Rose's Cantina

Grandpa Crown and my mother Vera In the spring of 1919, Bertie Crown discovered she was pregnant with her second child. It must have been a wonderful time for the Crowns. The world had survived a devastating war, which killed nearly 67,000 Canadians, and they had also battled through the Spanish flu which killed 50,000. As they looked towards expanding their family, they hoped by the time Bertie gave birth, it would be smooth sailing ahead. On February 28, 1920, Bertie went into labour. A few hours later, her baby was dead and she was bleeding out. Three days later, the former Bertie Becken died leaving her husband, Loyal Crown, a 28-year-old widower, with a three-year-old child. She and her infant daughter are buried in Victoria Lawn Cemetery in St. Catharines.  A few years earlier, Mary Ina O'Neill received the terrible news that her husband  Herbert had been killed in Etapes, France in an enemy raid on the hospital where he was recuperating from gunshot woun...

#137675083 / gettyimages.com I grew up under the care and tutilege of a single mother. We lived on mother's allowance, a more gentle term for welfare, until I was 16 when my mom went to back to work in a sweltering factory making sweaters for rich people. This is not a sob story. I never felt poor, not really, because I lived in a country that took care of its own. I knew Canada could give me a better future, a better life than my mom had. I just knew it. I didn't need any government advertising to tell me it was so. Because I lived in Canada, and I was poor, I qualified for student loans and grants, lots of them. I also got a bursary from the Royal Canadian Legion in the name of my father Russell who served his country with distinction before PTSD took his life in 1957. My brothers Bob and Gary got those loans and bursaries, too. Bob went on to a successful career as a financial manager and motivational speaker. Gary became a public school principal and, ...

My recent close encounters with modern socialized medicine have not been horrible, so I've become somewhat emboldened to embrace the system. But in my own way. I have need of a number of medical interventions, specifically tests. I haven't had a physical for three years, and I haven't had a proper physical since the kids were small, nearly twenty years ago. My current sawbones, The Worst Family Doctor in Ontario, is adverse to looking at my vagina so I don't think his physical exams really count. When I complained to the Ontario College of Family Physicians, I was informed that if I wanted to take my complaint further, they would provide my name to the doctor who would promptly fire me a a patient. So I didn't follow through. That's right, I chickened out. What's most maddening is that he's next to useless because he cancels his appointments all the time. I guess it's because his wife's a baby doctor. I'm hoping it's not bec...