Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #19 - Zuhy Sayeed

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Originally from Bombay India, she graduated as a school teacher. At the age of 21 she immigrated to Canada where she first taught & then later owned Happy Days Nursery School here in Llloydminster. In 1998 she received Lloydminster’s Citizen of the Year, has been involved with an immense amount of volunteer work & is proud community pillar. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

Hi, this is Braden Holby. Hey, this is Tanner, the Bulldozer Bozer. Hi, this is Brian Burke from Toronto, Ontario. This is Daryl Sutterin. Hello, everyone. I'm Carlyagro from SportsNet Central. This is Jay On Right. This is Quiddiquity coming to you from Tuffino, Saskatchew. Hey, everybody, my name is Theo Fleary.

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Hope everybody's having a great day. My teeth, as I'm saying this, are hurting. I've got to give a shout out to Wayside Dental. They've been doing works to slowly fix the damage, the missing tooth. I know a few of you are, well, actually, a majority of you are not exactly on board with that idea. But that is what is happening. But my teeth, as I'm talking here, actually kind of hurt, which is weird, from the whitening they did yesterday. So I got a pearly white smile right now.

So thanks to the team over at Wayside Dental, Mr. Necky Jamal. I think you're going to hear that name a few times here as the podcast rolls along. We got a cool idea coming up that you're going to hear about, well, you heard about Ken Rutherford's episode that just happened. And you're going to hear about more and more as we get closer and closer to June. But before we get on to all of that and, of course, to today's episode, Let's get on to today's episode sponsors. Jen Gilbert team for over 45 years since 1976,

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that Heath and Tracy and family support. And once again, they step up. June 4th, a group of us from Lloyd is embarking on a two-day bike trip to raise money for breakfast programs in our community. This is for Lloyd Public, Lloyd Catholic, Northwest. Buffalo Trail and Onion Lake School Divisions. And I gave a phone call to Heath and within, I don't know, 24 hours, boom. They're a major sponsor of it.

And we're going to try and do some good. If you want to hear more about it, go back to Ken Rutherford episode previous to this one. And we talk about it. And you're going to hear more about it here coming in June. So it's a cool little initiative we got going on to do our schools some good. Now, if you're into any of these businesses, let them know you heard about them from the podcast. All right. And now let's get on to that T-Barr 1 tale of the tape.

Originally from Bombay, India. She graduated as a school teacher, then immigrated to Canada when she was 21. In Lloyd, she first taught then owned Happy Days Nursery School from 1980 to 1996. She's been involved with the family medical clinic for over 40 years. In 1998, she received Lloyd Minster's Citizen of the Year. Since 2010, she's been co-chair of Inclusion Canada Foundation, and at the heart of it, She's a proud daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, and community pillar. I'm talking about Zui Saeed.

So buckle up. Here we go. Okay, it is October 4th, 2020, and today I am joined by Zui Saeed. So first off, thank you for stopping in to share a little bit about your life, your journey. And, well, thank you for hopping on. Well, thank you, and thanks to the Lloydminster Archives for this invitation. It's truly humbling. Thank you. Well, you have an interesting story to tell,

and you've definitely played your part in the Lloyd community and beyond. So I think it's pretty cool to sit here and get to pick your brain for a little while. Now, growing up in what today would be considered Mumbai, but in your day, Bombay, you know, I'd love to ask a question. What's your first memory growing up? Like when you look back, what do you remember about Bombay as a child running around? What does that take you to?

Takes me to our home, which was a block away from the ocean. Takes me to lots of happy days playing in the courtyard, being supervised by a nanny, doing things with my parents. My father was a majesty. Chief Presidency Magistrate of the High Court. So there were lots of trips to the High Court and getting familiar with what he did and what he did. So the drives along the sea face and along the sea. And with my mother being a very active social worker, I would go with her to a lot of the events and a lot of the work she did.

So I have a brother, a younger brother, and lots of friends. actually, amazingly, just last week, a friend that I grew up with sent pictures of us when we were really young. So it takes me back to the smell and the sights of the ocean and the sea and the sounds of the palm trees. Bombay is a concrete jungle in parts, changed even since I grew up. But at that point, there were lots of open spaces. The colonial buildings were beautiful. There was a sense of it being a cosmopolitan city, much like New York, but a little bit more relaxed when I was growing up. And even in a city of 9 million people at that time, 9 to 11 million people, people knew each other. There was a real circle of people that looked out for.

And then, of course, my parents were in various circles. So it takes me back to school that my parents were, that my parents were a part of a group of 10 families that founded the first international school in Bombay. It takes me back to those experiences. I'm now in touch with people that I started kindergarten or even preschool with. And it takes me back to those experiences

of being very overwhelmed with my parents, being very involved in the school, of course, but there were lots of other things that I was part of a riding club, played tennis. We had, thanks to the British, we had clubs that we belonged to. So I had swimming lessons, I had riding lessons, I had tennis lessons. You had different crowds of people that you were involved with.

But the first memories, if you want to know, with the drives along the sea and, and, growing up with my uncle and his children who lived in Bombay as well and lots and lots of friends. You said that your parents, along with 10 or 11 other families, started up the first international school? Yes. Did you ever talk to your parents about that? Why they wanted an international school, what they were trying to foster with that? Yes.

Well, we not only heard that from my parents, but we heard that from all of the other sets of parents that were part of inception of the school. They wanted a school that was global in its thinking. Being that Bombay and India was very British at that time, I grew up post-independence, and everything was British. If you went to a private school, it was British curriculum. My parents, along with the others, wanted a global curriculum. So we had elements of the US curriculum, we had elements of the of the British curriculum. Our exams were all British, but I remember having all of the library full of books that were from Canada and the U.S. I read Anne of Green Gables in India. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder, the little house on the prairies in India as I was growing up.

So we had this huge education, and another part of that, ironically, was when my class was when we were in grade nine, we had to choose, it was the first experiment in international curriculum for physical geography. And our teachers had to choose a particular country. We did world history too, which was also new. But our teachers had to choose a particular country for us to get to know geographically.

