was an appropriate replacement. It’s been four years now and I’m still working part-time at QC. I have not counted the quilts in our home or kept track of those given away. Luckily, I’ve never been asked to justify the number of quilts I own.

When I sew just for pleasure, I like to make a bright crumb quilt. These are made from the leftover bits of many projects, not all of them my own. Even though my co-workers poke fun at me for choosing to sew in this style, they save their own bits for me too.

I’ve been noticing lots of quilts during zoom meetings and I know there are several quilters in the KCC group. I look forward to sharing my love of sewing, ideas and inspiration with others in the KCC community. I can't wait to hear about your hobby too!

Games, Food, Drink, and Chat, by Patrice Bourque

The Social Circle hosted another in-person event on April 24th. This time our venue was Kettle Drums on Hunter Street. Our group of 21 people sat out on the outdoor patio on what ended up being a beautiful, warm, sunny day. Some new friends attended and the furthest travelers drove from Kanata! The food at Kettle Drums is really good, if you've never given it a try. Many of us ordered and shared from the appetizer menu. For those who did not want an alcoholic beverage, they had some impressively good mocktails. Most of us sat and caught up with those we hadn't seen in-person in a long time, but some of us did end up playing games such as Tile Rummy, also known as Rummikub. Make sure you come out to our next in-person event!

Equity Member Interview – Becky Ingram

Bumps, Bucket, Bex, Becks – Becky seems to have a lot of nicknames. “I’ll answer to anything,” she says. During Becky’s interview, Mathew offered to review his own; since she had shouted corrections in the background of his interview, could he do it too? Nope, we want the true story.

Becky was born in Niagara Falls, but moved to Etobicoke 2 years later. She has a brother 18 months older and a sister 3 years younger. She is very close friends with her brother; they were best buddies. Her dad was an Engineer who graduated from the University of Toronto. Her mom was one of 9 children; her mom and all 5 of the sisters became nurses. Becky’s sister became a nurse, one of her daughters is a nurse who married a nurse and his parents were nurses. Becky is a kind of nurse-by-osmosis. At one point her mom was an ER nurse and would talk about work at the dinner table. Most people would find it gruesome and unappetising, but they got used to it. So you don’t have to be careful when you talk to Becky; she can eat through anything.

Becky has synesthesia; she sees letters and numbers in colours. It’s her superpower; it helped her with spelling and math in grade school (and is a secret cheat remembering phone numbers and names). She spent all her summers at the cottage on Lake Muskoka. Her parents scrounged to buy it with the help of grandparents in 1965. On the last day of school, they got in the car and spent the entire summer there until Labour Day. A lot of people they knew from Etobicoke had cottages there, so it was a kind of community.

She went to Western University intending to go to business school, but found that too dog-eat-dog. She got a general BA, having taken courses in everything from dance/drama to economics, psychology and computer science. While still in university, she worked for the Ministry of the Environment in data reception. After graduation she worked full-time there, eventually managing a night shift of data entry and then writing procedure manuals. She changed jobs and went to a medical supply company. She was the in-house customer service rep for medical specialties dealing with heart valves and catheters for cardiac and neurosurgeries. Thank god she had that nurse-by-osmosis thing, it helped with the terminology!

While at Western, Becky would spend weekends visiting her brother at Waterloo. Once she graduated and started working that stopped, but about 18 months after her last visit, in 1983, she went again. She went to her brother’s previous residence, and saw a guy sitting in the common room. He had long hair down his back tied in a ponytail, with a bandana around his forehead, wearing a dashiki (a colourful African shirt), patched jeans and buckskin fringed boots up to his knees. She thought, “Who is this hippie wannabe and what is he trying to prove?” She found her brother, and the same hippie freak came by asking her brother where they were rehearsing that night. His name was Mathew. She saw that her brother liked him, so she now thought, “Hmm… there’s more here than meets the eye.” She went home from that visit trying to figure out how to see this guy again. They met the next weekend at an event, on the dance floor, and the rest is history. (Becky says she had been instructed to say she fell head over heels for Mathew on first sight. You see what I mean about the real story?)

