The Written Word
for November 29, 2000

As I sit here in Honolulu not my favourite city, by the way I think of how lucky I am and how lucky I’ve been. I am just a few minutes away from Pearl Harbour and the mass sunken grave for more than 1600 young American sailors yet I’m enjoying the sunshine and looking forward to heading on my annual trip to New Zealand. I’m lucky in so many ways. I’ve found love at an advanced age and though I’ve had my share of personal woes, including the loss of a daughter to a car accident, I have three wonderful children and seven grandchildren whom I love and of whom I’m so proud. Just to single out one, my eldest grandson, now going on 22, turned down a bushel of hockey scholarships to take an academic one at the University of Western Ontario. Another grandson, now finishing high school with a constant record as a straight A student, has his cap set for medical school. At the other end of the age scale, I see a young challenged grandson with such wonderful parents and his little sister, who is the apple of her granddad’s eye.

But mostly I think of my good luck not to have had to go to war. I was 8 when World War II started, 14 when it ended. I missed the Korean War because it was optional for Canadians and I was able to opt out. My Dad was similarly lucky too young for the first one, too old for the second.

But it’s not just Canadians against which I judge my luck. And it’s not only against Americans who, if they missed the early going in both world wars, took almost the whole brunt of Korea and Viet Nam. It’s against those in so many third world countries for whom war, pestilence and early death has been the norm.

I am a religious person in that I cannot believe that all this is simply a mass of chances upon chances upon chances. There must be a Superior Being. Yet I wonder why I have been chosen to be so lucky. And why are so many other so unlucky? Why have I been singled out to be spared from so much whilst others must bear so much grief?

It is, for me, the great imponderable.

And if I can get over the awesome responsibility of what fly to fish where and which river to fish, in the next two weeks plus in New Zealand, I just might give it all some thought!