New Seniors Handbook – Daryl Hopper

 by Daryl Hopper

When a person reaches the age of sixty-five, they will be officially a senior citizen. There will be rules to follow. The following are those rules.

• Shirts should be bright colours, preferably flower pattern, and worn inside the pants.
• Pants should be turquoise or pink and should be pulled up to just under the breasts.
• Shoes are to be sensible and closed toed. Men are to wear black socks with sandals.
• Bras will be worn loose enough so the breasts can be tucked into the belt of your pants.
• Hair is to be worn in a tight perm and coloured blue.
• Glasses are to be worn on the top of the head and then forgotten.
• When talking to other seniors, words are to be forgotten, especially halfway through a sentence.
• When going into a strange washroom, you must forget how to get out.
• When going into another part of the house, the reason you are there must be forgotten.
• The procedure to brush your teeth must be forgotten at least twice a month.
• When meeting people, their names and faces must be forgotten.
• If you drive, the left turn signal must be left on at all times, also, you are to drive ten kilometers below the posted speed limit.
• If anyone walks near your front door, you are to yell, “GET OFF MY LAWN!”, even if you don’t have a lawn.
• Many pills are to be taken every day; some pills are for the side effects of the other pills.
• You know your doctor by his first name.
• When talking to other seniors, you will compare all your ailments to theirs, this contest must be won by you.
• When getting out of chairs or beds, you must grown in pain and hold the part of the body that hurts.
• When asked what kind of computer you have, you must respond, “A BLACK ONE”.
• All knowledge of computers must be forgotten.
• If some young person asks if you have an IPAD, you will respond, “YES, IN MY UNDERWARE”.
• The 1950’s will be remembered as ‘the good old days’.
• You must have a pair of glasses used to find your other pair of glasses.
• If someone says for you to pull up your socks because they ‘look wrinkled’, you are to respond, “I’m not wearing socks!”
• Everything must be complained about, for example, the hot weather, the cold weather, the regular weather, the landlord, the neighbors, children, loud dogs, quiet dogs, your relatives, young people, old people, and the person looking back at you in your mirror.
• Stairs are to be avoided, but if you use them, the hand rail must be used, ’just don’t fall’.
• Kneeling or bending over must be avoided.
• If someone asks, “Do you have an APP on your computer?”, you will say, “No, I have my NAPS on my pillow.”
• When you blow out the candles on your birthday cake, you must put the FIRE DEPT. on call before picking your teeth out of the cake.
• Finally, you must always think of yourself as thirty-five years old at all times.

Great Aunt Anne Hopper (Thompkins)

 This is a little story about my great Aunt Anne Thompkins (nee Hopper) who lived out her final years in Victoria B.C.

I am not sure when exactly it was, but I was I think still a teenager when I got to go on my own to visit Anne. I had gone with my parents to visit Aunt Anne, but prior to that I hadn’t seen Anne since I was little when she lived with her husband Uncle “Tommy” in Bellville ON.

Aunt Anne was funny but with a straight face. It was kind of like dry English humour with a taste of sarcasm; Eg: We would invite her for Christmas and she would reply “I’ll be there… if I’m not dead” (lol) My dad always took it as her being a negative Nellie, but to me, she was hysterical!

This particular weekend my parents permitted me to travel alone on the ferry and buses to Victoria to visit Anne. I wanted to record some of her stories and thoughts on cassette, and get to know her again.

Anne and Tommy “Knight” Thompkins lived in Bellville ON in the 1960’s. When we first moved there in 1964 it was pretty tough for my parents, my dad starting Chiropractic college, my mom starting work as a waitress to provide for us while my dad was in school.

The first Christmas was genuinely going to be a Charlie Brown Christmas. We were as poor as poor could be. We had nothing for gifts, a tree or a turkey… or any kind of meat for that matter. I remember talk about having to have canned brown beans for our Christmas dinner. I don’t remember much as I was only 5 at the time, but I remember my brother Daryl going out and coming home with a spindly Charlie Brown tree that he got for 50 cents, which was the best he could find for the price.

The closer it got to Christmas, the more dire it got. I imagine my mom wondered how to explain to a 5 year old why Santa Claus was not going to come, even though I was sure I had been good all year.

I don’t recollect how close it was to Christmas it was exactly, but I remember my dad talking to Aunt Anne on the phone long distance, and then the next thing we knew we were going on a train ride from Toronto to Bellville to see Anne and Tommy.

Thinking back, I realize just how much she helped us out. She and Tommy welcomed us into their home, fed us a wonderful Christmas dinner, and she even made sure that the 5 year old me had a present from Santa. That present was a stuffed monkey and I still have him today.

The lean years in Toronto evenually got a little better. By the time the 1973 came, we were going back home to B.C. my dad graduated, my mom, no longer a waitress but a clerk typist for an insurance company. Daryl decided to stay and married in June just about a month after our dad’s graduation in May. In August mom, dad and I left for B.C.

Anne’s husband Tommy was a railroad conductor and because of his occupation, they had life time passes to ride the trains. So Anne after Tommy passed, would travel out to B.C. to visit the family. Later she finally decided to move out west to Victoria where her brother John and wife lived. She had a nice ground floor apartment in a nice neighbourhood.

When I visited Anne on my own that trip, I stayed in her spare room. During my visit she would tell me about the Hopper family and I recorded her telling the stories. Unfortunately, my tape machine failed to record anything. So the only recording I have of Anne now is from Christmas 1979 when she wasn’t “dead”, and came to have Christmas with us.

I do remember one of the things she told me about her mother. Her mother had gone blind, and Anne only being about a year away from becoming a registered nurse, had to quit nursing school in order to look after her mother. She cared for her until she died.

When she wasn’t telling me stories, we’d visit Uncle John and Dorothy his wife. One day, she wanted to show me some of the areas around Victoria and how beautiful it was. The beach was not too far of a walk from her place and we walked down old growth tree lined streets to the beach and watch the handsome cabs (horse and buggys) go by with tourists.

