Our granddaughter, on her way to fifteen years of age, mirrors the age her grandparents were when we first met. We represented the first wave of Canadian-born children of the first-quarter 20th Century Jewish immigrants. Most fortunate for us our parents, for whatever reasons decided to depart their European origins, for we escaped the fate of six million Jews for whom the Holocaust became their lasting memorial.

I believe that young people today, living in Canada, receive an education superior to that which we received. Speaking solely of the traditional 3-Rs. Throw in science and geography and social studies. They are more socially aware but in a frivolous sense; we had a more global, international awareness born of overhearing our parents' and their friends' frantically concerned conversations of what was occurring in Europe, during a time of international conflagration.

Today's youngsters have fewer concerns, accustomed as they are to living in an egalitarian, pluralistic-responsive society, despite the constant impingement and bombardment of the news of conflicts elsewhere, even those with which Canada is in some measure engaged. It is the superfluous, the engagement with celebrity, music, entertainers that consume young people today. We do, however, have the comfort of knowing that our granddaughter immerses herself in literature, as we did and continue to do.

Hard for us to believe that fully sixty years have gone by since we first met, my beloved and me. That our 57th wedding anniversary is fast approaching. We are as we were, although we have also become other than we were. When we look in a mirror without intent, we are startled to recognize our parents' visages, not our own. Our own are to be found in a myriad of faded old black-and-white photographs, portraying us as we were when we met.

On that account, time has stood still. But it has passed at an astonishing pace, taking us through life's many passages of discovery and productive lives together.