In 1985, Mathew went to Toronto, to journalism school. Becky was living there in an apartment; he moved in. In the summer of 1986, he proposed to her at his parent’s cottage in front of about 60 people. That takes guts. (I heard a “Yeah!” from Mathew in the background.) He got work out west in Edmonton, and they moved there. They started socializing with his work friends and still keep in touch. She got work at the Workers Compensation Board as an Adjudicator/Case Manager, where her knowledge of medical terminology helped again. They bought a house and had their first daughter. They went skiing in the Rockies and this spoiled them for skiing in Ontario. They came home in the summers – she missed those hazy, hot, humid stretches of weather that Ontario has.

Mathew got a different job back in Ontario. They found it sadder and harder to leave than they thought, but family was back here. They bought a house in Aurora. She applied to Canada Life and got a job as an individual disability specialist. Once her job was made redundant, the company gave her an aptitude test; she scored so highly in IT, they wanted her there. She had done well in computer programming at university, but it just wasn’t her passion. She took the job and immediately found out she was pregnant with her second daughter (who now identifies as non-binary). She managed to work-from-home.

Mathew got a new job in Calgary and they loved it there. They met a group of fabulous people with whom they are very close and keep in touch. Her third daughter was born here. She got another work-from-home job with a consulting firm who represented employers with the WCB; she did historical reviews of old WCB claims. She continues that job to today, as well as managing their social media. When Mathew got another job opportunity in Ontario, her job followed her remotely. They found a house in Scarborough. (She’d grown up on the furthest west end of Lawrence Ave. in Etobicoke and now lived on the furthest east end of Lawrence Ave. in Scarborough!) After all that criss-crossing of the country, they finally settled in Ontario.

Despite having 3 kids and work, Becky did a lot of volunteer work – in her daughters’ school, a Spark/Brownie leader, Girl Guide district work, hockey when her third daughter joined. She is now volunteering/working for Covid vaccine clinics. And soon, she will probably be volunteering to help her oldest daughter with her new baby (Becky’s first grandchild), due July 1st.

Even before the first KCC meeting at the Slavins in December 2017, the idea of cohousing came up. Mathew and Becky have a group of university friends (including Kris and Marc) who still all get together about 3X/year. They bandied about the idea of cohousing, and even had a few meetings, but it didn’t work out and they joined KCC. Becky and Mathew want to take control of how they live in older age and make decisions about that for themselves, as opposed to having others make it for them. They have been living in a cohousing-lite arrangement with Kris and Marc for the past 3 years and it has reinforced their belief in cohousing as a way of life.

Introducing… Chris Carless

Chris is an RN who has been working during Covid in a busy, downtown Toronto hospital. How does he feel about nursing right now? He says he was so used to being stressed out that he couldn't say what it was like not to be anymore. Things are better now, though, he’s a little more relaxed. In the beginning, they didn’t know what they were dealing with – there was a lot of government information, contradictory policies and confusion as to what to do. Equipment was scarce, and the nurses were told to sterilize their masks to use them twice. He was afraid he would bring it home to his wife and friends, but then he realized that nurses were the most protected people around, so it was less likely for him to get it. He never wore a mask for almost all of his career and, having a worn a mask now for the last 2 years, it’s hard to imagine going to work without one anymore. He is now 64 and starting to think about retirement.

Chris was born in Halifax. His mother was a housewife and his father was an airplane mechanic in the Navy. They lived in Halifax until his grade 12 year, which he did in Florida, because his father retired early and wanted to live there for a year. How was school there? Very different – there was a large American flag at the front of the classroom. There was an actual course entitled “Americanism vs Communism”. It was a more easy-going environment, though, and he had a lot of fun there. He played soccer and acted in a school play and made some friends, who would cut classes with him to go to the beach. He was old enough to do that just by writing himself a note, “which I did a lot”.

