He was tall and robust and looked as though he had barely entered his thirties. Black hair, black beard and moustache, and a bulging midsection, too heavily protruding even for his size, and certainly for his age. But a personable young man intent on doing his job. His job at the moment, as a technician working for Bell Canada was to fix a problem.

Late last week I'd received a telephone call informing me that at no cost to us, Bell Canada would like to set up an appointment for one of their technicians to come by and identify the cause of our poor Internet connection. I hadn't complained. They were receiving signals of problems leading them to the opinion that they weren't delivering the service we were paying for. The problem was not isolated to simply our reception, needless to say, it was an ongoing situation that prevailed across the city. And the company had initiated a program to identify and offer improvements to those individuals for whom the performance of Internet connectivity was impaired for whatever reason.

My husband had installed splitters on all of our telephone connections years ago, as required, for the modem supplied to us by Bell Canada to function properly. As it happens, the computer station we have in our family room is a distance from the telephone outlet to which it is connected, standing in a corner beside the windows, necessitating that a long wire be snaked under the area rug from the outlet to the computer.

Our visiting technician asked permission to drill a home in a discreet corner of the floor beside where the desk top computer sits inside a computer station, and he proceeded to do just that, spending the next part of an hour threading wire directly to the main telephone box located in the basement, installing other technical devices and finally completing what he had come to do.

He expressed interest in the number of paintings we have on our walls. His mother, he said, loved paintings and would be fascinated, looking at ours. I laughed and asked him how she would react to cleaning a house cluttered with so many paintings. He matter-of-factly responded she wouldn't be able to. She has been diagnosed with cancer of the throat and it's difficult for her to breathe, much less do anything much physical.

I asked a question that, when I mouthed it, sounded ridiculous, the assumption being his response would be "certainly, of course". Is she receiving treatment, was the question, and, amazingly, no she refuses treatment was the response. I felt incredulous and perhaps that was reflected in my facial expression. He went on to explain that she didn't want to 'bother' with going to the hospital for daily treatment sessions. And besides, she had no intention of losing her hair.

At age 64, she had been a habitual smoker all her life, but in the last few years had stopped smoking, he said. It was obviously a preventive action too late in arriving. He said 'I wouldn't mind temporarily losing my hair if it meant I could be treated', and I nodded. What else was there to say?