“There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.” — Washington Irving
In 1975, we decided to trade in our Buick 1968 for a brand new Dodge Colt 1974. The Buick was a fully loaded an excellent car which I had brought with me from Chicago but it was a seven years old and it started breaking down. The Dodge Colt we had was the very first model. It was a white car with light blue borders which Lynda liked very much. One weekend when Maxine was with her father, Lynda decided to put Adam in the back of the car and drive to New York City just for fun.
I was doing very well with my job as I had a 100 percent support from Gord Scott. I made necessary changes in my staff by firing some incompetent people and replacing them with new smart people. I started focusing on training them to become more technical and do their own trouble shooting as much as possible before they start calling me for help. I wanted them to understand that we were in the business of producing necessary information for the dozens of folks who were working in the warehouse to pick, pack, and ship the merchandise to the Beaver Lumber stores around the country. The real challenge was to produce the information on time otherwise dozens of people will be sitting doing nothing in the warehouse and getting paid. More importantly, the stores will not get their merchandise they ordered. It helped minimizing the number of calls I used to get every single night and Lynda was reasonably happy with that.
Gord Scott went ahead and booked me to go for a course in Montreal and mentioned to me that it’s an interesting course for you but more importantly it was a break for me as he wanted me to take Lynda and the kids with me to Montreal and stay in the brand new hotel which was the highest building in Montreal. We had no cell phones those days but the pager I used to carry with me was capable of reaching me in Montreal. Gord Scott also gave me the names of the restaurants in Montreal where we can dine during our stay in Montreal. It sounded very expensive but he said put it on your expense account. I never had an expense account before and I wasn’t comfortable with that concept but agreed with them.
We made necessary arrangements for Maxine to go to school every day while we were going to be away and took Adam with us.
We drove to Montreal and this was the first time for me to be in Montreal but Lynda said she was in Montreal once before briefly to see the Olympic Stadium. Anyhow, we checked in at the beautiful hotel on Sunday afternoon and I made necessary inquiries about the course which was starting on Monday morning as I was nervous about the course. We decided to have supper in the one of the beautiful restaurants in the hotel instead of going out to one of the recommended restaurants by Gord. It worked out very well.
The next day we had breakfast together downstairs and I went to attend the course. Lynda and Adam went out in a cab to a mall to do some shopping which used to be Lynda’s favourite hobby. I used to grab a sandwich for lunch and go back to the course. Around 5 O’ clock, I used to come back primarily to listen to what they did all day and to see what they bought. Then we used to go out to one of the recommended restaurants for supper. We had a wonderful week in Montreal and I was so glad that Lynda enjoyed every minute we spent there.
On one Sunday when I finished cutting the grass and getting ready to do barbeque, my sister and her husband with the baby arrived from India. It was not only unannounced it was quite unexpected, too. They didn’t even have money to pay for the cab and luckily Lynda had some money to help them. Lynda made them feel at home and quickly took them in the house to show the bedroom where they can stay. It was totally embarrassing when they told us that they were not going to eat the steaks we were about to cook simply because the meat wasn’t Halal. Lynda had to cook something vegetarian for them.
They stayed with us for a little while before we found them an apartment in Brampton and Lynda ended up buying all kind of things for their apartment as well as for their baby. Lynda was a very generous soul.
