I think we look great!

I received this beauty in the mail this week. I think we all look damn good!

Does someone want to take on the naming task?

Enjoy :0

Remembering Father Belyea

Remembering Father Belyea   (August 14, 1927 – February 22, 2008)

Father Belyea.

To this day, his name fills me with such admiration and takes me back to a time when he became an influential person in my life. It was September 1970 - the beginning of our 4^th year in nursing at U of T. When faced with the challenge of finding two required arts electives that would fit into our highly structured timetable, many of us had the good fortune of registering in Father Belyea’s “Religion 304: Theology in Literature” course. It was a long walk to St. Michael’s College on the other side of campus where classes were held, but by October, the trek from the School of Nursing on St. George Street, across Queen’s Park to St. Michael’s College felt like a welcome escape into another world.

Father Belyea had a presence. His smile would light up the room. He was charismatic but in an unpretentious way. His lectures were mesmerizing and thought-provoking, and he delivered them with great enthusiasm. At a time in our early twenties when we were looking to understand the world and to find meaning in life, Father Belyea seemed to be someone who had figured it out. If anyone could help us make sense of the confusion, it would be him!

Keeping up with the demanding reading list of books for the course was a struggle, but falling behind wasn’t an option. He introduced me to writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and James Joyce. Father Belyea would deliver his lecture as he walked back and forth, back and forth, at the front of the room, holding the book we were studying under his arm or in his hand. He would read key passages – just a line or two – and then perhaps repeat it as we pondered the concept he was addressing. The point was always to go a little deeper. He made us think. He asked questions, offering them to us for our consideration, without providing answers. He taught us a great deal about humanity and the human spirit. We learned about kindness, love, hope, acceptance, compassion and forgiveness. We listened to, and considered, the opinions of others, even if they were different from our own. Sometimes, we challenged those opinions. We learned that simple words can have a profound meaning and that comfort could be found in them. We strived to find the goodness in people, in each other. Father Belyea believed that we could make a difference in the world and the lives of others. He made us want to try.

Here are some of his unforgettable quotes from lectures:

Birds sing sweeter than books tell how. (e. e. cummings)

The greatest and rarest art of all is the art of being human.

If you’re bored, you’re boring.

The degree to which we isolate ourselves reflects the amount of fear we have towards other  people.

Climb Mount Everest: love someone who doesn’t love you.

The people we should love the most are those who love us enough to tell us the truth about ourselves.

              A person has to forgive himself before he can forgive others.

              The state of the soul is truly manifested in the eyes.

              Beware of youth who are too sensible.

              The artist sees through his eyes and states the profound, the obvious.

The experience of living can teach one how to think, but thinking can never teach one how to live.

There is an element of sadness that is generated from every thing of beauty, for example, a  sunset. Man forever longs for the infinite.

Father Belyea enjoyed having nursing students in his class. Perhaps the reason for this was that we, too, had chosen a caring profession; that he knew some of the more difficult aspects of life we’d already been witness to as nursing students, or would be confronting in our careers that lay ahead. As we became nurses, he had something valuable to impart to us.

I believe that the way in which I practised nursing over the years was influenced by the teachings of Father Belyea. I continue to live each day with meaning. And when I listen to birds singing their hearts out, I think of Father Belyea and smile. They truly do sing sweeter than books tell how.

     JoAnne (Garland) Haynes

The beginning of the Bios - Ginny Robinette Jennings

Here's a great example of what we can share with each other. After reminiscing with so many of you at the reunion, I can tell these stories will be wonderful - and yes people do want to hear what you've been doing for 45 years!

Thanks Ginny for getting us started.

 

Hello all! 

I am so sorry that I am missing this reunion-WOW! I can’t believe it has been 45 years since we all graduated.

I am going to fill you in on what I have been doing for the past 45 years, give or take….

After graduation, I worked for 3 years as a Public Health Nurse at the Borough of York, teaching Prenatal Classes, doing postnatal visits to new mothers and their babies and assisting in a Catholic School as a School Nurse a few days a week. As a school nurse, I was asked to assist in teaching some classes on Health which included information about puberty, changes in our bodies as we get older and some basic sex education information. I worked in an area near Annette and Jane where there were many Maltese families, most of whom had never told their daughters about menstruation…. I was kept very busy.

In 1974, I had my daughter, Tory in August and from that point became a stay at home Mom. Two and a half years later came our son, Graeme. In 1977, my husband Rob was transferred to Calgary- we gathered up everyone, Graeme was just 3 months old and moved to Cowtown.

It was a huge adjustment, uprooting, leaving my mother (my father had died my last year of Nursing School), my aunt to whom I was very close and my brother taking off to the other side of Canada. My life became very busy, meeting new friends, getting involved with the children and their schools. I even became a “Brown Owl” for Tory’s Brownie group. These years with the kids were busy as also for most of you.

I went through a great deal of turmoil after my marriage to Rob ended. I worked for a while in the travel business for a travel agency in charge of finding new corporate accounts. At the time, one of my friends in our neighbourhood, who was a Broker Owner at a RE/MAX Office nearby, suggested that I take the Real Estate course emphasizing that “nurses make great realtors”. So…off I went in an entirely new direction in life. I was a member of a Breakfast Club, members were in all different businesses and we shared ides and experiences. The Breakfast Club encouraged me to go into real estate and I also had lots of support from my close friends. So like the Nike saying “Just Do It” and “Do It Now” became my mottos in life and have applied to me these last 30 years. I enjoyed working in residential real estate. In 1990, I completed my first and only Marathon in Honolulu after taking a course at the University of Calgary “How to Run Your First Marathon”. I met some wonderful people during those 5 months.

I was a single parent for 4 years but that did not stop me from traveling and having exciting new experiences…I went to Club Med a few times in Mexico and St Lucia, travelled alone to Australia in 1990. The kids were growing up and I was fortunate to meet my future husband, Tim Casey skiing in Whitefish, Montana just after I ran the Honolulu Marathon. We married in 1994 and he became an amazing step Dad to Tory and Graeme. Tory was off at University the first year we were together but Tim had a great influence on Graeme, who was in Grade 10 that year. Tim was a Commercial realtor and it really helped him understand the nature of my business, which kept me very busy on weekends and evenings.

Being in our own businesses, we were able to take lots of time off. Tim and I started to travel extensively after we met. Trips included a train trip through India, flying throughout Australia in a friend’s Cessna 210 for a month, Scuba and Snorkelling in the Maldives, visiting Sri Lanka, sailing in the Caribbean, traveling to Turkey, a trip to Peru and Machu Picchu and most recently a trip to the South Pacific including New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, Vanuatu and the French Polynesian Islands. As you read this now, we are on a trip to Scotland, Ireland and England from May 27 until June 18.

I retired from real estate 5 years ago and at that time, we sold our condo in Calgary and moved to our modest cottage at Gull Lake, just northwest of Red Deer, Alberta. At the same time we bought a house in Fort Myers in southwest Florida, close to Sanibel Island on the Gulf of Mexico side of Florida. My brother has a house there and our children live and work in Toronto so it is easy for them to come and visit. This past winter our kids and 2 grandkids came to visit us twice at Christmas and Easter. Florida has become a real family home and it is wonderful to spend time with my brother and sister in law also. We play golf, tennis, bicycle and spend time at the beach along with socializing with some wonderful new friends that we have met.

All the very best to you all! Have a blast (in the past!) I am including some photos. A caveat…I am allergic to hair dye, hence the hair colour!!!

Cheers…a toast to you all!!

Ginny

Ginny Robinette Jennings

 

 

More photos - from Robin