And the country that my teacher chose was Canada. So I'm sitting in a classroom in Bombay at the Bombay International School and I'm learning physical geography based on the Canadian Rockies. Now you talk about just not knowing where I was going to end up and being able to be in the Rockies the first time with Rafit and being able to recognize the morasses and the crevices and the mountains and the root of the Canada number one and the root of the CP and CNN rail roads and the Canadian shield and the minerals found in Canada and the amount of oil and I knew that before I came to Canada. So for me, that kind of education where it was a co-ed school, again,

very different in the, you know, late 50s, being able to be taught to think critically, not to learn by rote, which was the way kids learned in India at that time. We were taught to do project work. We were taught to work together. We were taught to research. We were taught to present. We had extracurricular activities within the school day. We had a wide, wide, wide, wide exposure.

We had a group that would come in from England to do Shakespeare plays for us. We had that kind of an upbringing, that kind of an education. I don't know if I heard that correct, but did you say up until that point, India was learning by rote? What does that mean? Kids in India were not necessarily, students in India, were not necessarily taught to learn and understand things. I taught in India myself.

Okay. And a lot of the teaching was just to be able to teach the kids to memorize things. Okay. Ours was probably the good test scores. Exactly. That was the most important thing and continues to be worldwide right now. But having taught in that system, I know now the difference between how I was raised and how I was educated and how the majority of students in India at that time were educated. Today, it's a whole different story.

There are schools that are excellent that are teaching students to come out thinking, look at the technology in India. I mean, look at the growth India's had. But I came to Canada when I was 20. So I can only talk about what I saw in your years. But we've continued to go back. Now that our kids are older, we go to India every year. Of course, not this COVID year or next year.

But we've seen the growth and we've seen the change. in education. The Bombay International School that was the first is now one of many. So I'm encouraged. What was when you were growing up and even when you go back now, what is the oldest building you know of in your hometown? Like how old are we talking? The high court in India was built in the 1700s by the British who were still who were there at that point or coming there at that point. Most of the other buildings are 1800s, late 1800s, maybe early 1900s, but 1700s. Plus, the fact, don't forget, we're talking about in India that's seeped in religion,

that's seeped in history and tradition and legends. So if we're talking about older temples and places of worship and places that were built in far-off corners of India, we have much, much older. buildings. Rapheth and I have been to a temple that is dated 900 AD and we've been to places that are dated 600 BC. Don't forget the the civilizations of Mohenjadaro and Harappa and all that were found in northern areas. So there's a lot of old, old, old temples, sculptures, carvings, rich history. You don't go to India as a tourist just to see. You go to India, as Rafit is very often has said,

you go to India to experience it. You go to India not just cop off a plane and expect to understand everything. You go to India after you've done some reading and done some research. So you see beyond the poverty. You see beyond the population. You see beyond the struggle, because there is struggle, but people are getting ahead.

You see that now, and you see people that really want to get ahead. We could go into political discussions, but this isn't the time or place for that, I don't think. But there are the seedlings of discontent, because the rich are really, really rich. really, really poor. And there hasn't yet. There was a balance at one time. There isn't, that balance is being eroded. So there are going to be some issues in India with people not happy. I don't know why the word balance has come up a lot this week. But now you have me curious. You say balance was once there. What was balance like? When I was there? You just said balance. At one point they had balance. Yeah. Just one point.

point India, India is formed in a secular constitution. So every religion in India is respected. Okay. According to the constitution. Every person in India, according to the constitution, is to get ahead. They were classes, India is very much a class system, very much a caste system. So they were people who did not get ahead. We're familiar with that here as well. And there are now numbers of people that have to be included in various government and company rosters, right? It still creates a difference between the haves and the have-nots. There's always been a history of India of people being very, very rich and very wealthy. Most wealthy people in the world right now are in India.

They don't give enough to the community. They don't do enough for the community. So it's okay to have a roster and a quota system of, okay, you have to include 5% of people that would not ordinarily get ahead. But you're also going to treat them properly. There also has to be an element of understanding why that's important, that there is human rights that need to be recognized for all people, not just a token, not just tokenism. So as we see unrest in the world increasing around us everywhere, that unrest is also increasing in India, based on religion, based on wealth, based on the opportunity that people have or have not to get ahead.

It's no different than what's happening everywhere. You said your mom was, you learned about this from your mom, she was very much into helping the less fortunate. Did you have conversations with your mom and partner? We had lots of conversations because I was with her a lot. I was with her a lot and I knew how passionate she was about the rights of women and the rights of children. That was her focus, was the rights of women to bring women up in society again. Like in many places, women were not necessarily.

treated with equity, not treated equally, and mom was very, very, very passionate about that. Mom used to speak at Rotary Clubs, for example. I was there, but women weren't allowed to be members of Rotary Clubs in those days. What years are we talking? Like, how long ago? 60s? 60s? Early 70s? Early 70s? I left India in 1978. So I'm talking about just before that. Mom would go there and she'd be on the podium and she'd be saying to them, here I am a woman speaking to you and you don't have any women as members and there are no women in the audience. So it wasn't that long ago. And I know that Rotary embraces women now.

So do other service clubs. But Mom was passionate. She founded organizations. She went to the women's jails. She started cottage industries that women could do so that they didn't have to depend on their husbands for an income. She did 35 different things at one time. She was a very strong advocate of women's rights. And that was just part of who I was as I was growing up.

It just has become who I am. Women's rights have progressed since then. In your lifetime, what has been maybe one of the things that sticks out on the bad side, maybe back, women not being given opportunity? But now where you've seen the progression like, wow, we got, and I don't know, whatever that connection is. Women not being given opportunities, women being beaten up, women, being a starved woman being a baby. Are you talking India?

I'm talking about lots of places in the world. Baby, girl babies being murdered because they're girls? Because they're girls. Where is that? Everywhere. Well, I won't say necessarily developed countries like the U.S. It does happen in Canada at times from people that come from other places. in my work in the UN, that was very much part of what we talked about.