On the way back, we were walking back to her apartment. We walked under several of those large old trees hovering over the sidewalk. The next thing I knew I heard a big “PLOP!!” and felt a warm running substance running all over the top of my head and all through my hair! Well, of course I thought Anne would crack up laughing at me. But, Anne being Anne, just simply said something like “Oh well, it happens”, and did her best to wipe the messy bird poo out of my hair with a tissue. I am sure she cracked a smile when I wasn’t looking though. Totally embarrassed, we may haste back to her apartment.

Anne must have surely felt my pain and embarrassment, she was kind, not making a big deal about it, and offered to help wash my hair in the sink. She would have made a great nurse! By the time I was cleaned up, I felt much better.

I would have to say that great Aunt Anne was probably my favorite aunt. The last time I saw Anne was when I went for another trip to see her in Victoria, and introduced my future husband Dan to her.

It took 4 heart attacks before she passed in the 80’s. She was tough as nails but very much a kind and loving lady. I loved her dearly and still miss her.

The Toronto to BC Misadventure – Judy McLean (Hopper)

 I don’t remember too much about our family move to Toronto back in August of 1964 but I have some memories of moving back home to BC in summer of 1973. I was 13 years old by then. I was 5 when we first went to Toronto.

A bit of back story…

I started school in Toronto at Kew Garden elementary school. I did not get to go to Ruskin School, which my boys Matt and Robert, brother Daryl, and my dad Murray attended. My boys were part of the last class before the school closed. I was proud that 3 generations had gotten to go there.

I was terrified to go as it was a huge school, bigger than anything I have ever seen. I, like my brother Daryl, did try to “go home” at recess time…. got caught of course and brought back. I did add one trick though, I pretended to get “lost” one time, but that move failed me too. It was one of my recess getaways, and I knowingly headed for the beach. (We lived about 2 city blocks from Lake Ontario). I was headed to the playground when 2 young men found me. Realizing now, that could have had a not so great turn out. But these two guys were on the up and up and really tried to help me. I don’t know how they got a hold of my dad, whether they called the school and the school called him or just what. Needless to say dad was not impressed with me. After that one I caved in and went to school. I just cried until recess instead of running away.

I remember not having much for furniture in our Toronto apartment when we first moved in. I remember the back seat of the car being our couch for a time. Being the apartment was only a 1 bedroom for 4 people, my dad converted the living room into a bedroom for Daryl and I. He later split it in 2 when we got older. We used the dining room as the living room for all those years.

My hatred of school did not cease. The only fun time was in grade 8 in a business or some sort of boring class, we had a nice “Newfie” girl in class. I thought she was ok, but she got teased more than I did unfortunately. I always thought it was neat how they said the letter “H” or “3” differently, and chimney was “chimeley”. Then there was the European friend I made in grade 7 or so who got bullied horribly for simply liking flowers. People are stupid! I wished I was not so ladylike back then… I would have straightened those bullies out right quick.

Dad, after repeating some college years and courses due to working too much and a late diagnosis of dyslexia, finally told us we were going home to BC in 1973. Daryl had married Barb at that point and chosen to stay behind.

I hadn’t seen my grandparents for 9 years, other than a train trip back to BC in summer of 1967 with Daryl and my mom, and visits from my grandparents a year apart in 1972 and 1973. Grandma and Grandpa Roadhouse flew down in 1972 for a long awaited visit. Grandpa would disappear on us for hours, and later would turn up just amazed at all the brick houses. Mom, Daryl, Grandma and Grandpa and I went on a trip to Bolton Ontario and after a little detective work we found a relation Mr. Downy, who showed us the Roadhouse farm house that Grandpa was born in. That was a really cool sight to see. That house I believe is now back in the Roadhouse family some how (I read online somewhere).

In May of 1973, my parents flew Granny Hopper (Helen L. M. “Nellie” Murray) to Toronto for my dad’s graduation from Chiropractic college.

On to the trip….

So then in late July of 1973 we cleaned out the little rental 1 bedroom apartment we had lived in and I had grown up in. I said goodbye to my best friend Janet who I had known since we first moved there when I was 5. We were in different school districts so we never went to the same school but it didn’t stop us from being besties.

The trip home did not go as well as the trip to Toronto did. Dad still had the old homemade travel trailer that he and Grandpa built. It had been parked at cousin Reid and Doreen’s farm in Lindsay Ontario. I’m pretty sure some kinds of critters lived it in while it sat there at the farm. I don’t remember much about dad getting it ready to go but they got it road worthy again and dad bought Reid’s old 1 ton truck to pull it. He had also purchased an X-ray machine that he figured he would need when he opened his office in BC. That thing is another story all on it’s own.

A little sidenote about the truck… this GMC truck was bought new in 1964 by Reid who used it for a farm truck for many years. Daryl learned to drive on that truck and years later, once we were back in BC, Dad used it for the “stump farm” he called it, which was the property he had kept in Ruskin to come home to and build a home. The funny thing is that I also learned to drive on that very same truck! By the way, Mom and I named the truck “Old George”! They had several “George’s” as they got more successful later in life. Daryl inherited our old Buick as dad did not think it would make it back to BC, and he later parted with it. It ended up being in a showroom at a car dealership when he decided to part with it.

We saw Reid and family every summer throughout the years we lived in Toronto. I was between 2 of their daughters so there was always an exchange of hand me down clothing going on. We always seemed to go there at corn picking time too… funny how that worked out eh? I have to admit, I learned a lot about corn… and garter snakes… ewwww!

I was checking my mom’s diaries to see if she had our trip to BC was in her 1973 diary and it is! So I once I digitize it I will post a copy of it to show her version.

I don’t remember the exact dates that events happened but thanks to mom’s diaries she has that covered. So I’ll just touch on the events that happened as I remember them.

July 29th, we left Toronto to go to Reid and Doreen’s farm in order to prepare for the long trip home to BC. I am not sure how long we stayed but it was long enough to sort out Old George, and ready the trailer for travel. Loads got rearranged and goodbyes were said.

