Were we young and foolish or not older and wiser?  

 

A great many people have asked me why I would wish to return to Ontario, specifically Toronto when with my return home in 1997 we spent thirty years very successfully raising our children and weaving our way into a tight knit rural community.  

With many of those we knew in Toronto gone or moved away, what would be the purpose or value of such a move. At 65 with all the change in Metropolitan Toronto would any reason I might have bare any significant profit or experience to make it worth our while. Karen who now fears and has anxieties about our return and is uncertain of what it all would entail being more stalworth in her resolve grows restless as with each passing day wondering as I go through thoughts which become more defined and direct.  

We left Toronto in June of 1997 back home to Edmonton. Nathan, Gerry, and a then very expectant Karen with Erich climbed into the station wagon in Etobicoke and left back to my prairie home where I knew that the life that they would know growing up would be less stressful and shape them successfully as they grew into adults. 

My children now have achieved each milestone and have grown into successful adults in a world much changed from the 1980s when Karen and I first planted roots together.  

I left Toronto knowing I had very much left to do there that would go unfinished. I did so because of my kids and their success and future. Now it is time for me to return and put an end to what I have not yet completed. One book will be done in the first part of June however the continual fight against the pathology of mental illness and poverty which surrounds the city still draws me back to the city to which gave me the pursuit in the first place.  

Yes, we were young and foolish, but life has only left us older and not much wiser. One thing is certain our lives have many purposes, but the one which gives you the most is the one that gives you the strength to keep on and bring a fire in your life that can never be extinguished