Girls being denied health because there were girls. I remember lots of discussion about that, where health was denied to girls because there were girls. Education was denied to girls because there were girls. We had lots of work in the UN going on about the girl child. But in India, we'll go back to India. There was lots of infanticide. girl babies were put to death because they were so-called a burden on their families. It's heartbreaking.

It's heartbreaking. And I would warrant that it still happens today, which is why it's important for people to have equal opportunities, for people to actually be able to raise a family without poverty, without having to do without so they can include all of their children. So isn't always the male that gets the high end of the stick in the girls that they're going to. That's, get the short end of the stick. And in Indian culture, it's usually the girls that take care of the parents when the parents are old. They depend on the boys, but it's really the girls that take care of women. So I see India as a sort of a country that sort of morphed into much more than it was when I was growing up.

And don't forget, Sean, I mean, having shared with you the kind of upbringing I have, had. We were protected from a lot as well. I saw all the work that my mother did. I went with her to a point into the slums where she was starting programs for mothers and she believed that if mothers and children were fed, then they could get to them. They could get the women to understand how important it was to stand up for themselves and to get ahead. But women were, were not treated very well sometimes in their homes. So it was a lot of, a lot of work for mum. I came, mom came to Lloydminster. Mom lived with us in Lloydminster for quite a few years. And I suggested that she'd go on to the board of the interval home because mom had started

organizations like that for battered women. And mom talked about the difference between first world and third world discussions on a board where here there were grants available and people could have very different discussions around a board table whereas mom was out there in in Bombay knocking at the doors of every one of her friends to start an organization that sheltered battered women and then finding things to do for these women to get emancipated all over again So it's a very different world. And Canada's my home. Lloyd Minster's my home, but I have very,

I have many thoughts about what it was and what it's like for people in different countries. Refugees, let's talk about those. Look at the refugees in the world. What opportunities are they getting? So you really need to think about how we treat people And by we, I mean the big we. The we that can do something about it.

The we that can do something. We are so fortunate here. We are so fortunate. We have our issues. We have our problems. We have those that don't see that people are not being treated fairly. We have all that. But we can do something about it.

We're not moving a whole system of old world. thinking and a whole system where there may not be enough money in a whole system where everything is embedded in class and caste and religion and poverty. So when if you go back to when you're in middle school, I think it was, and you're doing geography and you study Canada, can you remember that? Oh, very clearly. I remember the name of the textbook even. So if you go back to that time, what was the dialogue around Canada? Because we're a young country compared to what, you know, you're just talking about different things being there for hundreds of years,

thousands of years. You're talking history, like when you call it steeped in history. That's a long time. And we're so young in a comparative sense to the world. So when Canada comes up and you're in junior high and you're talking about it, What is the dialogue around looking at us before you've been here for majority of life? Again, first we were doing physical geographies. It became about the physical aspects of Canada.

But we also understood about the First Nations, having been here long before the other Canadians came. We also understood the conversation was about the immigration that Canada needed in order to be able to develop its lands. because we definitely knew that Canada was a very cold, and in those days, in hospitable kind of country, and people actually had to come and make these paths. And when we learned about the Rockies, and we learned about the roots of the CN Railway and the CP Railway and the farms that had to be developed,

we learned about the contribution of the early Canadians. We learned about the hardships that they had. to go through. I could never understand it because it wasn't my world at that time. But when I came here and as I've been here now for 478, so 42 years, that's that learning and that teaching about that conversation around Canada is just part of how I've developed in Canada. I came when I was young. I turned 21 here. And I came from a fairly sheltered environment in Bombay, but I came from a big city, 11 million people, to Lloydminster. So that was a big culture shock, right? Absolutely. Except my advantage was, A, I was brought up in a very cosmopolitan city, B, I had international education,

see, I'd hung around with my parents and I knew that there was a world out there. I did French in school and mom found a tutor for me and I found out after I went to this tutor that she was the ambassador to India from France, his wife. That was the tutor I had for French. So I was raised in this conversation.

and Bolitan world. So coming to Lloydminster was a culture shock because of the size and the environment. Raffet was driving me to Lloydminster from Edmonton and there was not a soul on what

I call the road, what I now call the highway. And today I don't expect to be people wandering around the highway, but in India there were people everywhere. I was like, where are all the people? Right? So I was fortunate to have had that little bit of experience about the world,

and Red certainly learned about Canada, its physical history, geography more than its actual history. But then we did world history that touched upon the history, also not just of the world wars, but about how the geopolitics was happening in the world. But had it not been for, for the life that Rapheth and I created. And from the beginning, his mentorship and his,

I didn't know how to be a wife. I was a rebel when I was a teenager. I rebelled against all the rules and the institutions and, you know, that kind of systemic stuff that, you know. I love the word rebel. Now, tell me, I think me and you have different versions of what rebel actually means. So what is you rebelled?

What does that mean? Sean, I was a girl being brought up in, at that time, a conservative society in Bombay. Okay. I had a brother, right? I knew the difference because of the school we went to. I knew the difference,

and because the work mom did, about how girls were treated and how boys were treated. I was expected to have a chaperone when I went to writing lessons. I lost that chaperone very quickly. That was my being a rebel. I was not prepared to be treated as the traditional girl.

I was not. I got called on it many times, but my mother was also on the censor board of India. So she was the one that was designating films to be adult, restricted, or general. and if I went to an adult movie that I wasn't supposed to go to, the managers of the theater would let my mother know I was there. So I'd have to hide to do these things because I wasn't going to be left out. So it was a dichotomy for me. You're raising me in an international school.

I can say this today. My parents are no more. We've had the discussion many, many, many times. But you raised me as part of an international school. and brought me up thinking that the opportunities for girls and boys and men and women need to be the same. And then you stick these conservative kinds of thoughts while you're raising me. It didn't go well with me. So that was my definition of a rebel.

