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In response to relentless pestering from your webmaster, Sue has finally found time to sit down and to scan some snapshots for the site.
The technical difficulties, mentioned earlier in the preview here, have not been overcome. A deluge of delicious images has just arrived and cannot be permitted to sit about mouldering pending mere technical doings. Read on and enjoy Sue's life of accomplishment and adventure with her!
Hi everybody! Remember me?
I arrived at Oak Bay High in December of Grade 10, fresh off the boat from Germany, feeling very self conscious in my German clodhopper shoes, turquoise tights, skirt and handknit fairisle sweater. Never mind that those clothes are now all the rage...they certainly weren't then, at least not in Victoria. And I backcombed my hair, which nobody had heard of yet, which caused astonishment and incomprehension.
Judy Vaio was kind enough to share her locker with me, and Trudy Johnstone and Ethel Bonner walked me back and forth to school, thank goodness, as it was so dark after school I would have gotten lost. Later on I hung out a lot with Karen Bradford and Dianne Carpenter, and also Dierdre Humphries and Valerie Lawrie, but I've sadly lost touch with all of them.
Because my father was in the military, I lived a nomadic life, but I did stay in Victoria longer than anywhere else as I had started my higher education by the time Dad was posted back to Germany, so I was left behind to finish my nursing. Once that was done, I was supposed to meet them in Germany and work at the British Military Hospital there but instead I ran off to Australia with John Knape, where we married and lived for 14 years on and off. We had our son Drew there, and I continued my education there, receiving a scholarship to become a nurse educator, and later another one to go to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario to do my Masters Degree in Health Sciences.
Not long after returning to Australia I decided to come home to Canada to live. By then my Father had retired to Clarksburg, Ontario, and most of my brothers and sisters had returned from their own world travels to live in Ontario. It seems we were all waiting for our parents to become a problem to their children. They are forever globe trotting and having great adventures, while we implore them to act their age.
After nearly 20 years together John and I parted company. Two years ago John died. We had been divorced for 16 years by then, and I had been remarried for two years, but it was a devastating blow none the less. The next year my second marriage ended, and I now live a peaceful life with three cats in the tiny hamlet of Honeywood, inland from the Georgian Bay. My son Drew and his life partner Jenn live in Toronto and are expecting my first grandchild in August. Drew is also an RN, although his career has veered off into management consulting.
The difference between dogs and cats:
A dog thinks: "You put a roof over my head and feed me; you are a god."
A cat thinks: "You put a roof over my head and feed me, I am a god."!
I have had many wonderful experiences as an advanced practitioner in nursing, mainly as a result of having lived so long. I've been a teacher, an audio-visual producer, an administrator of home nursing services, a manager of mental health services, a midwife and now a semi-retired nurse manager in a nursing home where I can be one of the younger generation again!
I am very grateful for the richness of my life so far, including:
The many adventures I have had, travelling in some 40 countries. Highlights include:
¤getting lost in the jungle in Belize,
¤animals I have known while living in the middle of a National Park in Australia
¤encounters with barracuda in the waters of Costa Rica,
.
The incredible work experiences I have had. Highlights include:
¤ delivering babies in elevators, bathtubs, corridors and midair;
¤ coaxing recluses to: open the door after 10 years of solitude, change their clothes on an annual basis, cut 8" long fingernails, remove decaying dead pets from the bedroom;
¤ unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate people who committed suicide by: hanging from a towel holder, shooting off the side of the head, licking poisonous toads, jumping from tall buildings
¤the many children I have held and loved and those who I have never met and fostered.
¤the many old people I have held and loved and journeyed with to the edge of the beyond...
.
The depths of passion I have felt. Highlights include:
¤ the joy of giving birth,
¤ the despair of losing my closest friends,
¤ the anguish of betrayal,
¤ the ecstasy of intimate love,
¤ the bliss of forgiveness,
¤ the awe inspired by nature and all of creation,
¤ the overwhelming gratitude for serendipitous events such as this spiderwoman finding that webmaster's website,
¤The labyrinths of my mind and soul that I have travelled in my lifelong voyage to self discovery.
.
My satisfying achievements with hobbies and recreational activities. Highlights include:
¤ learning how to attract and befriend reptilian visitors,
¤ how to paint love into your portraits,
¤ swim as if you had been born in the water,
¤ canoe and kayak as if you didn't care whether you tipped or not,
¤ how to survive the spectator sport of rock climbing without accidentally biting down while your heart is in your mouth,
¤ how to win at pool,
¤ how to win at poker,
¤ how to spend one whole year playing hearts in the UVic SUB without winning even once,
¤ and how to avoid getting your wetsuit shat upon by monkeys when on a diving expedition.