August 7th, 1973 we were underway at last. We got as far as Orillia Ontario when it was discovered that the tongue of the trailer had bowed badly. This was likely due to the trailer being overweight likely from the X-ray machine he’s bought. Dad got it welded and we found a camp to stay at for the night.

The next day, we got as far as Mactier in Muskoka area when the tongue broke again. This time it was right down to the ground just about. It was towed a tiny gas station in a place near Parry Sound Ontario. The guy told dad he would have to rebuild the tongue and so we had to order the steel for it from Parry Sound. We couldn’t stay in the trailer as it was now lopsided, so we got a motel for the night.

The next day, August 9th, the men had the work done on the tongue. Dad also got them to grease the wheels on the trailer.

We left Mactier late in the day, and got literally about 5 minutes away when it happened. We were going along, tongue working fine. We drove over a small hill, making note of the station wagon pulling a large travel trailer passing by us going in the opposite direction. I was sitting in the passenger window seat when we saw smoke coming from the trailer and it seemed to be listing to the left badly. That is when I saw in the side mirror the tire bouncing down the middle of the road….

We pulled over as quickly as we could safely. Dad and I ran back over the top of the hill to see what had happened because we had also seen a cloud of dust come up from the other side of the hill. It was the worse as suspected. The tire had come off of our trailer, bounced down the road and somehow hit the station wagon right smack in the radiator. This caused the woman driving to panic, jam on her brakes which of course flipped their trailer onto its side! Thankfully no one was hurt!

It turned out these poor people had suffered the worst vacation ever. It made our bad luck seem like a day at the park. The man was a minister with his wife and their family. They had 4 flat tires, their son nearly drown and when the husband tried to jump in and save the son, he nearly drown because he could not swim! The wife had to rescue both of them. So this accident just was the “the icing on the cake” for them! The police came, phone numbers and insurance exchanged, and at that point we were beaten. Dad was “done” with trailer and it’s problems, so after the mechanic put the tire back on we drove back to the gas station, off loaded what we could take onto Old George, and abandoned the rest for now. We then drove back to Reid’s to off load and leave stuff, regroup and start over again. I had to fight to keep the TV set! Dad hated TV for years.

We had to wait out a thunder storm before going as George had a tendency to leak. So we hid out parked under a bunch of trees. After the storm we finally got going. We stopped for gas somewhere and when I got out to go use the rest room, and bunch of bats came flying out from under our tarp swooping down at dad and I. I being a 13 year old girl, ducked and screamed of course! The guys at the gas station were excited about the bats though. The told us that their area was mosquito ridden and the bats would help to get rid of them. At least something good came out of it!

We arrived back and Reid and Doreen’s after midnight. They were completely shocked to see us again!

The next day, Doreen took us kids to Peterbough to sell corn door to door (oh joy!) while the grown ups dealt the truck load of stuff. Daryl and Barb came to help and we finally left Reid’s for the second time on August 11th. We got back to the trailer and loaded what we could onto George. We slept in the trailer that night for one last final time.

The next morning, we loaded the rest from the trailer, then finally got underway, arriving in Parry Sound by lunch time. Dad had left instructions for the gas station owner (I think) to sell the trailer and forward the money… of course, we never saw a penny of that.

We stayed in a place called Blind River that night and I believe that is where we saw the water was literally black from minerals I suppose. You could not see the bottom of the river water.

We were not able to get at our clothing as it was packed too tightly in the back of the truck, so we made do and shopped at Kmart for some things as needed. Other than that, things were fairly uneventful, thankfully. That is until we got to Medicine Hat Alberta.

We somehow had managed to drive completely across Saskatchewan in one day, almost 700 miles! We were completely beat by the time we crossed into Alberta. We stopped at a Kmart (I can’t remember where) to pick up a few things and I remember it being so hot that the pavement melted onto my flip flops! What a time getting that off.

It was night when we got to Medicine Hat. Dad found us a motel to stay at but it was full. They told him there was a convention in town and there wasn’t a room to be had anywhere. Dad got them to call and ask around at other motels as we were to exhausted to go any further. They did and told him that one place had one room left from a cancellation and we could have it if we got there quick enough. We hurried to the motel they sent us to, but the manager there told us there was some sort of miscommunication and there was no rooms available at all. We were done for!

We had no choice but to keep driving. We went a while until dad could not see straight anymore to drive. We pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned gas station and just sat there. We tried to sleep sitting up in the truck, dad at the wheel, mom in the middle, and me on the passenger side. That’s when mom “lost it” so to speak. The day had just gotten to her and she was beyond exhausted. She began laughing hysterically! Which of course started me laughing too. I had my head on her stomach for a pillow and every time she laughed my head would bounce. It got old pretty fast and finally after a while she settled down. I think we only slept 2 or 3 hours in total. By 4 or 5 am we were on the road again.

We arrived in Golden BC August 16th around 4 pm. Too tired to go a mile further we found a nice motel and took a long nap. We slept good that night.

We went through Rogers Pass, I took in the beauty moreso this trip as I was now older and could appreciate it.

Throughout our entire trip west, we occasionally would pass a “hippy” hitchhiker. We first saw him in western Ontario and of course we were so full up we could not have picked him up if we wanted to. We passed him over and over again, even in BC. The last time we saw him, he gestured that he would ride up top on the tarp… Oh my God! I think not!

Dad stopped at BC weigh scales because he thought he had to. That’s where he found out we had a 1 ton truck with nearly 4 ton on it! Nothing sketchy about that eh? He also neglected to tell us that every time we went down a big hill through the Okanagan and on highway 3, it was all he could do to brake. I remember him having the brake petal to the floor and him nearly pushing himself through the seat. He also didn’t tell us that the gas petal was nearly wore out too. We made it to Hope by the skin of our teeth! Mom and Dad were determined to get home to Mission today as they were just done with this trip from Hell.

