When I was a child, there were so many doctors in my life that my mother used to tell me that I should take up the study of medicine.

Of course having to quit school in Grade 10 put a crimp in things academic.

I had a great aunt, who lived to be 105 years old. She was one of four sisters of my paternal grandmother, Cecilia. All of them lived past 90.

My great aunt, after selling a couple of farms belonging to her and her husband, my Great Uncle Art, offered to pay my way through the University of Arizona if I could finish my Grade 12 through correspondence school, which would have gained me entrance.

Didn’t do it of course; I discovered beer, motorcycles and the desert, pretty much in that order.

It was Dr. Lee in Tillsonburg who diagnosed the emphysema that had sent me there. For years he had been........

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