Whats a small decision you made that ended up having a big impact on your life

In Edinburgh 1968 in the flat we shared while both working at the Western General Hospital as newly graduated physiotherapists, Ann Leitch said to me over dinner one evening, ‘I’d really like to go to Canada. Do you want to go?’ I said, ’Sure, that sounds like a great idea’. I had no idea that I stood at a huge crossroads in my life, in fact I didn’t really know where Vancouver was, and that was where Ann had contacts, friends of her parents. Canada sounded exciting and I was ready for change.

We applied for immigration papers, had chest X-rays in Glasgow and saved like mad as much as we could off our miserable pittance of a salary working in the NHS. January 1969 saw us meeting at Heathrow Airport for our flight to Edmonton and on to Vancouver. When we met,Ann was in tears, unpacking her suitcases in the Departure area as they were too heavy to be loaded. She ended up taking out a heavy jacket from one case and a sheepskin coat from the other, we were going to cold Canada after all, and wearing them onto the plane, in layers.

She looked like the Michelin Man! Immigration papers had to be processed when we landed in Edmonton, at the time a small building in the middle of the airfield. We had to leave the plane, exiting by a staircase and walking over the tarmac to the terminal. It was the end of January in Edmonton and I have no idea of how cold it actually was, but I do remember feeling the little hairs in my nose freeze.

I had never felt anything quite as cold and wondered just what I had let myself in for. Fortunately, Vancouver was it’s usual mild, wet, self though there were the melting remains of a snowfall around. We stayed for our first couple of days with friends of Sheila’s out in Point Grey while we found ourselves a room in a rooming house at 14th and Oak and put a deposit on an apartment at 12th and Heather to move in on the 1st of February. We both started work at the Vancouver General Hospital, having arranged jobs from the UK.... and the rest is history!