We arrived in Mission about 11:30 pm and stopped by the hardware store which was across from the post office. Mom used a phone booth to call Grandma and Grandpa Roadhouse. We did not know where their address was as they had moved since the last time we were there. All I remember was overhearing a very loud scream of joy from that phone, mom holding the receiver away from her ear because Grandma was screaming so loudly from happiness and excitement. They kept telling us that they’d come get us and show us where they had move to. Dad thought he didn’t want to bother them and we’d find the place ourselves. Grandma insisted, and said they could just walk down to us. We were confused, but the next thing we knew there they were running toward us with open arms. Dad and Grandpa got George parked for the night, and we went upstairs to Grandma and Grandpa’s rental apartment on Welton Street. It turned out that it was less that a block away from where we were standing to call them!

It was long after midnight before we got settled in for the night. Grandma had mail for us, two of which were very important. One was the bill from the accident we had in Ontario. Those nice people only asked for $400 for the damages to their vehicles. Dad paid it out of pocket gladly. That could have been so much worst in so many ways. The second was the college documents that we did not stay around long enough to wait for. Dad had forwarded all mail to Grandma and Grandpa’s address before we left so his final college exam results were waiting there when we arrived. To everyone’s relief, Dad passed! He was now a licensed Chiropractor!

Their apartment was actually a small bachelor suite but Grandpa had partitioned it off for Grandma’s bed and he preferred a comfortable recliner to sleep in. I think we just crashed on the floor. All I remember is Grandpa’s snoring. He could move earth with that roar, but I remember how nice it was to just be there despite.

The next day Dad and Grandpa went to Maple Ridge and found us a house to rent. Within a week they had secured an office space to set up shop. I started grade 10 at Maple Ridge Senior Secondary that fall and we ended up moving again after only a month in the rental house. They were building a new mall (Maple Ridge Square) and the house was being sold to make way. The Realtor helped us out though, and set us up in Pitt Meadows in a duplicate rental. There we stayed until the house in Ruskin was built in 1975. Every weekend Dad would drive Old George out to the “stump farm” to clear the land. One Saturday not long after we got back, he had an accident. The brakes finally gave out on George and he crashed though a sign in a parking lot. Luckily, no one was hurt. So that’s when GMC George became Chevy George. George ended up with a Chevy hood, grill, fenders etc.

Funny fact: Both my brother Daryl and I learned to drive on Old George! Later our dad traded old George for my 1965 Chrysler Valiant.

The End

The History of the Hopper Family in Ruskin – Merle Hopper

 Written by Merle Hopper – transcribed by Judy McLean

Murray John Hopper was born in Wynyard, Sask. on January 30th 1924. Murray’s parents, Arthur and Helen (Nellie) Hopper, along with his brothers Arthur and Robert, came out to Vancouver BC in 1938 and lived there from September to January of 1939.

The Hoppers then moved to Ruskin and the three boys, Arthur (Art), Murray and Robert (Bo all attended Ruskin School. At that time the majority of students were Japanese.

Murray had a newspaper route and delivered the Harold and Sun papers up to the Ruskin Dam in 1939 and 1940.
Murray in his teens worked in Art and Carl Nelson’s shingle mill along with Walter Smith.
After leaving the Nelson mill, Murray at age 18, joined the Signal Corps in the Canadian Armed Forces. After training in Vancouver, and in several towns in Ontario he was sent overseas and spent three and a half years in total including Canada and overseas.

Murray’s family lived in the house next to the hall, where the Shield’s family now reside. Murray and his brother Bob dug the well for that home by hand.

Murray and Merle began courting on New Year’s Eve 1946, were engaged on January 4th 1947, and were married on February 18th 1947.
Our son Daryl John was a student at Ruskin School in the 1950’s.

Murray and family moved to Toronto so Murray could attend Chiropractic college. Our daughter Judy began her schooling in Toronto Ontario. Daryl complete his schooling in Toronto while Judy completed her schooling in Maple Ridge.

Judy married Dan McLean and have two sons Matthew and Robert who attended Ruskin School in the school’s final years.
Art Hopper’s wife Pearl and Murray Hopper’s wife Merle were Ruskin Brownie pack leaders in the 1950’s. We held our meetings in the basement of Ruskin School.

Many concerts and stage shows were put on in the Ruskin Hall. One show in particular was the Miss Ruskin pageant. The winner of the pageant turned out to be a real horse. Back then we took turns shoveling coal into the furnace.
It has been a pleasure to witness the changes to Ruskin Hall over the years. It holds a lot of good memories for us.

The Big Move – Daryl Hopper

 The year was 1964, my dad was sitting in his basement study area trying to make a major decision, namely to uproot the family and move to Toronto to go to the Chiropractic College or to stay in Summerland BC and continue with a job that he hated. For the past twenty years he was the manager of the five and dime department store in Mission BC. In 1962 the store was bought out by Stedman’s, a department store chain that did not treat their managers very well, so he quit and took a job as assistant manager in the five and dime store in Summerland BC.

Dad wanted to be a chiropractor ever since my mother got very sick in the 1950’s.  As a last resort he took her to a chiropractor in Vancouver who helped her so much and impressed my dad so much that he decided to become a chiropractor so he could help people too.

He realized that this would be a huge gamble, but thought it would be worth it. So he decided to do it. He talked it over with my mother, who agreed with him mostly because she did not want to disappoint him. She had one condition, which was to try it for one year, if he failed then we would come back, to which dad agreed. They kept it a secret from me until the end of the school year, as they did not want to freak me out. When they did tell me, guess what, I freaked out.

The move to Summerland was traumatic enough, coming from a house in the bush to a small town with people and paved roads. Toronto was too intimidating for me. I hated the very thought of it.  Apparently, my opinion did not matter, because we packed up the house with everything that we thought we would need in Toronto. Dad built a huge roof rack for our 1955 Buick; then we stuffed it full of our belongings, including our washing machine. We were going to drive across Canada living in our camping trailer that dad and grandpa had built a few years ago.

Dad always wanted to ‘beat the traffic’, so he made us get up at 3 AM. This was 1964, there was no traffic! My sister and I were both prone to car sickness, made worse by our mother’s smoking. Dad had quit smoking cold turkey just before we left. They had an empty tobacco can for us to throw up in, and we made good use of it.

