MGordon_MD
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Oct 24, 2008, 12:37 PM
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By Michael Gordon
It was a lovely Sunday morning in late June in Toronto, and I was out for a shorter than usual cycle. I got onto the Don trail at Finch Avenue, just a few blocks from my home, with the intention of cycling down to one of the coffee shops on my North York path. There, I would have a coffee and read my book – a habit I developed years ago to combine exercise and reading enjoyment.
At the intersection of Leslie Street and Sheppard Avenue, two older women on bicycles were awaiting the light change with me.
One asked, “Is the path still closed at Queen Street?”
“Yes, it’s a real shame, as getting to the Beaches or downtown is not as easy, since it now requires a lot of on-road riding, which I don’t like,” I answered.
They agreed, the light changed and off we went, only to meet up again just above York Mills Road. “We’re going to the Tim Hortons around the corner,” they told me.
“I would love to join you if I can sit with you and chat,” I replied.
“Sure.”
Over coffee, Doris and Anne revealed that they were both 73 years old. Although they rode bikes as kids and Anne had ridden during the war in Ireland, which she recounted in a lovely, lilting Irish accent, they took up cycling for recreation just a few years ago. They were part of a larger group of about 12 women, mostly in their age group.
They often cycled together in varying sized groups. A number of them, including Anne and Doris, took long trips to destinations as far away as Ireland, France, Vermont and, most recently, Holland, which they enthusiastically agreed was one of the best. “It was flat, beautiful and cycle-friendly.”
They slept on a barge that transported their luggage – and when necessary their bikes – from one part of the country to the next, a real treat which they shared with about 50 other international cycling enthusiasts of all ages, including a few older than them.
We shared stories, as I too had cycled in Holland and Vermont and have contemplated some European jaunts now that I have some more flexibility in my work schedule.
We went from cycling stories to Ireland stories, which I introduced by noting that while studying medicine in Scotland, I did a month-long external medical rotation in 1963 in Northern Ireland’s Londonderry.
I recounted a pre-“troubles” conversation I had had with an ophthalmologist whose outpatient clinic I was assigned to. While examining a nine-year-old boy with a squint, the ophthalmologist asked, “So what does your father do?” He determined that the boy’s father was on welfare and the boy had eight siblings.
The physician looked at me, and in front of the lad, said, “Now you see the trouble with Ireland. I am paying for his father to be on the ‘dole’ [welfare] and have as many kids as he wants, while I work to pay their way.”
What an eye-opener to the world of Irish society and politics that was. The terrible fighting is said to have officially started six years later, in 1969, when 67-year-old Francis McCloskey was killed by a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer.
Anne, Doris and I parted ways, having had an engaging, mutually warm and enlightening encounter. I will follow one of the cycle trip tips they gave me and hope to see them again on the cycle paths. Just keep cycling, even as you age. It is good for the body and the soul.
This article previously appeared in The Canadian Jewish News
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Dr. Michael Gordon is Medical Program Director, Palliative Care Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System in Toronto, Canada and Professor of Medicine, at the University of Toronto. He is co-author with Bart Mindszenthy of Parenting Your Parents.
Parenting Your Parents is available in bookstores and online at: Indigo-Chapters, Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is available in a US edition: Parenting Your Parents: Support Strategies for Meeting the Challenge of Aging in America.
For bulk orders email info@dundurn.com. Call: 416-214-5544 or Fax: 416-214-5556
Dr. Gordon is the author of the engaging memoir Brooklyn Beginnings: A Geriatrician's Odyssey, published by I-Universe.
Brooklyn Beginnings is available in bookstores and online at: Indigo-Chapters, Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and I-Universe
Visit Dr. Michael Gordon's website.
(This post was edited by MGordon_MD on Oct 24, 2008, 12:45 PM)
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