You didn't really rebel when you were growing up in a society like that. You were found out pretty easily and you were not necessarily. courage to do that, but I did. My kids don't know all of this probably either. 11 million people in a, in Mumbai, Bombay, wouldn't it be easy just to sneak away? That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. You think so. You think so. You think so. But it wasn't like that because there were still, there were still people that knew my parents. My parents were very well known. And there was always circles of people that knew, and because of my parents, knew me, recognized the car that I would take and drive at night. What was your first car? What

car did you first take? It was a Fiat. It was a Fiat. It was a little white Fiat, and the number plate was 9-999. It was very recognizable. My mother was also the sheriff of Bombay. So it had covered flag on the front of it. She was the sheriff of Bombay. Right. What does that mean? It means it's an honorary figure that did a lot of good work and a lot of opening of this and opening of that. It was an honorary position, but she was the first female sheriff in Bombay, so we used to laugh. Our idea of sheriffs was the Western movies, right? The John Wayne movies with the guns and the whole lot. Oh, there was lots of teasing and lots of fun had about. that but I would take the car and it would have the flag had to be covered if she was not in the

car well everybody knew the car so you'd hop in this car and take it for a joyride and cover up the flag hoping nobody'd see you right how stupid but at nine million eight 11 billion people say I banked on that I banked on the fact that I would go to places where maybe nobody would know who I was but anyway that's how I grew up I was uh so-and-so's daughter uh all the time I do remember my excitement of coming to Canada and being Zui Said, right, and not Mrs. So-and-so, Mr. So-and-so's daughter. And then I came to Canada and I became Dr. Saeed's wife. And I had people stop me in the grocery store in those early days saying, oh, you're Dr. Saeed's wife.

Remember, I came from across the pond, right? And I was a... So that sort of... Till I made my own friends, and I could actually introduce Raffet to a friend of mine that he maybe didn't know, oh, this is my husband. What a thrill. What a thrill. But totally, honestly, if it wasn't for Raffet, I don't know.

I didn't know when I came here the kind of wife I needed to be. I didn't know. I could have fallen to all kinds of staying at home, not wanting to go out, not wanting to drive. I didn't drive for a little while because I was terrified of the wrong side of the road and the huge Lincoln Continental that he have that my Fiat could fit in the back in the trunk of that car. Rapheth encouraged me.

He honestly made me fly. He didn't help me fly. He made me fly. And because he was raised in a family also that believed in human rights and the opportunities for women. his family, you may not have talked about it with him, but his family founded a college and schools for girls

and boys who came from families that couldn't afford education. And the college for girls and the school for boys and the school for girls is huge even today. So we kind of, I know Rapheth before I came here, we had met when we were very young and he had left India for England and then for Canada. And the deal was if, you know, down the road,

we would get married if that was what we wanted to do. It was not an arranged marriage. It was a marriage by choice. We both had a close affinity with each other. And when we did get married, and when I did come to Lloydminster, we created this life that gave to the community that, you know, raised our kids.

we thought in those early years a couple of times should we go home because Raffett was only here for a year and I came in the middle of that year. What month did you arrive? I came in July and I was freezing cold. I was freezing cold. I was wrapped in shawls because that was my wintertime temperature, right? Bombay is about 21, 22, 23, 24 in the winter. I was freezing.

So, and then Sohail was born. and there was still this question of should we go back. And then Rashad was born and there was still this question of should we go back. And then we decided, you know, we're not going to think like that anymore. This has become home. We've got people, I think Rapheth mentioned it in his conversation with you. We had people who were like the hills and the leeches and, you know, that generation of people who welcomed us, who made us part of their families.

And we had people all over Lloydminster in the work that we were involved with in the community that just made this home. So it's been home. It's always been home. We go, we go back to India and we see our friends and we do the work that we have to do now that our parents are gone. But we'll never move back there. This is where we raised four children, five grandchildren. I hate to stick on India for a few more minutes.

Okay. But you use words like slums, and I just, let's speak about the bubble we're in. I don't think we have a slum anywhere in Lloydminster. Could you paint a picture for the listeners of what a slum is? We're familiar with the word ghetto. We are fortunate enough to go to places like Mexico and Latin America, and we see people living. maybe even in the US, very close together and in surroundings that we could not even imagine. A lot of people have seen the movie Slumdog Millionaire and have had quite a shock about what that's like.

But that's what happens when people don't have money, when people don't have land to call them their own, when people rely on being employed as house. I can't. When we grew up, we called household help servants. I can't do that anymore. But they're all house help. They're people that rely on other people for a very measly sum of money. So slums are fabricated out of cloth, out of tin, out of whatever you can find.

A little bit of stuff whatever you can find. There's no hygiene. There's no sanitation. Some slums are developed enough where they have trenches, you know, for the rain. Now we have a monsoon in Bombay. It's a three-month-pour downpouring of rain. Can you imagine what happens to those makeshift kinds of places? Be awful.

Awful. Also, migrant workers from other parts of India, from villages, will, congregate in big cities for the hope of work. So there are construction workers that will come from villages that will come from smaller cities and they'll go to the biggest cities like Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Bombay, Madras, which is now Chenaya where Rapheth's from. And they will live in the construction sites that they are constructing. They'll move from site to site to site. And they're literally covered with just cloth as protection or they're sleeping on the street. Like, I'm talking about people that have nothing.

We don't understand that here. We can't understand that here. But that's what it is. It's a means of earning a living wherever and however you can. So when COVID hit India, when COVID hit Bombay, there was no room for these migrant workers to shelter. There was no room for them to isolate. They were in hordes together

and there was no way that they could even get back to their homes. They walked. They walked thousands of miles. We don't get that. We're lucky here. My God, the most that's been asked of us during COVID is to stay home. Right? Wear a mask, social distance and stay home.

Stay on your couch. We haven't been asked to go to war and we haven't been asked to walk thousands of miles to go, shelter where we came from. So my mind is always in two places, not that Lloyd Minster is in my home, but it's because I appreciate so much that Lloyd Minster and this country has given us. As a Canadian citizen, I am absolutely thrilled to be a Canadian citizen. I had to give up my Indian citizenship for that, but I did because I realized truly that I'm in a place that can make a difference. I'm in a place that I can have done all the work that I've done and tried to make a difference.