I do not remember a lot of the details of the trip, because it happened in 1964, and I am now seventy-two and have a hard time remembering my name. I do remember driving across the mountains on highway one, a windy and very treacherous road. The Coquihalla highway, a safer, not so windy highway, was not built yet. I remembered as a young kid going on holidays in the Okanagan, before my sister was born, we would take the same road. I was so scared going across those old wooden bridges between mountains that I would lay on the floor of the car and shut my eyes. Going across them again brought back those same memories, this time being older; I was able to hide my fear. My sister was only five; luckily we were able to entertain her so she would not look outside.

The scenery, however, was breath taking. At night we would stop at a camp site carved out of the forest with the Rockies as a backdrop, it was amazing. Once, dad let me drive the Buick. I was to just back it up so we could hook up the trailer. I wanted to show him how good a driver I was, so I took off and drove all away around the camp site then backed into the spot to hook up. He did not know that mom had let me drive the Buick, with her in it, since I was twelve. I got out expecting ‘the lecture’, as he thought all teenagers were reckless drivers. All he said was, “Ok, let’s get hooked up.” That was a resounding compliment coming from him. When we finally cleared the mountains, I was sad to see the last of them.

I had not seen flat prairies like the ones in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba since our trip into the Peace River area to visit relatives a few years previously. The old joke about watching your dog run away for three days was true. The trip was uneventful as I recall, except that it was the only time dad let my mother drive the car. It was so flat that he thought that she could not get into too much trouble. It took us about three days to get across the prairies. We had a flat tire, luckily dad had a spare and we were on our way in no time. Gas stations were few and far between, so dad had to watch the gas gauge very closely.

Ontario was quite picturesque in its own way. There were forests, and little lakes around every turn. It was mountainous, not like BC but enough to give our fully loaded Buick a good workout. When we looked down the mountains we saw Lake Superior which was very scenic with many small islands in it. It took two days to get through Ontario. It was nice to see civilization again after the desolation of the prairies, although, with civilization came traffic. It was hard to navigate as we were not used to the roads or the chaos.

Finally, we pulled into mother’s cousin Reid Roadhouse and his family’s farm near Lindsey. They had invited us to stay with them for a few days to rest up before going into Toronto. Doreen, Reid’s wife, was in the hospital having a baby, their only son Roger. Mom jumped in and helped with meals and whatever she could do until Doreen came home.

When it was time to go to Toronto dad decided to lighten the load and leave me with Reid and Doreen. Dad, mom and Judy went ahead to Toronto to find an apartment, and enroll me in school. Meanwhile, I learned how hard farm work was. There were about twenty cows to milk, hay to cut and rake with tractors and wheat to harvest using a combine and dump trucks which I learned how to drive. He bought a brand new dump truck which I was one of the first to drive. Years later, dad bought it to get him, mom and Judy back to BC. Judy and mom named it ‘George’.

Finally, they came back to get me and leave the trailer in the field until it was time to go back to BC. When I first saw Toronto I could not get over how big it was with the high rises and all the cement sidewalks. Our apartment was a small one bedroom. Mom and dad took the bedroom, then dad split the living room into two sections – a bedroom for Judy and me and a living room section. Our first sofa was actually the back seat of our Buick.

I had to walk about three miles to Monarch Park Secondary School to start grade eleven. He had put me in the five year arts and sciences programs which did not interest me in the least. I wanted to go to trade school to learn something useful.

That one year trial that mom agreed to turned into nine years because dad failed every year of a four year course at least once. They finally made it back to BC to start his practise. I was not with them because I was married with a good job my then.

That was our big move that changed all our lives. Years later, after he had retired, I asked him would he do it all over again. With no hesitation, he said, “NO!” My jaw dropped to the floor.

The beginning of computers - Daryl Hopper

 I wrote the following story about twenty years ago when I was a computer operator. It starts in 1968 when I began in the computer world, such as it was back then. The story goes up to the early 1990’s when I quit. I will continue from there and try to bring it up to date. I hope you will enjoy it.

In the Beginning

The first computer was invented in 1822, but I started a little later. Actually, computers have been progressing faster and faster since then. The first generation (circa 1940’s and 50’s) were the tube and wire type, they had 18,000 tubes, 500 miles of wire and took up a half of a football field. They could do one transaction every three seconds, and you thought your computer was slow! You could not program them and they only had one kilobyte that is one thousand characters of storage. During the 1950’s and 60’s there was one person that was instrumental in bringing the computer into the next several generations. Her name was Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), I don’t know if she was a relative or not, probably not. She was in the United States Navy and retired as the first woman Rear Admiral. She invented the compiler, which translates basic English into machine language or the binary system. Now computers could be programmed for several different things from decoding messages to commercial business transactions. She was a fascinating person, if you want to find out more about her just search for ‘Grace Murray Hopper’ and you will find many sites with her biography etc.

