Finally

It has been a great life up to now and it continues to be so.  Looking back over the past three-quarter century, there’s little I would change even if I could.  Blessed with excellent health (no prescription drugs at age 77) and with parents who lived well into their 80s and 90s, I may be lucky enough to enjoy quite a few more good years.

First of all, I was lucky enough to meet and marry Joy – a wonderful partner with whom I have spent my life. There have been highs and lows, but the highs have been much more prominent. Our four children have done us proud. There are 16 University degrees in our family, including one Ph.D. The older grandchildren are either in University or heading in that direction; the younger ones will no doubt be encouraged to do the same. Richard, Janet, Brian and Murray are very close (though far apart geographically) and keep in touch with each other – and with us – every few days.  They also try to see that the “cousins”, i.e. their children, get to see each other as often as possible.

I admit to preaching more about environmental concerns than actually doing something about them.  Will our grandchildren be able to deal with the mess we’ve left?  And then there is the ever-present concern of international terrorism and the problems of inequality around the world.  I worry about this as my life winds down.

These memoirs have been written to try to describe my life and times – from the 1930s up to near the end of the first decade of the 2000s. My grandfather, the original “R.K.Smith”, kept a daily diary every year from the early 1880s until he died in 1931.  Although a wonderful series of documents and historic in their own right, they were pretty terse documents – I’ve referred to them earlier in these memoirs – with weather and farm work their main themes. Hopefully, my memoirs are a somewhat more comprehensive and interesting read.