Thursday 28 December 2017

Cornish Chronicles 2017 - it's official: we're retired.

Dear Friends and Family,

Rob and Cher - enjoying the good
 life on our Fall Colors Cruise
The time has come to write our annual Cornish update. For weeks now, as Christmas emails have been steadily coming in, I’ve resisted the urge to sit down and write. As my Dad used to say “there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things”. This saying used to infuriate me because inevitably what he really meant was that I had to do things his way. Anyway back to my point. In my case, the right time to do our annual update is between Christmas and New Year. All the major news of the year is behind us and ready to be reported on and we are in that wonderful lull between the frazzledness of the Christmas buildup and the final fling of New Year. So today is the right day – the sun is shining on fields of open snow, it was -24 degrees this morning when we awoke, so no chance of being tempted to go out and sit on the back deck enjoying the sunshine.

2017 has been a relatively quiet one for us in terms of major events. Having said that we have also found ourselves to be more than fully occupied with more than one would ever imagine for a couple who are supposedly retired. I’m beginning to realize that for us at least, retirement means we have retired from being paid, but not from being busy.

Rob, Cher, Neville and Maureen did a short jaunt
to a game park in S. Africa and saw lots of animals
Our travel schedule this year, whilst not particularly exotic, has been steady, with a variety of short term forays versus any major long term trips. The one exception to that would be travel to South Africa, where our plans, by necessity, needed to be flexible. In January and February, we had planned to be visiting friends and family in South Africa for six weeks. Isn’t this the retired persons dream – fun in the sun in January and February? Unfortunately it turned out that our son in law Alex needed a second round of 6 weeks of radiation soon after we were due to leave. This required Alex to be driven to Sunnybrook hospital daily for his treatments. We decided that we needed to split up, with Cher spending the full planned 6 weeks in South Africa, while I did a brief pop in there for three weeks only, returning to help Alex and Elaine with the routine at home and rides to and from appointments.

Sammy, Esther, Elaine and Alex taking
in some of the Tulip Festival - Ottawa, May 2017
Our next jaunt was a four day trip to Ottawa in our RV in the middle of May to the tulip festival with Alex, Elaine, Sammy and Esther. It was still cold at that stage, but the beauty of RV camping is that one doesn’t need to suffer too much with the elements. The Ottawa Tulip Festival is an annual thank you from the Dutch government to Canada for having sheltered members of their royal family during the Second World War. Each year the Dutch government sends tens of thousands of tulip bulbs to be displayed in the parks of Ottawa. It makes for a spectacular display and a “must see” at some stage. Add it to your bucket list.

 Niagara Falls from the
Canadian side
A couple of weeks later, Julia and her three boys and us ventured out in our newly acquired eight seater KIA van to visit Niagara Falls to meet up with our long time East London friends Boots (Chris) and Allie (Alison) Horsfall. They were visiting their daughter Jenny, husband Jeff, and three grandchildren, who had moved recently from UK and are now doing ministry in Pennsylvania in the USA. We had agreed to rendezvous in Niagara Falls on the USA side for a couple of days. Unfortunately Elaine and Alex were unable to make it which was a pity as Jenny had been good friends of both Elaine and Julia in our pre Canadian days in East London, South Africa and they hadn’t seen each other for decades. For those who have not seen Niagara Falls, which they hadn’t, it is a very impressive sight, especially when viewed from the Canadian side, I should hasten to add. Us Canadians are typically known for our low key modesty, but hey Cher and I have enough of the brash South African still left in us that we can still flaunt it a bit. Boots and Allie were duly impressed with the “Canadian Falls”.


In the spirit of making hay while the sun shines, literally, and making the most of summer, we booked ourselves and the RV into Beavermeade Campsite again for a week at the end of July. Julia and her boys joined us for a few days and Elaine, Alex Sammy and Esther also spent some time with us. We love these memory making opportunities and Beavermeade is a great spot to do it in, combining, beautiful surroundings, lovely beach, the boating activity of the Trent Severn Waterway and a variety of parks complete with splash pads. What more could one want?