The IBM 360 Years

That is enough history, let’s talk about me. Lol. When I started Computer College in 1968 we learned about the punch card and how to program the unit record machines by wiring the control panels. Unit record machines were machines that sorted, collated and gang punched the computer cards preparing them for input to the main computer or mainframe. When I graduated my first job was running some of these unit record machines. After a few boring weeks I was promoted to computer operator, wow, NASA here I come! Well, not really. The first computer I worked with was the IBM-30. The CPU was the size of a one-ton van. It had lots of lights and buttons. When it wanted attention, say when a job would pause until we mounted a tape, it would ring its fire bell. Needless to say we had to bring several pairs of shorts to work. Lol. We communicated with it via a ball typewriter. The commands were simple, eg. To start a ‘job’ we would say ‘START’, not exactly rocket science. We took the thousands of punch cards from those poor guys in unit record and fed them, hand full by hand full, into the card reader. The computer would then, if everything went well, start processing the ‘job’. DOS was a new thing, nothing like the DOS of later P.C.s. Before DOS we had TOS… Tape Operating System. We had to put the ‘supervisor tape’ on the tape drive, dial in the address of the tape drive on the CPU and hit ‘load’ on the console to start the job running. Very seldom a job would run from beginning to end without a problem. We would have to fix a card jam or the JCL (job control language) or get a programmer to fix the program usually at 4 am. I later was promoted to programmer at a different company. This meant I got most of the problems to fix at 4 am… not fun. Programming the mainframes of the day took a lot of patience and time. They only had 64k. Megabytes were unheard of yet. We wrote a program, usually in COBOL, on coded sheets of paper, several pages long. Then we submitted it to the keypunch department. They would keypunch the written instructions onto punch cards. We would write the Job Control that told the computer what to do with the compiled program. All this would take a day. Then we would submit the compile to the computer to run, usually overnight. The next day we would get our compile and the printout to debug. This would go on until the compiled program was perfect. Then we would finally catalog it, which meant load it into storage. We had to know how to read core dumps in order to find room for the programs and fix any problems in the programs. A core dump was the actual data and program instructions in binary form or machine language. We would add and subtract in hexadecimal, a number system based on 16 not 10 eg. 0123456789ABCDEF. So 5+C=11, not eleven but one one or 0011 in binary machine language. The fun part, when I was an operator, was that the machines were so slow that we had lots of time on our hands and we were young. The machines ran 24/7 and so did we. So, we would run a long job that would take at least three hours on the night shift, then go out and party. We took turns running back to change a tape or whatever needed to be done. By morning the jobs would be finished, the reports printed and distributed, and the boss would think we worked hard all night because we looked so tired.

The IBM 370 Years

In the mid 1970’s computers started advancing faster and faster. I worked on the IBM 370 series. The main languages were the same as the 360’s but the hardware got faster. No longer did we have the old typewriters to communicate but new screens and keyboards. Also gone were the lights and bells, how boring. Storage was bigger too, a whopping 128K. The data was stored on removable storage units called DASD, (Direct Access Storage Device). They looked like huge records about eighteen inches across and six or eight ‘records’ deep, and weighed about ten pounds each. We became very muscular. Most of the data was kept on magnetic tape.  We had tape vaults with hundreds of tapes in it. If you have ever seen old movies with banks of old six foot reel to reel tape drives, that is what we used.

The Final Years

The final years for me were the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. I was in my forties, the oldest person in my department, and very burned out. By now Bill Gates was going strong. Personal Computers were getting more and more popular in the business world. It still took someone to program them because the users were not interested in computers just the reports that they could produce. Besides, operating the mainframe, I also had to operate and program, to a certain extent, the P.C.s that were still kept in the computer room. They used DOS, not the same as the old DOS, and BASIC for the programming language. The mainframe we had at the time was state of the art. It was the AS400, it was about the size of a refrigerator. It had something that we only had heard about that was the GIGABYTE. Just imagine, 1000 MEG. In fact, our company was the first in Canada to have Gigabytes in a commercial environment. We were the first to have ‘mirroring’ which was the ability to have an exact duplicate of the storage in the CPU. Every transaction was duplicated in the mirroring storage. This was in case of a head crash, which was considered a disaster in the computer world. If a head crash occurred in mirrored storage the machine would simply go to the backup or mirrored data. The user would not be inconvenienced, and we could call for service, and replace the damaged disk drive. You guessed it; we were the first in Canada to have a head crash using mirroring. It saved our butts. In 1992 I had had enough, we moved across Canada. I got into the security business and never missed computers a bit. Now computers with windows and the Internet are so user friendly that anyone off the street can use them with no trouble. I think I got out in time, as my job no longer exists.

The Future

I have seen computers come out of the Stone Age and into the space age. I was a jack-of-all-trades in the old days, now there are specialists for every part of the computer. There are software people, hardware people, network people, web design people and coffee people that keep the rest awake all night when there is a problem. What does the future hold, who knows? I read that the scientists are working on an implant in the head. They already make a blind man see with a visor implanted directly into the brain. I hope these guys are on our side.

Back to the Future

The above was my story of the old days in computers. I was a senior computer operator, scheduler, programmer and production support in a lot of different companies for over 25 years. The technology went ahead so fast over the years that eventually it left us operators and programmers behind. The office workers, called ‘users’, all had P.C.s on their desks and could process their own input data. The old users that used to input their data to our data entry department for processing, and could not learn computers, were all phased out. I feel that I should explain some of the terminology of the day. For example, a ‘Head Crash’ is not a stroke. It is when the head sensor of the disk drive, which floats about a millimeter above the disk that is spinning around sensing the data, touches, or crashes, on the surface of the disk. The disk must be replaced and all the data on it must be restored to the point of the head crash on a replacement disk. Without ‘mirroring’, like the cloud of today, we would have to take all our disks and tapes to a computer room offsite and rebuild the system. Then we would start processing from there until our system was repaired. All this would take days. The company would lose millions of dollars and maybe even shut down. We had an offsite computer room on standby at all times. We would even go there and practice the recovery procedures once a month. Thankfully, when we did have a head crash happened we had mirroring. Actually, it happened to me. I was the only one that noticed it. A message flashed up on the screen like ‘mirroring is activated’. I called my boss, he called the engineers to come in and replace the damaged drive. They did. Then we simply switched the mirroring off and continued with the processing. No one except us in operations knew that we saved the company. We ran ‘JOB’s, which was the combination of the data to be processed, the object program that the programmer created and the JCL (Job Control Language) that we created to tell the program which devices to use and where to put the data on the disks. When I wrote about ‘debuging’ a program, this started with a real bug getting into one of the older computer and causing problems when it ate some of the wiring. When I wrote ‘we would say START’ did not mean that we actually talked to the computer, except to swear at it. We would simply type it into the typewriter to tell the computer to start a ‘JOB’. We would communicate with the computer via the ball typewriter on the first computer that I operated in the early 70’s. I wrote about Grace Hopper. Turns out she was not a relative, too bad; I could have used her brains. She was the first female Rear Admiral in the US Navy. She never went to sea. She worked in the offices developing her computer languages. She invented ASSEMBLER, COBOL, and probably RPG. These were old computer languages that brought computers from wiring panels to writing code so that they could use computers in the business world. This was revolutionary. Now they could code programmes to do transactions 1000 times faster than they could do just filling in paper work. She was the mother of the modern computer. I wrote about ‘GANG PUCHING’. This does not mean a riot. It just means that we would wire a panel to move one field of data from one area on the punch card to another area. I wrote about what I thought the future would hold. Scientists have made huge progress in the medical world with robots doing operations remotely. Computers fly airplanes. The pilots are now computer operators. The smart phones have so much storage that I cannot fathom it, knowing what one byte looks like. I cannot imagine what the next 20 years will bring in computers. I am sure there will be implants in our brains, or elsewhere. If the human race is still around!