I'm not, it feels lots of times, I felt like you were batting your head against a wall, but you could make a difference. You didn't have the economics and the socio-economics and the deep-rooted caste and class system that we're running up against. We are in one way in Canada. We're learning that now, but I'm just, I'm glad Raffa chose to be in Lloydminster for one year. I'm glad I came during that time. I'm glad that we said, let's give ourselves another year here. I'm glad that we started having kids here, and I'm really happy to be here 42 years down the road, and I've been proud of what I've been able to contribute in my own little way.

one final one on India back in the 50s early 60s while you're there early 60s we uh with everybody that's come on in the archives we've talked an awful lot I was saying this before we started you know around this area if they grew up in rural you know wherever Saskatchew and Alberta yeah out in Ottawa they talk about dirt streets no power no running water, things like that. Did India have all that? Or was it like as a kid, do you, it's such a funny thing to ask about.

Did you have toilet paper? Yes. But again, it depends on where you lived. It depends on how you lived. I never thought I'd ask that question, but it's come up twice now that in the rural communities of Saskatch when they use the eaten catalog as toilet paper.

No, again, because of how I was raised. yes, we had toilet paper. If you talk about in the slums, there was no toilet paper, but there was water. And by and large in India and in other countries in the world, toilet paper isn't something

that has often embraced, it's water. But there's toilet paper now everywhere. How about running water? Running water, again, depends on where you lived. Many of the villages, when I was growing up in the late 50s, early 60s is probably my better memory of growing up. The villages didn't have running water. They had wells.

So everybody used the community wells? Everybody in the villages used the wells. The infrastructure and cities was built for running water. But I remember the water being shut off between such time and such time because we had tanks on our buildings. and on our homes and the tanks had to be filled so the water would be shut off there was a tremendous demand for power so even where I grew up power would come and go the villages didn't have power at that time they had no running water and no power and yes there were dirt roads that has changed to some extent everybody has power everybody has TVs you can walk by a slum

and you'll see the power and that everybody is sitting these little makeshift places, but they have a TV. Isn't that crazy? They have a cell phone. Isn't that crazy? John Raffeth and I went to India one time, and we came back here, and there was a fellow here that we knew that had started, one of the first cell phone companies here in Lloyd Minster, Triedon.

I don't know if I remember. And we said to him, my God, man, go to India. You know, there's almost a billion people at that time in India, and there are no cell phone. And of course, that didn't happen with that person, but we went the next year, and there was every single not just foreign cell phone imported cell phone companies. There are Indian companies and everybody in your vegetable seller in the markets, your person who's driving a bike to deliver goods, your person in the rural areas who's still riding on an oxen-pooled cart to transatl. sport things. Everybody's got cell phones. Everybody's got cell phones. Glan lines are a thing of the past. Doesn't that hurt your brain? You're living in the slum and you got a TV so you can watch whatever.

Whatever. And the channels are amazing because they get the European channels, they get the Middle Eastern channels, they get the Indian channels, they get CNN. They're watching everything. Before the TV came, movies because you remember India's got Bollywood. Yeah. The movies still continue to be, but are a big thing. That was the entertainment people had with the movies. Now they've got TVs. They've all got TVs.

They've all got TVs. So over here, that's an interesting. Over here, you got the major sports, right? You got, well, for Canada, obviously, hockey, baseball, basketball, football. Soccer's slowly making a charge and, you know, somewhere. out there. Somebody's, I'm sure, yelling at the audio going, how about lacrosse and stuff like that? But in India, was there a national sport where people tuned in and cricket? Cricket. Cricket, biggest, oldest, most important sport in India is cricket.

The national sport, interestingly enough, is field hockey. Really? Yes. Field hockey. But the sport is cricket. The sport is English soccer. Now people are watching U.S. American, as we call it, American football and baseball because of the TV. But people flock.

Rashad and I were in India when there was a big challenge cup for, and it was India and it was India and Pakistan. And if you know any Indian history, Pakistan and India were divided after the British. and there's always been heavy rivalry regardless of whether it's country rivalry or sport rivalry, right? And they were playing Pakistan and this was a big deal. And India won that night

and the streets just erupted. You have TVs hung, if you can't be in the stadium, you've got TVs hung everywhere. People follow cricket like nobody's business. So it's huge. But the other sports are getting there. They're not necessarily ice hockey. our hockey, but

certainly British soccer and baseball and they watch a lot of the Australian and European sport. Let's talk about Raff and you. You go to

university? Graduate with a degree to become a teacher? Now you're a school teacher? I was a school. I ran my own nursery school. I was a school teacher in Bombay and I ran my own nurse. Street School in Lloydminster. Do you remember the conversation that went between with you and Raff and like had you guys been,

hey, you said you weren't, it wasn't arranged. So were you dating at that point? We were dating from two different cities. Raffett lived 800 miles away from me. We met when I was very young. Now, this is a story that, again, not, anyway, we met when we were very young. we developed a great affection. I think it was instantly falling in love,

but I was too young for that. I was too young to understand that. Raffett, from 800 miles away was my rock. We wrote to each other all the time. There was no email and stuff. Long-distance calls were very restricted because you could only, you had to go through the operator

and you only got three minutes and blah, blah, blah. But, and then, yeah. Why did you only get three minutes? Well, because your operator says, did you pay for three minutes at a time? And then just before three minutes, the operator would come on and say, do you want to extend this, right? So you paid another. How the world has changed.

I know. And then they developed what was called STD, and I can't remember the name for it. You could just dial direct and speak. That was towards the, just before Ruffet left, we were able to have those kinds of conversations. You guys are 800 miles apart. Yeah, we're 800 miles of more. This is before FaceTime, Snapchat. Before any of that.