Grandad and Nanna with their full team of chiddles,
celebrating Canada 150. 
John, Sammy and Esther
dressed up for their cowboy
theme night at camp
Our next jaunt was to our annual family week at Fairhavens Christian Camp in early August.  2017 is the 150th anniversary of the founding of Canada, so we all got to wear our Canada 150 tee shirts. Our week at Fairhavens has become a tradition and for the first time ever we managed to have all three of our living units, mobile homes or our RV, all together in one space, where the grandchildren could play together and we could keep an eye on them. The kids are looked after in the mornings, and evenings, while the adults go to their chapel program, which makes for a nice break for everyone. We love to give the grandchildren these opportunities to bond and spend time together with their cousins. 


Canadian Country Cousins
2017 Collection
One of the things we did this year was to add a series of stories about the Canadian Country Cousins. We started this tradition in 1983 – 1985 when we lived in UK. We wanted to make sure that Elaine and Julia would remember who their cousins were, so Rob told the girls stories about the Country Cousins who got up to all kinds of adventures with their South African cousins on Uncle Nev’s (Rob’s brother) farm. These 35 year old stories have ended up on CD’s which currently provide endless entertainment to Elaine and Julia’s kids. So this year Rob started a Canadian Cousin’s series. Some of the characters, such as the Big Black Bull and the Cheeky Baboons, from South Africa have found their way to Canada. In the world of imagination, anything is possible. We made up a CD for the grandchildren of the 2017 edition of Canadian stories as Christmas presents for the two sets of children. Hopefully their children will listen to them one day!


Kerry, Lynne, Cher and Mom Tobin,
enjoying the good life in East London, S. Africa
No sooner did we finish our week at Fairhavens than Cheryl got word that her Mom was not doing well in South Africa. On the spur of the moment we decided that Cher should go and see Mom. Cher was on the plane that night and was gone for 2- 3 weeks, which left Rob high and dry watching our lawn guy cutting the grass each week. Fortunately Mom started to improve almost immediately, so Cher got to spend a couple of good weeks with sister Lynne and family along with Mom in good and improving shape. 


L. to R. Ed and Andrea Zak, Alice and John Chase, Cher
and Rob, Rose and Alan
Our final travel fling for the year was a September Fall Colors Cruise. The name of the cruise is a tribute to good marketing as there was nary a Fall color to be found. Being a couple of weeks early and primarily too far south didn’t help. We were joined by four other couples, my two brothers Neville and Alan along with their spouses Maureen and Rosemarie and Alice and John Chase and Ed and Andrea Zak. The cruise began in Quebec City and then went out to sea via the St. Lawrence waterway to Prince Edward Island, and then followed the Nova Scotia and New England coastlines down to New York, stopping in at about 10 different ports over 11 days. It was wonderful to visit so many ports that we have never seen. It was also great to meet up with our group every evening over dinner to swap notes on our days adventures. In addition we got some keen card playing going in our spare time. The on board evening entertainment was exceptional most nights. The three siblings and spouses ended our trip with a daylong train ride from New York to Montreal on the Adirondack Amtrack line. This was our last shot at seeing fall colors which once again was mainly a non-event. The funny part of this story is that both Alan and Neville are color blind, so even if there had been colors, they would not have seen them.  That pretty much completed our travels for the year, so life has been pretty staid and boring since then. 


