3. I BELIEVE

I joined the mormon church in the fall of 1956 when I graduated from high school and we moved from Three Hills to Calgary. I am grateful to have found a church still run by the Savior today, now resurrected, through living prophets and apostles here on the earth, and with all the ingredients of His original church, like priesthood authority, temples and respect for healthful and righteous living.

I was fortunate to be married in a mormon temple, with proper priesthood authority, not just "til death do us part", but for all eternity. My Margaret and I, and our children are a forever family. We learn from our living prophets and apostles that life continues after death, and how we prepare now will determine how we will live then.

Family Reunion at Sun River, Oregon June 2008

It is nice to belong to a church that is growing and has the resources to help the victims of disasters world-wide, usually the first on-site with vast quantities of food, clothing, portable shelters or whatever community assistance is needed. During 2008 the LDS church distributed over 300,000 wheelchairs throughout the world! I marvel at what I read on the http://www.lds.org/ web-site NEWS EVENTS or www.mormontimes.com about the amazing things the church is doing.

2. MY EARLIER DAYS

As we moved around a lot, obviously I changed schools often, once even going to three different schools in one year! I did OK but I wasn't a brilliant scholar. I never really got into sports, except maybe softball, but I could ride a horse and could shoot a magpie out of a tree or a smart alex gopher off his mound. I think I went to eight schools ending up at Three Hills HS where I graduated with a Senior Matriculation which was designed for college entrance.

Me closest to the camera at Glen Leven School near Irricana, Alberta, in 1950.

Me standing back left outside Glen Leven School on a nice spring day in 1951.

Mom was very self-motivated and immediately after we moved to Calgary, she decided to attend the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) two blocks from home and got a diploma in Architectural Drafting. She was subsequently hired by SAIT in the Drafting Department and spent the next twenty years as their star draftswoman.

I also attended SAIT studying Surveying and Drafting at the same time as Mom, completing only one year before heading to Europe for a three year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Later, after completing my MA in Counselling at BYU I was hired by SAIT to set up a brand new Student Counselling Service, which was located in that building below, but I found it very boring and soon left to go on to other things!

Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) where Mom and I studied and later worked.

1. MY ORIGIN IN CANADA

My first breath on planet earth was taken back in 1937 in my grandparents house in the very small farming community of Arrowwood, in the province of Alberta up in Canada. A war was imminent at the time and my folks weren't keen an raising a bunch of kids to get shot up in a war, so I'm all they had. My dad was a US citizen at the time, even though he didn't know it, so being born in Canada, made me a Canadian, but as the son of a US citizen, I was also a citizen of the United States, a fact that would come as a huge surprise later in life when applying to move to the states!

Dad's chosen career was a farm laborer, and as such we moved about a fair bit from job to job. Areas we lived in included Springbank, immediately west of Calgary where we lived on a farm with a huge old two story farm house, two great big barns, one for about 50 milk cows and the other for about a dozen horses. I had my own horse and remember riding four miles to school when the snow drifts along the sides of the road were as high as the horse and we would get back home at night both completely white, covered with frost and snow! School only closed when the roads were absolutely impassable in those days.

Other farms we lived on were near Bowness, Airdrie, Kathryn, Irricana and finally near Three Hills, shown on the map above, where I graduated from high school (one of thirteen graduates) and dad chose the occasion to quit farming and moved us into Calgary where he went into carpentry.