His parents moved back to Ontario, to Hamilton. He would have stayed in Florida for sure if he’d had the choice – it’s warm there. He did grade 13 in Hamilton and went to Brock University in St. Catharines, getting a BA in Theatre Arts, focussing on set design, not acting. He took a painting course too. Did he have artistic abilities? “I thought I did.” He worked about a year in theatre and then gave up on it. It required too many hours and more commitment than he was willing to give.

Chris started working as a landscaper – on his own, doing hedge trimming and lawn mowing – and joined a couple of other companies. He met Anna through a friend of a friend in Hamilton. He visited that guy, who was dating Anna, and she answered his knock at the door. Did he steal her away? He “kind of did”, although he’s not sure you can really steal someone who doesn’t want to be stolen. “Somehow” they got married. Somehow??? Was it an accident? No, it just seems illogical because he didn’t have a regular job and no prospects. They’ve been married 32 years. Anna started a psychology program at the University of Victoria and he moved there with her and continued in landscaping.

One day, Chris was pruning trees at a nursing home. He looked through the window and thought, “I could do that”. He took on a part-time home support job (sort of pre-PSW). It was very interesting, very random, you never knew who you would work with that day – what their mental or physical state was and what you could do for them. A lot of times it was washing the floor or making breakfast for older shut-ins, people with mental health issues or HIV. But it didn’t pay well.

They moved from Victoria to Ottawa for Anna’s schooling, and he took a PSW course from Algonquin College. That allowed him to work in nursing homes and do more sophisticated help at homes. It was also interesting but grueling at a nursing home because you’d have 10-12 people to get dressed and washed in the morning; some with Alzheimer’s or other issues. They moved again -- to Winnipeg for Anna’s education -- and he got work in a hospital. Then they moved to Toronto and his experience got him a job in North York General as a transporter, who moves people around by wheelchair or stretcher, a “stress-free” job.

He got accepted to nursing school; his first day started the day the airplanes hit the twin towers (!). He started working in 2003 in the cardiology department of St. Michael’s Hospital, and he’s been there ever since.

Chris still paints and it’s his major hobby. He paints in their garage and tries to do it regularly 2-3 hours on the days he can. He had a painting partner who painted with him for 8 years – providing stimulation to “keep him awake and motivated”. Unfortunately, his friend died in 2019 after a long battle with glioblastoma – a cancer of the brain or spinal cord. He recently started a Zoom course taught by a local painter doing landscapes and has created a weekly painting group with her. He says landscapes are easier than some of his earlier work and can be done fairly quickly. He has also done some big canvases in the past, but he doesn’t do that anymore as there’s no room for them.

Chris has also been doing yoga for about 7 years. He and Anna had a 3-week yoga holiday in India just before the pandemic. Other travel: they bought a house in Mexico when he was 50 and fixed it up. They sold it 9 years later. They’ve been to Thailand, Israel, Ecuador, Costa Rica and some Caribbean trips – lots of winter travel.

He walks a ton with the dog everyday regardless of the weather. He has an online coach with whom he does some high intensity workouts. He likes to garden and wants more space for it. He also likes to cook and wouldn’t mind trying to cook for a larger group; the biggest group he’s cooked for is 6 people. He is not a musician, but he likes to listen to music and sing.

Anna started thinking about cohousing a few years ago because she began to think about the inevitability of aging and how it might be better to have some people around. Chris and Anna began to attend the Toronto cohousing meetings to see what it was all about. Chris’ first impression was that it’s very complex, involving real estate and finances. KCC was more advanced and organized. It doesn’t have land yet, but is a kind of thought experiment – a big complicated thing, but with a group of people willing to go through these thought processes and learn things. He has a lot of respect for KCC for their cohesion and organizational skills.