Our cruise dinner group met every evening for
a debrief on the day's activities
Early in the year the tenant in our basement apartment had given us notice that she and her two sons were moving out. That gave us the nudge we needed to get our apartment up to scratch to meet all of the town’s fire and building code requirements to give us full and complete “legal” status,  before our next tenant moved in. We had been warned that this can be a hazardous exercise as between the Fire Department and Township Building Inspectors they can be picky to put it mildly and extreme pickiness converts in to costly dollars. I called the Chief Fire Officer to ask him where to start. He was a nice guy. His advice to me was “Rob, I am extremely busy, and don’t need any more work. Believe me you don’t want me to come and inspect your apartment, as my requirements will be stringent. Just do the best you can to make it safe and I’ll pretend this call never happened”. With advice like that, we decided to go with the spirit of the law, “make it safe” rather than get too bogged down with the letter of the law, which promised to be tedious and costly. We called in a contractor and did our best to accord with the safety regulations without going overboard. That cost us more than we had anticipated, but were pleased with the outcome before our new tenants moved in. Blow me down if in the Fall if we didn’t get a letter from the one and same Chief Fire Officer (CFO), saying that “it has come to my attention, that you are running an apartment in your basement and I need to come and inspect it prior to you applying to the Township for legal apartment status”. I nearly died. The CFO duly arrived to inspect and referred us to the township to get his recommended work done. The bottom line is that Rob has now developed what seems to be a good working relationship with the Building Inspector who is doing their best to minimize the additional work we need to do, seeing that we have already done a good job of trying to meet the spirit of the law. In January we are having to give our tenants a month’s free rent, and send them to live elsewhere for a month while we get the work done. It has not been a profitable year for the apartment rental side of the Cornish financial empire.

We continue on with our work of welcoming new immigrants to Canada. We have had three Syrian families join us in Port Perry over the last twelve months. This has been a combined churches and community project. Cher and I have joined two of the teams working with the families. It has been wonderfully satisfying to be part of helping these folk begin to rebuild their lives in this great country of Canada which has extended its helping hand to generations of immigrants who have fled the various unhappy circumstances which history has dished up to them. The husbands of all three families are now working, rent is being paid, driving licenses are being acquired, English spoken and kids settling into school well and in some cases excelling. As the local community has teamed up it is amazing what can be achieved. Each family is now well on the way to being integrated, contributing members of society.

We continue on at our local church Emmanuel Community Church. We both attend Sunday morning small groups before our Sunday morning services. Rob does Service Leading about once a month and Cher continues to serve on the Missions Committee which she has been part of for about twelve years now. Together we lead a Welcome Team and Committee, which exists to make newcomers welcome and encourage them to keep returning and become integrated members of our church family. We have some success with this, but never enough. Attracting and keeping young families is a major challenge. The future of the church looks bleak if we don’t solve this riddle both locally and nationally.

The official published book. It won't make
the bestseller list, but it was fun to do. 
In this, our first full year of retirement, Rob embarked on one of his bucket list items. He decided to write the memoirs of our pre-Canada exploits in Southern Africa, complete with photographs to liven things up a bit. He wrote it initially as a blog, completing 17 chapters in all, which took us up to the time of our departure for Canada in January of 1991. Each blog/chapter took at least 10 hours to complete, so it turned into a major project. The intention all along, was that this would be a gift to our girls and families to remember us by and the plan was to turn it into a book which they would be given as a Christmas gift. Turning the blog into a format suitable for publishing as a book was a pile of work. We now have it figured out, so call us first if you want us to step you through the process. For those wishing to read our pre Canada story it can be found at www.robwithcher.blogspot.ca. The entries from April to November 2017 contain Chapters 1 to 17. The 200 page published book is too expensive to make copies of. 

Rob is trying to maintain his fitness level. Due to time spent away from Port Perry, his local gym membership expired and never got renewed. He has now signed up for a membership in Markham, where Elaine and Alex live so that he can attend with Alex. For the first time he has signed up with a personal coach, who Rob feels bears a remarkable likeness to Attila the Hun, a man low in empathy and lacking in any grace or mercy. Despite this, Rob is already noticing an uptick in adoring looks from his none too easily impressed wife.

All that remains is for us to give an update on our kids and rapidly growing grandchildren who are the delight of our lives.

