Christmas, 2020

Nadolig Llawen!    Merry Christmas!    Buon Natale!

 Christmas 2020.

From our home to yours, dear Family and Friends,

Again it is our pleasure to share a little bit of our lives over this past, most unusual, year at this very special time.  May you enjoy a full and restful Christmas/New Year season.  2020 certainly brought very different life experiences.

Tina continues to enjoy complete retirement from nursing. With the new year,Tina resumed playing her cello with the Camerata Strings adult ensemble in the VSO School of Music. She continued to enjoy the cello music, new to her, while playing as part of an ensemble, Then COVID-19 shut group practices down for the rest of the season. Tina missed getting together for rehearsals but practiced at home to contribute to a video assembled performance. Ted video recorded both Tina’s part and David’s part and each submitted the recordings for inclusion. Tina does anticipate returning to Camarata with her cello whenever in person rehearsals resume.

Tina’s health remains a challenge as she suffers increasing back pain that limits her general activity. Medical tests identified Bertolotti's syndrome, a condition with which she must have been born but is only manifesting itself now as Tina ages. So far, medical referrals, re-referrals, and limited treatments have not yet helped. To add to the difficulty, the most important specialist doctor involved with Tina’s condition contracted COVID-19 in the spring taking her off practice for six weeks and, after a brief return to practice, requiring extended leave-of-absence to deal with after effects of the disease. Tina waits on her next treatment opportunity in January.

In the spring, we were delighted to find and reconnect with Tina’s cousin, Pasquale Fappiano in Italy, with whom we had long lost contact. He gave us a wonderful welcome when we visited back in 1985. Through Pasquale, we can now share ourselves with others of Tina’s Italian relatives. Occasional messages serve us well.

With exercise and prescribed medication, Ted's health continues stable, actually feeling very well indeed, although he did experience another bout of atrial fibrillation in the spring, Again, his heart doctors decided he needed cardioversion to correct it, again using external stimulation instead of making Ted’s ICD jolt his heart. Otherwise, he is bothered only by occasional colds but did have a bit of bad/good health news that currently does not bother Ted at all. He has developed prostate cancer but of a kind that is very slow to grow, so slow that, at Ted’s current age, he will very likely have died from something else before this cancer impacts his wellbeing. Ted continues to use long walks with Angela's dog as his primary mode of exercise, walking Adam daily, every day of the week.  These long walks allow Ted readily to exceed the recommended minimum 10,000 steps per day.

With COVID-19, Angela and her friends in the Dusty Babes Collective had to markedly reduce work in their ceramic art studio in south Surrey near White Rock. She brought supplies home but to work here is just not the same as at the studio.  Angela continues her part time position as the lead ceramics studio technician for the Semiahmoo Arts Society in the South Surrey Recreation Centre, now working Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and teaching ceramics classes on Wednesday evenings. From time to time she also gave classes on Saturday mornings. Angela teaches mainly adult classes which vary from those for absolute beginners to classes in more advanced ceramics skills and enjoys many returning pupils. All this came to an abrupt halt when the South Surrey Recreation Centre had to close under COVID-19 restrictions. Fortunately, Angela qualified for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit until the centre reopened in the summer and she could resume her work. 

The Dusty Babes did not show their works this year. In the Spring, Angela was to show on her own at Surrey’s Darts Hill Garden Park again but that show was cancelled by COVID-19. Angela remains an active member of the Potters Guild of BC.

Outside of her art, Angela continues her interest in sophisticated board games and computer gaming which she shares with Christy, but much more online than in person. Adam delights in their companionship when they can get together.

David changed private study on his viola, now with Thomas Beckman through the spring and this fall, working online for most of the year. He continues as a violist with the New Westminster Symphony Orchestra, really enjoying rehearsing and performing under conductor, Jack (Jin) Zhang until disrupted by COVID-19 mid spring. The orchestra assembled an online performance of Mozart’s Impresario Overture this fall. David continues to watch for opportunities in other orchestras, in particular for professional opportunities to arise, although these do not exist with the current situation.

David continues to enjoy writing fiction, with which he extends his imagination. Early in the year, he completed and published his major rewrite of The Stolen Treasure, a novel he had originally developed as a young teen.  His novel, The Sheltered Life of Betsy Parker, published five years ago as a digital copy, continues to draw ongoing interest and responses on the GoodReads literary sharing site. David keeps the second edition available both digitally and as hardcopy on Amazon. Next as a literary project, David has written a collection of short stories now under rewrite.

