Motorcycle accident (301/365)

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October 28, 2015 – Looks like Dad didn’t have the best start to his UBC education back in the late 1950’s.

I never told my Dad that I got my motorcycle licence and bought a bike. If he’d been better we could have had a discussion about it. I told Mom about the riding, and she was horrified. She was horrified when I got the scooter, and even more so when I got the motorcycle, but she accepted it eventually, and Dad would have too. He knew that Kirk had a motorcycle when we first met, that we brought it to Vancouver when we moved here, and that we rode two-up all over the place. I know he didn’t care for the fact, but he accepted it.

But I never told him I started to ride on my own. I never told him, partly because I knew he’d had a bad accident that left him hearing impaired. But it had more to do with the fact that when I started to ride he was already into cognitive decline and I didn’t want to add to the anxiety that he was already struggling with. I didn’t hide it out of fear, I hid it out of kindness.

Kirk and I were poring over some boxes of old photos, and what a trip it was. Many were from before I was born, things like our house being built, Mom and Dad in their high school years, our old cats and dogs, fishing out at the cabin, old family friends….and fabulously awful photos of my brother and I.

And then I found this in an old photo album given to Dad by Uncle Harvey, sometime in the 1950’s. That little newspaper clipping was tucked in there, but it has no year. Deductive reasoning tells me that it’s before Mom and Dad were married, so pre-1960. I think Dad graduated from high school in 1956, so it’s somewhere in between there, perhaps 1957 then, because I don’t think he took any time off (intentionally) between high school and University.

It’s a guess.

But it’s also an interesting little piece of history.

I went to UBC (and still work there), I ride a motorcycle, I hope to never have a similar accident though, I don’t need to replicate that part.