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Activities
in previous years: Because we enjoy traveling, we hosted young travelers from Europe, S. America and Asia who stayed here while they visited Canada. We coached those with working holiday visas through the process of landing a job in Toronto: we helped them to write résumés and interview for jobs, and find their way around the city. While they stayed with us, I taught them to grow organic food in my vegetable garden, and they got to eat whatever they helped us grow. We share some of the vegetables we've grow with a local food bank, so gardening also becomes volunteer work; and Deborah volunteered every Monday at the same food bank, sorting and distributing food to clients. We participated, through our yacht club, in giving sailboat rides to intellectually disabled adults, and to Big Brothers and Big Sisters and their "littles". We used our 27' sailboat and previously owned ones to sail together and take friends out on Lake Ontario, and sometimes went away on weekend cruises to other clubs around the lake. We towed a smaller sailboat to the North Channel one summer, and to the Florida Keys for our first winter in retirement, where we lived aboard until the warm weather returned to Ontario. All that came to an end with the Covid19 lock down and pandemic. We converted our spare room into an office and orchid nursery, and Deb's fitness room. I got a bit infirm as I transitioned into my seventies, and sold my sailboat to avoid a disaster "at sea". I turned activities I enjoyed, and my expertise, into volunteer work. I've been a musician and music teacher, so we organized ukulele and guitar groups for people who want to learn those instruments and share their new passions. For two Christmases, I performed Christmas music at Women's shelters with a collection of other musicians. I performed with my jazz combo and other groups for charities and retirement homes. We enjoyed "voluntourism": "volunteering is the rent we pay for the space we occupy" We were active members of the Couchsurfing, Workaway and Helpx communities. We enjoyed staying with over fifty hosts around the world, and hosted many travelers of all ages each summer in our cottage here in Scarborough. We collected 90 references on our Couchsurfing profile, from guests, hosts and other people in the CS network; another 35 references as Helpx and Workaway hosts. Our young international visitors helped me in the garden and with sailboat upkeep for a couple of hours per day in return for their lodging. During January and February of 2014, we spent seven weeks teaching free conversational English in Nha Trang, Vietnam, to an eager and fun group of young adults and teenagers. After we returned to Canada we continued to coach Vietnamese students by email and through collaborative google docs, helping them to write their essays and résumés in English, proofing and offering corrective suggestions and helping them to prepare for IELTS exams. We worked at a remote Andean village school in Ecuador for five weeks in Jan/Feb 2013. We did inspections and wrote reports on Alma Foundation projects in Peru in Feb/March 2013. We continued to assist with their accounting after we returned home to Toronto. We led a team of Liaison Officers for Tall Ships that visited Toronto Harbour for a week in June of 2013, as we had also done previously in 2010. Our designated ship this time was the Peacemaker. We spent one full week on a Habitat for Humanity project, helping to build a townhouse complex in Scarborough. I compiled newsletters for the Angolan Memorial Scholarship Fund, then Deb and I served as treasurer for a number of years. I chaired the investment committee for a decade; now the investment committee has disbanded and I do the entire task myself. When we retired, Deb and I designated our retirement gifts from our colleagues to be in the form of donations split between that charity and the Racecourse School in Kitwe, Zambia. Colleagues donated a handsome sum. Through 2012 I drove cancer patients to treatment one full day per week for the Canadian Cancer Society; and because I'm O negative, I've been a regular blood donor. That fall Deborah interviewed applicants to be recipients of an annual Christmas hamper program run out of our local community centre: food, toiletries, clothing, bedding, toys for children, etc. I've built websites, published newsletters and organized recreational leagues for my tennis and sailing clubs. I created the spring and fall newsletters for Highland Yacht Club for number of years, and served on the COM as Communications Director. In younger years I managed a summer youth hostel for young travelers, and volunteered at a summer children's camp for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. I played piano, and my bands and choirs played and sang for school fundraisers. I played trumpet in an 18 piece swing band and in a 7 piece jazz standards combo which performed at retirement homes and nursing homes. Deb and I also performed in the retirement home as a sing along duo with ukulele and keys. We performed in our basement studio for live-streamed fundraisers during the Covid19 lock down. Deborah fostered litters of kittens from the Toronto Humane Society for several years. |
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