Tom and Suzy – Daryl Hopper

 by Daryl Hopper

When I was a kid in the fifties, we lived in the back woods of Ruskin BC, about an hour outside of Vancouver. We had many cats. All of which were the descendants of the original pair of cats. The male was ‘Tom’, and the female was ‘Suzy’.

There were always cats around, all self respecting mice knew to stay away. The cats did pay rent, because every time they caught and ate a mouse they would leave the guts on our porch. I guess they thought they were earning their keep. I told them not to bother but they kept on doing it. I do not know if I raised them or they raised me.

Tom lived with my uncle Bob in a shack that he built, Bob not Tom. Tom had a broken leg that he limped on. No one knew how he got it. Uncle Bob would cook up some pork chops and they both would chow down on them. Old Tom could not move around too well, especially when it came to catching mice. So, when the mice started running around on the rafters of the shack, uncle Bob would simply get his rifle and shoot them down. I do not think that Tom ate them because he preferred pork chops.

Suzy was Tom’s cat wife. She was pregnant most of the time. Old Tom could not walk so well, but he could do something very good. Suzy was very adventurous, and loved climbing trees. This one time she saw a nice tall tree in the bush across from our house. She probably thought, “Wow what a nice big tree, I can climb that, what could happen?”  She started up the tree, limb by limb, higher and higher. She got to the top, about fifty feet up. She looked around and probably thought,” Wow what a view, I’m so good at climbing!” Then she thought, ”Well, I’m hungry, I guess I’ll climb down now. Wait a minute, I’m a cat, I can’t climb down backwards! I didn’t think this through at all! I’m in big trouble, I better yell for help. I’m sure some human will climb up and rescue me.”

I was playing in the yard when I heard a cat crying in distress, I looked up and sure enough, there was Suzy stuck up the tallest tree in the bush. I ran in to the house and told my mother, ”Mom, Suzy’s stuck up a tree in the bush!” Mom ran out and started calling Suzy. “Suzy, Suzy, pss pss pss get down here.” She yelled. Suzy came down a few branches, and thought,”What am I doing, this is too scary, those lazy humans can come up here and get me!” Mom went and got some food, put it in Suzy’s dish and started to bang it on the floor of the porch. Suzy came down a few more branches and stopped. She just sat there and cried. “This is ridiculous. Why don’t those stupid humans climb up here and get me. They look like monkeys; they can climb up here no problem!” Suzy thought.

When dad got home he just looked up at Suzy and said, “Damn cat, it will come down when it’s hungry.” Then he went inside and read the paper. Suzy was up that tree for three days when I freaked out and cried, “Mom, we have to do something for Suzy, she’s never coming down!”

When dad came home from work they talked and finally decided to call mom’s brother Merv. Uncle Merv was a lineman for BC TEL, and climbed telephone poles for a living. He came over, looked up at Suzy and said, “Ok, I think can get her down, I’ll get my climbing spurs out of my truck.” He strapped on his spurs and started up the tree. Suzy was looking down at uncle Merv and thought, ” It’s about time one of those damn humans climbed up here and got me down, it’s been three days, I think, I can’t really tell time. I’m going to fire the lot of them when I get down.”

Merv finally got up to Suzy. Suzy though, “Hello, you’re my hero. I don’t know why you have a bag, I was just going to jump on your face and we can climb down.” That was not Merv’s plan at all. He grabbed Suzy by the scruff of the neck and stuffed her in to the bag. Suzy screamed, “What are you doing? That’s rude, are you sure you’re a monkey?” Merv came down the tree and let Suzy out of the bag. She ran and hid under the nearest bush to compose herself.  She thought, “Wow, that was rough, I guess I’ll have to act like I’m grateful because I’m really hungry and I need them to feed me.” She rubbed up against me when I gave her the bowl full of food.

About two days went by without incident, when Suzy thought, “It’s boring around here, that tree thing was kind of fun, after all I was the center of attention.“  Up the tree she went again. When she got to the top she started screaming, “Hey, stupid humans, guess who is up the tree again, get the guy with those claws on its feet, I owe him one!”

Once again mom called uncle Merv to come over. Surprisingly, he actually came out. He was not happy. I heard language that I never heard before. He strapped on his spurs again and up the tree he went, cursing all the way. Suzy was watching all this and was thinking, “Wait until he gets up here, he’s going to get a big cat in his face.” Merv grabbed Suzy before she had a chance to jump on him, and stuffed her in the bag again.  “Damn, that didn’t turn out right at all, God, he’s strong.” Suzy thought. Down they came. Suzy ran and hid to avoid getting a spanking.

Dad decided that was enough, he was going to do something. I thought that would be the end of Suzy. But no, all he did was put a bunch of wire around the bottom of the tree to stop Suzy from climbing up. Suzy thought, “Well, I never saw that coming, oh well, there are plenty of other trees around here.”

The wire around the tree thing worked for Suzy, but the squirrels never got the memo. They got caught up in the wire all the time. So, instead of cat screams, we heard squirrel screams all the time. At least we did not have to call uncle Merv for that.

The Big Lie – Daryl Hopper

 I was raised in the 1950’s. My parents and I lived in a small house that my dad and grandpa built on a hill, in a small hamlet called Ruskin, which was about an hour outside of Vancouver BC.