Apart from his music and his writing, David continues to enjoy his Monday and Thursday part-time employment with Meridian Farm Markets at their store in Tsawwassen. He also accepted a call to work a brief term at the Purdys Chocolatier store in the Tsawwassen Mills Mall. As a grocery store worker, David is among “essential” workers and experiences no loss of work as a consequence of COVID-19.

David’s ASD specialist psychiatrist and the local support counsellor at Alongside You, together, continue to give David wonderful support. Tina and Ted remain deeply thankful for such readily at-hand support. 

With the current situation, we did not take a get-away this year

Beyond the immediate family, we continue to enjoy our extended family, although only virtually for now. Email and Skype keep us in touch with with Norman and Barbara and with John and Liz.

Looking beyond ourselves, one substantial local issue grasped our whole family’s attention this year, this with the local hospice. Several years ago the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the plight of the few Canadians who were definitively dying slow and tortuous deaths and ordered Parliament to change the law to compassionately permit a more dignified passing for these people. With considerable controversy, Parliament made the change to permit due respect for those Canadians carefully considered and self-initiated choice to opt for medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Public medical facilities are now required to respect that choice. A t the Delta Hospice Society’s Annual General Meeting, late in 2019, after the Board of Directors of the Delta Hospice Society acknowledged that requirement, a group who opposed MAiD, through membership stacking from outside of our local community, ousted the existing Hoard of Directors and elected a new board that promptly reversed society policy and refused to permit the option of MAiD in the Delta Hospice.

The controversy came to a head when it became known that this new board was refusing society membership applications from local citizens while accepting applications by outsiders. Even our highly respected retired immediate past MLA had her application refused. Next, this board sought to hold a Special General Meeting to change the DHS constitution and bylaws and transform it from a secular local community society into a parochial “Christian” society, eliciting outrage throughout the Delta community. The community rose in protest, buying memberships (that remained not accepted – all four of us bought memberships as well) and marching in peaceful protest on  June 13th. That same day, it received news that the Supreme Court of British Columbia had ordered the society to cancel the scheduled Special General Meeting and to accept all submitted membership applications.

By appeal to the Appeal Court of British Columbia, the new board gained a freeze on membership and delayed implementing that order until the appeal failed. Even then they refused to accept local members until the court refused their requested stay pending further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Local membership applications have finally received acceptance late in November. In the mean time, this board has continued to recruit outside membership, reaching all across Canada and even into the United States. The controversy remains far from resolved as we approach the new year.

We gave close attention through the British Columbia provincial election last October. Ted feels concern that a strong majority government replaced the effective minority government in Victoria and remains troubled by elements of the direction Canada’s federal government in Ottawa continues to take.

Adam, Angela’s red haired Standard Poodle, continues to endear himself to us all.  He no longer sees his  “friends” often but he loves to greet and offer in play whenever he meets other dogs. Adam did make a few new puppy friends to whom he serves as a role model. Adam keeps Ladner well mapped and his chosen walking routes when we walk are many and varied. Twice daily walks, preferably long, are compulsory with this dog; supper is optional. Adam guarantees that Ted and Angela exercise.

As winter returned to us, we enjoyed south Delta’s annual return of vast flocks of Snow Geese, many now continued on to the Skagit River delta and/or California’s Sacramento Valley. Trumpeter Swans are back on various farm fields. Resident Bald Eagles have now returned to renovate their nests. Very soon, trees along Highway 10 will burst into our annual crop of transient Bald Eagles. At home, our bird feeder remains frequented by Chickadees, House Finches, Juncos, Song Sparrows, White Crowned Sparrows, Spotted Towhees, the occasional Nuthatch, Downy Woodpeckers, and Northern Flickers while Anna’s Hummingbirds use their feeder as frequently ever and Steller’s Jays enjoy our steady supply of in-shell peanuts. The Jays know Ted and have him well trained to keep the peanuts coming. We continue to enjoy the George C Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary although COVID-19 has limited our visits.

Ted has slowed his efforts to seek players to experiment with his invented team sports of Two Ball and Delta.  He also keeps up his web presence for the games, but has lacked activity to post to the site blog, or on Facebook.  These continue to catch occasional attention world-wide, but he still awaits word of anyone actually playing either game.  You remain invited to have a look and, perhaps, to draw the games to the attention of sport minded people you may know.

