An Accident in the Family
On the Friday afternoon of Labour Day weekend in 1974 our son, barely three years old, suffered a serious eye injury. Years and years of surgery and treatment left him with only a faint hope of saving some sight in the eye.
Other rounds of surgery when he was 14 were very difficult for him. He was in Grade 9 at a very competitive private boy’s school. In April of that year, in the midst of several rounds of surgery, he refused to return to school. We weren’t able to determine the exact reason but assume that his classmates were making fun of his eye. Fortunately he was a good student, the school passed him, and he attended Grades 10 and 11 at the Bishop’s College School in Lennoxville, Quebec not far from our home the next fall.
It was at this school that he flourished. To this day I have great admiration and am very grateful for the wonderful people who ran this school in which every student felt welcome. Our son joined a football team and was very proud to call and invite us to see him play when the team visited Montreal for a game. We couldn’t believe the transformation.
He stayed there two years to finish high school and then we were lucky to have him at home for two years of junior college, the last time he lived at home. He and I played chess regularly and he was thrilled to start beating me. I think it’s a very important milestone in a young man’s life when he comes to realize that he has the skills and ability to beat his father in any pursuit.
He would go on to earn a Bachelors degree in English at Acadia University, then to become a successful Chartered Accountant in Vancouver. He is a very courageous young man and leads an exceptional life with the sight of only one eye. Only recently, in his thirties, he has had the eye removed and replaced by prosthesis.