Elaine, Alex, Sammy and Esther

Elaine continues to teach Bible in the Middle and High School at People’s Christian Academy. She loves her teaching and particularly her subject. It gives her great joy to be helping her students understand the major themes of the Bible, giving them a foundation for life which most Christians take a lifetime to acquire. She is busy to the extreme and we spend quite a bit of our time each week, helping her to keep up with the treadmill demands of teaching, house management, kids and husband.

Alex, Elaine and kids
Esther, Elaine and Sammy all go
off to school together - soon to be
joined by Alex again. 
Alex has been at home since his second round of radiation in the Spring. During the year he has begun to weaken on his left side, which slows him down when walking. Currently he is on a new drug, not yet recognized in Ontario, which is making him feel stronger and more confident. Because of this Alex is now feeling well enough to return to his School Chaplain role for part of each day from January onward. We spend a day or two most weeks taking Alex to various appointments and Rob is now going to the gym with him weekly, where he works hard at keeping his muscle tone up. 

Sammy and Esther on their
way to Awana, their weekly
Bible Club
We sleep over often in Alex and Elaine’s basement where we are very comfortable and have enjoyed the extra family time that has given us all.  One of the side benefits is that I occasionally have been assigned the task of overseeing Sammy and Esther’s piano practicing. They make it look easy so I have decided to revive a long lost opportunity and am hoping to start to learn the piano along with them with Elaine as my coach and teacher. We’ll see how this New Year’s resolution pans out over time.

Sammy and Esther are both doing well at school and maturing in a lovely way. They are both diligent students and destined for academic prowess I’m guessing. They are kept busy between school commitments, soccer, swimming, and ballet involvements and so on. Sammy loves to read and showed me his 25 library books that he had borrowed recently.

Julia, Chris, John, James, and Peter

L. to R. Chris, James, Julia, Peter, John
Julia made a momentous decision this year to homeschool their children. Our provincial government, always on the leading edge of “forward, progressive thinking” has recently introduced a sex education program which makes me want to turn in my grave, and I’m not even there yet! Needless to say, we are very supportive of her having taken this step, although it is a major commitment on her part and not for the faint hearted. We too are part of this project and contribute in a variety of ways most weeks. Julia, whilst stretched is enjoying this and, by our estimates, doing a wonderful job of it.

Chris continues on with his work with a local software company which is owned by large USA corporation. There has been a Christmas takeover in the last week by an opposition company, which has led to what we all hope and pray will be a limited staff reduction, which Chris was fortunate to escape. Chris, like his boys is an avid Lego nut and they all spend many a happy hour in the bedroom of their house that is dedicated to Lego projects!
John - sweet smile and
keen mind

John (5), continues to be a lively, interested and full of beans little boy. He is fascinated by the world of nature and is most often found with his nose glued to the ground observing his latest insect discovery. We have a large box of rubber dinosaurs and John is an authority on each of them, being able to name them and tell us what they eat and how they fight and move around.

James - Captain America???
James (4) lives in a world of imaginary characters and super heroes. Without TV and movies on the topic, he has somehow acquired a great depth of knowledge of these characters. He is most often found dressed up in a costume portraying one of his heroes. His favorite costume is his cowboy outfit, complete with hat and boots. On our trip to Niagara Falls earlier in the year, Julia was requested on numerous occasions by tourists if they could take a photo of James.

Peter - strong man with a
big smile
Peter (2), is a force of nature. Despite being almost two years younger than him, Peter is almost the same size and weight as James. He has been slow to speak, but fast to smile. He is beginning to speak now, but has no problem in following the conversation and insert himself into the action. He will often walk by one of his brothers and give them a playful “nudge” which leaves them sprawling, followed by one of his mischievous giggles. His most recent notorious exploit, was to upend about 15 of his cousin, Esther’s jigsaw puzzles into a pile on the floor and then do his best to mix them all up. That caused a bit of gnashing of teeth, by parents and grandparents.

Our final word on 2017 is for us to wish all of you God’s richest blessings in the upcoming year. In whatever life brings you, we wish you strength, patience, courage and gratitude.

With much love,

Rob and Cheryl

December 2017