And now we look forward to 2021, to COVID-19 vaccination, and a more normal year.  Recent weeks, of course, have filled us with Christmas preparations.  We hope yours have gone well and we wish you a Merry and Blessed Christmas and all happiness in the New Year.

With our Christmas love,

Ted, Tina, David, and Angela.

P. S. That this letter arrives on Christmas Eve is entirely deliberate.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!    Happy New Year!    Felice Nuovo Anno!

Controversy in Delta

Here where I live in Delta, British Columbia, substantial controversy rages around the local hospice. One member of the Take Back Delta Hospice Discussion group on Facebook received a deeply troubling message containing startling misinformation implying that the simple requirement for the hospice to respect patient choice is actually compulsion on the hospice to impose upon its patients. This got sent sent to this organization's members all across Canada:

.

I simply had to clear a few things up with this Mr. Gunnarson by writing him as follows:

Dear Mr. Gunnarson,

I must respectfully urge you to withdraw the letter apparently circulated by you to your members urging nonresidents of Delta to interfere in a local Delta community issue that is unequivocally none of their business by taking out memberships in the Delta Hospice Society. Please remind your members who do not reside in Delta that, unless they intend to relocate to Delta within coming months, taking membership in this local community society is completely inappropriate.

The Delta Hospice Society is a strongly supported and much loved local community society that provides hospice services to residents who are already dying, to ease and give comfort at the end of life in the manner the dying may, by their own self-initiated choice, desire. A little over ten years ago, Delta residents from all walks of life and faith persuasions gave their enthusiastic financial support to build the Irene Thomas Hospice and the Harold & Veronica Savage Centre for Supportive Care. Membership in the Delta Hospice Society was and long remained very small, with supportive Delta residents leaving the business of the society to those few members and their elected Board of Directors. This is typical of most such service societies, the actual membership is far smaller than the supportive community within which they serve. Whether holding membership or not, residents of Delta most certainly regard the Delta Hospice Society as their community society.

Unfortunately, being a small community society with a limited membership, the Delta Hospice Society was readily susceptible to membership manipulation. In 2019, a hostile element stacked the society membership with people who supported its agenda, including people resident outside of the Delta community and, to the dismay of long standing members and the community as whole, ousted the existing Board of Directors and replaced it with their own Board of Director at the society’s 2019 Annual General Meeting last November. This new Board of Directors continued to stack society membership with residents remote from Delta for whom the operations of the society are completely none of their business, even going so far as to recruit in the United States of America. Delta residents who truly cared about the society they considered to be their own found this turn of events alarming and started taking out their own society memberships only to find that their membership applications were refused and returned to them while the applications of outsiders were being accepted.

The new Board of Directors then developed a plan to completely change the Constitution and Bylaws of the Delta Hospice Society and transform it from a secular community society into a parochial self-defined “Christian” (quotation marks for so-called because there are deeply faithful Christian residents of Delta who cannot recognize their actions as truly Christian) society. They planned a Special General meeting to authorize this change for last spring.

Needless to say Delta residents, out of our love for our community society as it had existed for so many years, quickly grew alarmed, initiated a campaign to take back the Delta Hospice Society by bringing the many resident supporters of and donors to society into membership, and took the matter of the refused memberships to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The court ruled to require all membership applications be accepted, to require membership lists be made available to the complainants, and to cancel the scheduled Special General Meeting. The new Board of Directors sought to appeal this ruling and the court ordered membership lists and applications sealed pending that appeal while keeping the cancellation on the Special Genela Meeting. The board's eventual appeal to the Appeal Court of British Columbia failed and the board was then required to accept the many resident membership applications. The board then sought a stay on the ruling while it attempted to take tho matter to the Supreme Court of Canada but the appeal court, recognizing that the Supreme Court of Canada would very likely decline to hear their case, refused the stay.

Now, under court order, the Board of Directors of the Delta Hospice Society is finally accepting the many local resident membernship applications. It would appear that this boardt is also upping its campaign to recruit outsiders to counter local residents, as evidenced by your letter. This matter is not the business of any nonresident of Delta. Please leave Delta residents to care for their community society without your interference.

Thank you for your attention,

In Flanders' Fields

In Flanders' Fields for today and every Remembrance Day