I can't wait to see what happens next!
Sue Buxton
This seems to be the only other picture I have of Karen. I met up with her again in Montreal, but no photos. Then lost her again.
No wonder my parents despaired of me!!
[The years have not been kind to the colours in this print of a great photograph. The blues and greens were almost all gone making the couple look as though their wedding had taken place during a simoom. The worst of the orange is gone but the flesh tones require work. Your webmaster will return to correcting them. Sue may be pestered yet again, this time for a more detailed scan!]
This, what can be seen of it, is the second car I had in Australia. A 1948 Ford Pilot. They never reached North America but what a beauty it was! This is 1969; as you can see, not only the bikinis were tiny in those days in Australia, so were the minis.
Do you remember the 'sixties as happy times, fellows? Now you know why: look at the length of the girls' skirts.
Angel of, ahh; oh yes, Mercy!
This was taken on an expedition to the Great Barrier Reef. I was fortunate to be able to join some friends who were founding fathers of the Queensland Underwater Research Group and thus able to obtain permission to camp on an uninhabited coral island and do some diving. I went along as nurse/decoration. It was amazing to watch the giant green turtles lay their eggs and we were so excited to be there when they hatched. I have a poor quality image of the mother to follow.
Oh yeah, this is the nurse's uniform specified in Australian medical practice, is it? It would be a reasonable conjecture to suppose that those big, healthy Australian scientists headed for a sunny dessert island found Sue, ahh, suited for the trip beyond a mere nurse's degree! It is also a reasonable conjecture that when she appeared in this uniform, they left off studying scaly old sea turtles. It's much more likely that they turned around as she paraded along the beach in this attire and reviewed her undoubted qualifications.
The captions says: "1970 Visit to the edge of Canada".
'How do you like them veils, mon?' The only photo I have of myself as Sister Buxton, with my sister friends.
Well, this mon likes them a lot (Sue has vacationed in the Caribbean, see below.). Patients the world over, at least the male ones, would heal up a whole lot faster if their nursies rustled about them in crisp clean uniforms and either veils like this or in those nurse hats they receive at graduation in Canada and the U.K.
(For those not exposed to 'Straaulian culture and language, the expression "Sister" is the honorific applied to a nurse. An Australian man arriving in North America must take care when addressing a nurse here lest he be taken for a wise guy and get himself into trouble!)
This one is especially for you John. You made an earlier, self disparaging remark about your Anglia. This was my first car in Australia.
The reference here is to an antiquated Ford Anglia referred to in recent correspondence with Sue. It was used by the webmaster for transport up to Uvic. For the first half of a term, Sue received a ride in that old Anglia from the nurses' residence of Jubilee Hospital on Richmond Road up to a night Psychology course which we were both attending in the old Young Building at Uvic. ("Tolman" was the surname of the instructor of that course, by the way, a fine name indeed for a Psych. prof. to have especially since he was a strict operant conditioning guy!)
(Some at Uvic may recall the webmaster out in the parking lot after classes cranking that old girl by hand. There wasn't anything wrong with the self starter though the battery was feeble. The self starter worked fine but, hey, self starters were for girls or for wusses who worried about having a thumb taken off or breaking an arm. Four cylinders? No manual spark advance? No problem. Real men cranked their cars into life. The same applies to motorcycles. Indeed a very litmus and bellwether of the moral decay of North American manhood is the failure these days to use the machine's kick starter!)
It seems all my photos are of me in or by the water...could it be because of my wardrobe or am I never anywhere else? This is Balmoral Beach in Sydney after dark (feeding time for the sharks but I was so hot and bulky I had to float or perish). No one else before Demi Moore had ever shown their beautiful pregnant shape that I know of....this photo was stolen, taken without my permission and is now one of my favourites.
This is the first photograph of Drew. As he appears here, he is minus one day old. He will show up again farther down the page and later in life!
This one proves I can keep my clothes on but I can't stay out of the water! I revisited my old haunts after a few months spent travelling in New Zealand.
This big, handsome chap now in academic regalia we met earlier. He was just about to burst upon the world then and that, really, is just what he is about to do in this photograph, too! Here is Sue's son, Drew, having just been granted a B.Sc.(N.)
Just look at that huge smile on Mummy's face! Drew is going to put it right back on there again this Fall [2003] when he propels Sue into grannyhood.
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