It took five people to raise me.

My parents were augmented by my dad’s three sisters, who never married and lived together their entire lives. The family called them “the girls,” and when my last aunt died at 91 (the first born out of seven and the last to die), they were still “the girls” at the funeral.

These women were ahead of their time, the core of our family, and in the 1950s and ’60s, they had solid careers. Two worked for Alberta Government Telephones, and the youngest, Jessie, became a teacher, a principal and then a University of Calgary graduate in her late 50s.

Jessie was the first of the three to take driving lessons and bought a baby blue 1955 Chevy. The family was thrilled for her, although as the years went by, we never really wanted our children to ride with her.

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