Margaret Reid Stacey
I live in Nelson BC, and I'm currently in my second term as a City Councillor, which is endlessly engaging. This was never in the what-I-expected-to-do-when-I-grew-up vision, nor was the job of managing a restored theatre for 18 years. I did some teaching at Northmount and Westmount for a few years in Montreal till I met an aspiring young lawyer and I've followed Greg's legal career throughout the Interior of BC since 1975.
We've had four great kids, and it's my ambition that they all live within driving distance, if not walking distance from us; we are almost there—Eleanor is Development Director at the "Cultch" Centre in Vancouver, Rob is an architect, also in Vancouver, and Lizzie had to take a break from the SFU post-grad teaching program due to lymphoma. (The best Christmas present ever is that she's recovering nicely.) Now to extract chiropractor Annie out of Toronto! I am the proud grandmother of one granddaughter, Christina Margaret, born in September 2009.
Besotted grandmother, Marg, and baby after a swim in Anguilla
Ed. note: This is Marg's caption, not mine.
I think my best job was managing the Capitol Theatre. I couldn't come to the reunion years ago because I was launching a youth theatre program, (more like a production boot camp), and the thing became a grand tradition over the years with a couple of thousand young alumni who went on to whatever they did, with theatre firmly entrenched in their souls.
This City Council gig is great because I do like being a fixer. And there's plenty to fix, even though the community is quite idyllic. Picture big mountains and the Whitewater ski hill, the Kokanee glacier, nearby Ainsworth Hot Springs, a frigid Kootenay Lake with great beaches, and a mainstreet with atmosphere and far too much personality. Enough promotion.....! Greg and I have downsized from a sprawling house on the lake to a little centenarian one downtown, and have enjoyed fixing it up.
As the inevitable result of schooling, the United Church and the Rotary Club, I've got some interest in social issues too, and have been involved through city work with housing, community health and homelessness in our area; moreover, Greg works in child protection, and I work for him often, so as much as I can talk about the great home, the great kids, the great life, there's always this dark side brooding, and I can barely watch the news. I think Barack Obama is a beam of light, and I hope he does at least one social reform weekly during his term in office.
On the brighter side: Just last week a lovely young woman appeared at City Hall from VANOC to organize the national Olympic Torch Run, and introduced herself as Sarah Mulhall. And then this MRHS website appeared onscreen. So I figured there was something cosmic happening, and I'm looking forward to exchanging with folks I once knew. For the last couple of years I've been immersed in more ancient history, tracking family for my parents (who are alive and well in Hanover, NH.) and that journey took me to graveyards and archivists across the continent, searching ship lists, war archives and churches, meeting unlikely relatives and acquiring seasoned photos. At some point in life we ought to revisit things, right?
Our next thing: Greg has never travelled out of the country, as he just enjoyed sending me and the kids far and away, primed with the destination's history (yup, historian and political scientist). He's now announced that he wants to go to Paris this summer for three weeks...... Well, I guess I'll go too.
I have a question to thread though this website if anybody's interested in answering: it's about the early Boomer cohort. I'm pretty sure they (we) are significantly different from our slightly older schoolmates in habits and expectations. Any comments?
June 2022 Update
Margaret Reid Stacey, 2022
A year and a half ago my husband Greg died unexpectedly and peacefully. Last month a host of family and friends finally gathered to salute him and send him off properly.
Greg Stacey
I figure Act Three of my life has started:
Act One was growing up and all that.
Act Two was a long good marriage, teaching, theatre management, civic politics, raising four kids who thrived, making longtime friends in a great community, seeing the world with Greg.
So Act Three is quite often grandmothering - see my youngest daughter Lizzie and seventh grandkid Phoebe here. Beyond that I’ve returned to my first passion - painting. Large canvasses, murals, teaching art to folks in retirement. And beyond that, I take each day as it comes, try to be curious, try to be hopeful despite aging issues, losses and our crazed world, and pay some things forward.
Daughter Lizzie and seventh grandkid Phoebe