I had the run of the middle part of a ten acre hill. I played with the neighbors cows, which would come right up to me and lick my arm.  We also had many cats and chickens that I amused myself with. I had every toy in the world because every Christmas I would tell my parents that I did not want clothes, just toys. My dad managed a five and dime store in a nearby town so I had a lot of choices. I had all the toy guns from the cowboy TV shows of the time: great role models like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Rifleman, Zorro and a lot more. I was in little boy heaven. The nearest kids were about a quarter mile away so we did not play with each other that much. I had a great imagination and I used it.

When it came time to start school, I was terrified, as I had never been away from home before; besides, I had to walk about a half a mile to get there, and I was not thrilled with that.

My mother dragged me down the hill to school the first day, because she did not trust me to go myself, she was correct. I was already plotting my escape as we entered the school yard. The other kids saw me come in with my ‘mommy’ holding my hand, which did not bode well for me, as I became a bully magnet from then on.

My teacher was Mrs. Anderson, an older, rather over weight woman with the patience of a God. I tried every escape plan I had, like peeing my pants so I would be sent home, or running home at recess only to be dragged back by my mother or my favourite was stopping at my aunt Pearle’s place, which was half way to school, to use the bathroom. She would yell at me to get out of the bathroom and go to school.

One day I got so far behind in my work that Mrs. Anderson told me to stay after school to catch up. Oh my God, I started to panic, I thought,”She is going to keep me here all night, I’ll never see my parents or more importantly my toys again!” I had to come up with the best escape plan of all time, maybe playing dead, no she will just drag me out and toss me in the garbage can. Then it came to me: I will lie, which goes against what all my role models would do, but I’m desperate.

“Mrs. Anderson” I said in my best pathetic voice, “I have to go because my mom is taking me shopping in town as soon as I get home.” I thought she will buy that, it sounded good to me.

“Ok, Daryl, go ahead, we’ll catch up the work later.” Wow, she fell for it; I was out of there so fast I almost forgot my coat.

When I got home my mother asked, “How was your day?”

“Fine” I answered trying to hide my guilt; those role models would be so disappointed with me. I went on with the rest of the day, playing and worrying about my lie which I was sure would get me sent to hell.

When my dad came home from work he would usually play catch or bat a ball around with me. This day he came home and went straight in the house and sat down, no catch or anything. I thought that was strange until I saw his face, the angriest that I had ever seen, my stomach sank.

“Come here!” he said with his ‘really mad voice’. I walked over to him but stopped short of his reach. “I ran into Mrs. Anderson in the store today, guess what she told me?” I felt sick; I wondered what hell was like, probably no toys.

“I don’t know.” I said in my best innocent voice.

“She asked how our shopping trip was, and how she let you go so you could go shopping too.” I was trying not to burst into tears. “Why did you lie to her?” he yelled.

“I didn’t want to stay overnight, or to be thrown in the garbage, and I missed my toys!” I cried, realizing that that did not even make sense to me.

“Don’t ever lie again!”  he roared as he was spanking me. “Go to bed right now, no supper for liars!”

My role models were right, it took a long time before my parents trusted me again, to say nothing of facing Mrs. Anderson the next day.

As far as I can remember that was the first and last time that I ever lied to save my own neck.

Our trip to Holland – Merle Hopper

 The “Thank you Canada” tour for WWII veterans and their wives.

Written by Merle Hopper

When we signed up with the travel agency in Ontario we had some choices of different tours to go on before we went to Holland. Our first choice was the three-day tour of London, England and were taken by bus to see the Windsor Castle, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. We found all of them very beautiful and interesting. Then we traveled by bus through the Chunnel and into France. In Paris we were taken on the second bus tour. We enjoyed seeing the Eiffel Tower, Champ d’ Lisse, Napoleon’s Tomb, the statue of The Great Thinker, Notre Dame Cathedral and Chateau de Versailles Palace. In the evening we were taken on a boat cruise on the Seine River. On the way from Paris to Holland we stopped at Vimy Ridge to see and admire the huge monument placed there on the Ridge during World War II.

All the veterans and their wives were taken to the Canadian Club in Apeldoorn where they received the official Welcome to Holland from the president of the Welcoming Committee. Later all the veterans and wives were taken to their assigned hotels or host homes. Our first bus trip in Holland was to the Keukenhof flower gardens and lucky for us the tulips and other flowers were in full bloom and gorgeous to see. From there we were taken to a huge hall in Amsterdam where we were entertained and fed buffet style. Four young cadets lowered themselves from the ceiling on ropes down to the floor carrying a British flag, Dutch flag, Canadian flag and American flag. The Minister of Veterans Affairs of Canada gave an excellent speech. He thanked Holland for inviting the veterans and their wives to the celebration.

In Apeldoorn we were invited to the Randirode Nursing Home where we shook hands with the patients then enjoyed a delicious meal. For our next trip we were taken by army jeeps and trucks into Apeldoorn and waved at the hundreds of Dutch men, women and children who were lined up on each side of the street. They were waving Canadian flags and holding signs which said “Thank you Canada” and “Thank you Liberators”. All ages of Dutch people held up their hands for us to shake and just touch.

Another trip was to the huge war memorial cemetery at Groesbeek. This is where many high officials placed wreaths at the monument. One very special person was Princess Juliana who was escorted by four Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in full dress. People were allowed to stroll up and down the rows of crosses and headstones. There were several headstones with 18 and 19 year old boys’ names on them.

Our last huge gathering was the final parade in Apeldoorn. Most of the veterans walked and received hugs, kisses, gifts and cards from Dutch people along the parade route. Others not able to walk were driven in army vehicles in the parade. Everyone gathered at the Canadian Club, found their transportation and left for their hotels and host home.

After experiencing the friendliness, gratitude and praise from the Dutch people, we all felt very proud of being Canadian.

---

A note from Judy:  My mom was famous for keep journals of their travels. This is just one of them. Both Dan parents and my parents experienced this trip together. It was great that they could do this together.  The original trip was in about 1995 for the 50th anniversary of  the Dutch Liberation. Neil and Velda McLean went again for the 60th anniversary. My parents did not go. The Dutch Liberation tours are still ongoing today.  Converted to a digital file on April 7, 2013