And we visited back and forth, but remember, again, this is conservative India. For my parents to allow me to go to Rafit's home and visit there, and for him to be able to come to our home, luckily our families knew each other. So there was a level of trust. But when I went to Rafit's home for a visit, I was chaperoned if I wanted to go out with him. So like your dad would go out?

or he would hire somebody to go with you. No. Raffitz, no, I could, I flew by myself. But Raffet's mother and sister were the chaperones. So we wanted to go to a New Year's dance once. And his mother said, sure, I'll go too. We didn't go. He went to the New Year's dance.

Not me. Why not? No way I was going to make his mother go and embarrass him. So, you know, so we created and developed our relationship around these circumstances. I didn't have those issues at my home. We could go out. With any of your sons when they wanted to start dating a girl, did you say, sure, I'll come, Chaparral.

Can you imagine? I can't. I think it'd be awesome. I should. Okay, fine. I will try that on one of them, but no, it's two of them are happily married. But yeah, no, can you imagine? Can you imagine in today's society what that would mean?

I'd love to get a picture of Sammy's face when you say that. You're going to see who, Sam? Yeah, sure. Oh, come along with you. Sure. Exactly, exactly. But anyway, no, that's how we developed our relationship. Raffeth went to England in 1974. He stopped in Bombay on the way and we had a conversation about what our future may hold. And we decided that if our future was destined to be together, then it would happen. We had, again, letters, some phone calls, not too many. And, you know, you talk about a lot of different things, right, that are just like, I find very intriguing because it's a different world,

right? It's just a different world. You know, whether we're talking about slums, that's a different world. Yeah. But having a relationship like the one you're talking about, just look at what we do in today's age here. I can't speak once again for the, you know, outside this bubble. But North America, you just don't do what you're talking about. No, you don't do what you're talking about. I always felt in my soul that Rapheth and I were meant to be together. And no matter how we were raised and how far apart we were and how things evolved that we would eventually be together. And he and I made that happen and made that commitment to each other.

And when we discovered that there was a process for Canada, to go through immigration in 1977 to tell you the truth my father was very ill and both our mothers put it to us that maybe my father should see if we were going to get married anyway in 1978 was our plan that maybe we should just have the ceremony in 1997 and let my father witness it that was the last time he ever went out so we did get married in 1977 and a very closed, very closed private family ceremony. Because I remember I had a social life too. And I didn't want to be out there in Bombay as a married woman.

Again, my kids don't necessarily know this, but I did not want that kind of impact on my social life. What do you mean? Well, you can't. It's a conservative place. You're married woman and you want to go out with a group of people to a Discoveck? Can't. You can't.

That's frowned upon as a married woman to go out to a bar and have a few drinks. Yeah, because your husband isn't around. And they didn't, yeah, I don't, I didn't want it. For whatever reason, I didn't want it. Because going to a bar and having a few drinks when I was growing up was not necessarily something that was embraced anyway. Wasn't embraced. But you did go. Well, shh.

So anyway, so, so when, when, so. we got married. Our families got involved at that time. Raffeth gave the go-ahead to his dad to formally ask for my hand in marriage from my father. So the parents had something to do with it. And then it took from 1977 August to March 78 for my papers to come through. Can we stop there for just one second? So Raff had to ask his father to ask your father. for your hand in marriage. He didn't have to, but he did.

That was the norm. The norm. No different than the norm is today to ask if Raph was to do again, he'd just go talk to your father and get the okay and then go ask. So all values, all culture. Some people still do that here. Yeah, right? So anyway, so my father was still not well in March of 1978.

we decided we would, and the deal was that we would have a big reception and whatnot when I was ready to leave India. So we had two receptions, one in Bombay and one in Madras, or Chennai, as it's now called, and I left in July. I'd never been out of India. You've never been out of India? I had never been out of India. I was raised in a very British atmosphere. My grandfather was knighted by the king emperor. My father went to school in, did his law school at London School of Economics. He lived in England for a while.

I'd never been out of India. So we went from Bombay to London. I was thrilled. I was thrilled. I was finally in London. But it was huge. Why didn't you go anywhere as a, you just said that your dad had

gone to London and I mean obviously he's been outside the country. Yeah, but we were... We traveled all over India. We did not travel. My mother did travel abroad. My mother actually in 1948 was the first Indian woman to get a scholarship from the Indian government and she went to Los Angeles as an Indian student. And she lived in Los Angeles and attended, attended,

UCLA for four years. Yeah. And that did his schooling in. But, you know, but India was their home. There was no reason. I understand, but just think about yourself now. I know. You've been to countries, your children have been to country.

And you just go, do you just only travel in Canada? Mm-hmm. I know that's not, that's making it simple. But in those days, it was different. It was a bigger deal to go out of country. It was the visa issues of tremendous. It was not easy. But when the first Japan Airlines flight flew from Bombay to Tokyo,

as the sheriff of Bombay, my mother was on that flight. Really? Oh, yeah. So it was a different shot. We traveled all over India. My mother came from a different city altogether, which a city that was called Hyderabad and still is. We were there twice a year because my grandmother and I had a number.

amazing, an amazing relationship. And she lived on a rural farm. She had... Your grandmother in India. My grandmother in India. She had an orchard, a fruit orchard. She had a well in the backyard. She had an aviary with birds. She had peacocks all around. She'd raised chickens. She raised... She was, she came from a very aristocratic family. But she lived in this beautiful... My grandfather passed away long before her. Mom was even married, but my grandmother had this kind of a life. We went there. We craved it because we lived in a big city.

We'd never seen fruit grow on trees where we lived, but we craved the time at my grandmothers, all of us cousins together, because it was so different. It was love. Last night I'm sitting on the deck with my sister, and we're having a cocktail. And we're sitting there and my daughter comes strolling out. She gets all excited.

And we're all like, what did she excited about it? She's going, the stars, the stars. Look at them. She yells at her brother and they're looking at the stars. In the big city of Bombay, could you see the stars? We saw the stars very faintly. Two reasons. Number one was the pollution.

