Today would have been my grandparents’ 65th wedding anniversary, except sadly, my grandfather passed away almost two years ago. My Nana and Papa were the rock of our family, holding everything together, and providing a life-long example for us all to follow. I miss him.

My Papa’s mother died when he was 12, and that was basically the end of his formal education. He got a job cleaning up in a sock and stocking factory, and when his shift ended, he’d hang around and watch everyone else work, because he didn’t really have anything else to do. That way, he learned how to fix all the machines in the factory, and was soon promoted to do that kind of work.

Years later, after he was married, he went to work at the Canadian General Tower, a plastics development firm in Cambridge, working on their machines. There, he was lucky enough to get a personality assessment, which showed that he was incredibly intelligent and quick to learn. The company decided to send him to the States for two years of further education, so that he could become a development engineer — which left my Nana at home with two little girls.

My Nana was pretty plucky herself, and while Papa was away, she decided she needed to be able to use the family car. So she put my three-year-old mother in the back seat, and put my baby Aunt Karen in a bassinet on the floor of the front seat. Then, having never driven before in her life, she took the car downtown, took her driver’s test, and won herself a driver’s license. That’s some spunk, right there.

When my Papa came home, he went to work as a plastics engineer (ironically, my other grandfather also worked at CGT as an engineer at the same time, but they only met once before their kids decided to get married many years later). After a few years he and two other men decided to start their own business, Aclo Compounders.

Aclo was a company that specialised in taking colourless plastic pellets and adding custom-mixed dyes to create coloured pellets. Other companies then used these coloured pellets to create plastic parts, like car dashboards or toy dump trucks. The dye mixtures were their chief intellectual property and the scientific work went in there. After many years — I was a teenager at this time — the original three founders decided to sell the company.

My Papa was immensely popular at the company and has many, many stories about times that he helped out a family, or took care of one of his employees, or made everyone laugh with his jokes. When he was leaving the workers in the plant all got together to get him a farewell gift.

They had some of the pellets from the company custom pressed into a toilet seat.

It was kind of a weird gift but well fitting his sense of humour. My Nana and Papa installed it in their downstairs powder room. I loved that seat — I’d never seen anything like it, so colourful, and also so lovely and smooth on your behind.

A few years ago, when my Papa got very sick, he started to give away some of his belongings to family members who would like them. All I asked for was the toilet seat. It’s a fabulous toilet seat. But it also reminds me of my Papa — his humour, and his amazing entrepreneurial spirit.

After selling Aclo, he went on to found another plastics company, Canuck Compunders, in Cambridge. He was head of the Rotary Club for Ontario and the northern U.S., he founded CrimeStoppers, he started the Probus club for men, and another for women, in his hometown. My Nana was at his side and helped him with all these endeavours over the whole 60+ years of their marriage.

Happy anniversary, Nana. I know you miss Papa as much as we all do.