It was the truly unique way he spoke, emoted, his facial expression, certainly not his physical appearance, aged, wanly complexioned, white haired, that evoked his identity in my memory. Ken? I asked tentatively.

We had dropped by our local Salvation Army Thrift Shop and were looking through the books neatly shelved there. We often come away with valuable additions to our home library. Just as often as we drop off books there that we no longer see any value for, mostly light reading material like detective novels that my husband favours, along with autobiographies, history, art and other types that he gives emphatically greater value to and retains.

We'd placed our little dog Riley in his carrying case for comfort, in the child seat of one of the shopping carts. That cart stood close by and alongside where I was perusing books. I soon became aware that a tall elderly man was peering at the top shelves directly in front of where I had parked the shopping cart and sleeping Riley. I speedily pulled the cart out of the way and heard the man laugh and tell me that hadn't been necessary; he had no problem reading the titles from his vantage point.

The voice made me look more closely, and although I did not recognize his face, I did recognize the way his mouth curved when he spoke and his jaw slightly twisted, although his face was quite symmetrical otherwise. At the sound of my enquiring voice and his name, he turned directly toward me, scrutinizing my face in turn, and then recognition spread in a smile over his face.

It had been well over a decade since we'd last greeted one another as familiar acquaintances given to walking our dogs daily in the ravine. When his dog, Blackie, died at a venerable 16 years of age for a larger breed, Ken posted obituary notices all over the length of their routine ravine rambles so everyone who knew him and his dog would be informed. Thereafter, neither Ken nor his wife Hilda ventured into the ravine again.

Ken had retired from the Canadian military. He retained the bearing of a military man. He was affable, charming, jocular, saw the light side of everything and no sentence could pass his lips without being curved somehow toward hilarity. Not even his fond memories of a companion pet that had meant so much to him.

He had been originally from Vancouver, posted through his job in the military at one point, to Germany for an extended stay. Where, though he was married with two children, he somehow moved away from his family into a liaison and eventually marriage with a German woman. On his retirement, they remained in Ottawa where he had been working latterly at the National Defence Centre.

Nor had he simply rested on his laurels after retirement; he took up a position as a reliable, always-available blood-plasma courier with the Canadian Blood Services, delivering the product to various hospitals in the Ottawa Valley region, sometimes driving for long distances, in all kinds of weather, summer and winter.

When he was absent from home, Hilda walked Blackie. Her temperament was slightly standoffish, although not unfriendly, and dour, quite unlike his. It's odd how opposites in behaviour and personal characteristics are often attracted to one another. Ken still refers to Hilda as 'Babe', so obviously somewhere in her personality is a hidden affinity for lightheartedness in her intimate life.

They had just returned, he told me, from a two-week vacation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, in the Bahamas, and loved it. Usually the trips they make are to Germany when they're informed that some family member has died, to attend the funeral. Or trips to Vancouver to see his children and grandchildren, but the difficulties in those relationships seem hardly to make the trips worthwhile with the bickering and the alarm they feel in witnessing how the others get along between themselves.

He had mentioned, years ago, that they might transfer themselves back to Vancouver, but thought otherwise of that plan, which in fact we thought had occurred. We live at opposite ends of the ingress to the ravine, miles distant from one another.

But he said, it's a six-hour flight to Germany from Ottawa, a six-hour flight to Vancouver, so they're in between each destination which calls them on occasion to attend a wedding or a funeral. Grinning broadly.