And number two, with an amount of lights. So the stars were fainter. which we went out into the country because as I said as a child we did a lot of traveling and every weekend we would actually go to my parents' friends lake house catch fish to the works

and there we would see the stars and there we would wonder at the kind of nature that we didn't see in Bombay but again as a child you don't have deep thought about that I mean today I miss the sound of the ocean and I missed the sound of the palm trees outside my window when I was growing up. But I probably took it for granted when I was young.

My kids have never understood our fascination for the ocean and the seas. Maybe they do now. But every holiday in Lloyd, from when we, you know, in Lloydminster or in Canada, we would just, Rapheth and I would gravitate to the ocean because we both were raised by the ocean. And it was constantly, oh my God, look at the water. Oh my God, look at the waves. and my prairie sons. Okay, there's the ocean.

But I think they enjoy it much more now. I'll never forget the first time when Samir Nassan actually played in the ocean, right? Because they'd never done that coming from here. And then Samir Nassan went with us to Australia and we went to the Great Barrier Reef. And I couldn't understand why they were nervous about going out in the boat to the reef,

but they'd never been on the seas. They'd never been on the high seas. And then it was all saltwater, to expect them to jump into the ocean and really appreciate the barrier reef and its myriad of colors and fish. They couldn't do it in the beginning, because it was all salt water

and it was scary because you couldn't see land anywhere. Well, by the end of it, they were saying, I wish Perch Lake was like this and they didn't want to come out. So the experiences that we grew up with and we took for granted at that time, that's what I remember. That's sound of the ocean every night I went to sleep. You know, you bring up something I hadn't really thought about,

but living that close to the water, the ocean, was there things you did as kids that you wrote on the water a ton? You know, like here, you know, for hobbies, let's put it, you could go snowmobiling or take. a four-wheel or quad and go out in the countryside and go on trails, that kind of thing. But we don't have a giant body of water where you're hopping on a boat and going out and fishing whatever. We did a lot of boat rides from Bombay itself, but to be able to go out in smaller boats

and go fishing, you had to be outside of Bombay in more rural places. We had that advantage because, as I said, our friends had lake houses and we would go and get in boats and the fish you still literally fly into the boats. There were different species of fish. There were fishing villages not very far from where I was raised, where there were fishermen that would go out and get fish. And we went to the beaches to play in the water. You didn't do that necessarily where we lived,

but we actually traveled, went to the suburbs, and played in the beaches. But swimming in the sea was not encouraged because of the currents. It was not encouraged because of the currents. Certainly you could play in the water and play, but the currents, they didn't maybe have at that time a real good system of marking the currents, but we were told enough stories about people

who had been taken out by the currents that you didn't dare. You just didn't do it. You just didn't do it. What was, you know, you move, you hop on a plane, you move pretty much to the other side of the planet. You've never been out of your country before. When you look back at that trip, I'm sure there was a ton of excitement, but what maybe sticks out about that trip?

I was scared. I was very scared. I kind of knew where I was going because of the studying that we'd done in Canada. And you're 20 at this point? I was 20, but I never really imagined again. Like you, for you, India, something totally different for me, the thought of actually being in Canada. And it was for a year.

So I knew that I could do it. But coming to Lloydminster where we're driving in, I hadn't seen any people on the road as of what I thought it was, okay, the highway. We had been in Edmonton, we'd been in Toronto, there were enough people around. I wasn't too scared, but driving into Lloydminster. And at that time, 1978, there was a boom, a building boom going on.

all around us as we were driving in were homes being built. These homes are being built out of wood shone. Homes in India are built apart from the slums are built out of brick and stone and cement. I'm a primary elementary school teacher and you blow and you blow and you blow the house down. These are sticks. Are they going to last any win? That was my biggest fear as I drove into Lloyd Minster was, oh my God, these homes are built out of sticks, out of wood. You know, so you huff and you puff and you, and that was a real fear. That was a real fear. Rapheth had built us a home.

So coming and driving into that home wasn't just scary because it wasn't being built. It was already built. He'd furnished it and everything. It was wonderful. It was, it was nothing that I had ever, ever imagined, because, of course, we have mosaic tile and everything is so different, right? Till I realized I had to do housekeeping. I had never done housekeeping in my life.

Sean, I had never made a bed. I had never made a cup of tea. I had never cooked a meal. Never. I had never cleaned a bathroom. I had never understood that you could turn the tap on in Lloydminster and drink out of the tap. because you can't drink tap water to this day in India.

Simple things like that. A washing machine? What? I had a beautiful neighbor. We had a beautiful neighbor, Merna and Ray Coates, who literally talked me through this stuff. She found me one day.

She would stop at our house. She was right next door to us. She'd stop at our house, at her way home for lunch. And she found me sitting on the step in the basement, just sobbing because I thought I'd wrecked this washing machine. She had nothing, no nothing about that stuff. And Raffitt was busy working.

He'd been away for six weeks to bring me home. So he was busy catching up. And, you know, in those days he worked at everything and did surgery and on call and the whole thing. So it was a very interesting, very, I remember somebody that I met at an international conference that my class in school was volunteering for. And this guy was from Toronto. And I was so excited because by that time, I was. I knew I was coming to Canada. Oh, I'm going to Canada.

Well, we're in Canada. And I said, well, Lloyd Minster thinking, you know, everybody should have heard about Lloyd Minster. He says, where's that? And I said, well, it's in the prairies. And he says, that's in the boondocks, man. You've got to come to Toronto. So I said to Rapheth, if this place Lloyd Minster is not in the Reader's Digest Atlas that I have at home, I am not coming. Would you believe it was in the Reader's Digest Atlas?

Okay. You know, I always think coming from small, right? Helmand, I don't know if it gets any smaller in the farming community, that going to a place like India would be, as you can imagine in my brain, stressful. There would be a lot of excitement, but that many people stresses people from here out because it's new. It's completely new and it's completely different. But it's funny to hear you talk about going from 11 million people and being stressed out by not seeing people. Yeah.

That's different. Very different. Very different. And it's actually, when I think back to my thoughts and my, again, it was people that took me under their wing. It was the physician, Dr. Agarwal, his wife, Olive, who picked me up every day and took me out. Remember, I wouldn't drive for a long time until Raffett finally put his foot down, and I had a driving instructor from Lakeland College at the door there to pick me up, and I still created a fuss, and I was too scared, and I didn't want to drive,

and Raffet said, I've paid for it. He's here to take you driving. I had an international driver's license. I drove all over Bombay. I drove all over Bombay, all over, all over, along with the trucks on truck routes, you name it. I was driving everywhere in Bombay. because I had to drive far enough that people didn't know where I was going, right?

And I wouldn't drive here. So this guy standing at the door, Madam, your husband has paid for it, we're going driving. So went driving, started driving, this huge big Lincoln Continental. Come winter. I bump into him at Shopper's Drug Mutt. Well, madam, how's your driving going? And I said, it's not. It's winter out there.

He says, I'll be there eight tomorrow morning. I couldn't get out of it. I drive. Again, Raphet, Raphit just helped me. You think I could have done all this stuff if it hadn't been for this man that not only brought me here, but just showed me how to fly. We raised our children with all of this. I worked in the clinic. I ran my own nursery school.

I was fortunate. And yet, you do. You come all this way, have to learn how to make tea, how to clean a toilet. I'm curious now, did you learn how to clean a toilet? I can clean a toilet, but I can't make tea. Rapheth makes me tea every morning. Really?

Yes, I can make tea, but he makes me tea every morning. That's a ritual that we've had for 42 years. He makes me tea every morning. unless he's out of town, and then I worry about making tea for myself. Listen, I should first point this off. I'm not laughing at you. I know. It's such a interesting thing to hear.

Some of the things I just take for absolute granted, right? Like certain things you've been doing since you were knee high, per se, right? I never cooked, Sean. Ruffett still does the majority of the cooking. So what did you come here that you didn't know how to do, that you do now, and you enjoyed, and you had no idea? I can cook some. I can cook some. I completely enjoy living in a smaller community.

I completely enjoy knowing people where I'm going, whereas to hide from that when I was in India because of the fact that I just didn't want to be around too many people that knew my parents. I love the fact that I can hold my head up high and know that I've contributed to where I live. I love the fact that still I can turn on a tap and drink water I never gardened before I've never grown flowers before

mind the neighborhood that we live in that Raffin and I sort of help develop I mean they know some of them know my background when they see me outside with plants and you know sui how many times have you done this in your life well very few because again and I was lucky enough to have landscapers when we were in our old house, right? So these things are giving me now that I've slowed down and not really all that involved. These simple things are giving me pleasure that I never had time to do before, and I certainly didn't do that in India.

Never. The fact that I can cook, not like Rapheth, but that I can cook, but that I can cook and I made a custard the other day for our little, for a shot son, our littlest grandson. Give me pleasure, I can do this stuff. I never did at home. I made cookies once in a while, but I wasn't allowed in the kitchen.

Everything had to come into the main part of the house for me. We had an electric oven. We didn't have portable electric oven. So I'm enjoying these things. I'm enjoying the fact that we've raised our kids, we're enjoying our grandkids, that rather than I have time together. But I feel a sense of accomplishment because I've been able to move 12,000 miles away, and I've been able to do what's made me happy.

I've been able to be fulfilled as a woman, as a citizen, as a member of a community, community. And I have a great family that we can now take time to enjoy. So I didn't have those things there. I just had one brother. I certainly never thought I'd be the mother of four sons. Five grandchildren. One's going to be 16 this fall. Imagine. Imagine. Did you want to have kids when you were growing? Oh, I desperately wanted to have kids. That was no question. I desperately wanted to have kids. I didn't know how many kids I wanted. I thought like my parents I would have two, but Raph came from a family of six siblings together. Split the difference. Yeah, but you know, it's been quite the journey, quite the journey, experiencing things that I had never learned

before in raising kids, learning systems that I never had to know before. Um, and, and, and, I guess the biggest difference of what I have learned and accomplished that I did not have in India. I had the education, I had the social work field with my mom, but I didn't have the knowledge and the experience that I have today of developmental disabilities and the medical field. I didn't have the advantage of or the knowledge even of teamwork, a team that came together around child to be able to develop a child to its his or herful potential that's a lot of the work that I did and though that work started when Raffitt was not even married and he was part of the the world of people with developmental disabilities I came into it

and I've learned stuff and I know stuff that I never thought I would know so It's been real learning and it's been challenging, exciting. Well, you've spent a lifetime on, you can elaborate on it, but inclusive Canada. Inclusion Canada. Inclusion Canada, sorry. Could you explain to the listeners, maybe some of the work you've done? Okay, so when a child is born into a family, it needs and needs, some extra support in order to be able to learn how to walk, to learn how to talk,

to be able to see speech therapists, physiotherapists. There needs to be, it starts from community, and that's where I started from, where there is a team of people in the community that wrap themselves around a family and provide that extra knowledge and the extra support. I didn't know any of that before I needed to do that. I've been involved in the inception of those kinds of initiatives and programs in Lloydminster. And for me, it was only natural that you go from Lloydminster into a bigger world. So inclusion Canada, inclusion Lloydminster, inclusion Alberta, inclusion Saskatchewan,

inclusion international, simply means that every child, every person belongs and can be full participants of any community. that they live in. And by people, I'm talking about people who have intellectual disabilities or who have developmental disabilities. That's the work that I started with. That's the work that I did. That's the way that we got school systems to accept children with disabilities within

a regular school. In Lloydminster, when I first came, there was a separate school for kids with disabilities. we would not stand for that. So it's developing systems, it's developing understanding, it's developing inclusion everywhere we go. We did not have programs in Lloydminster through the city for kids. We didn't even have any programs for kids at that time.

All these recreational programs that you see were the inception of inclusion in Westminster because we wanted our kids who had developmental disabilities to be with other kids. in recreational and social settings. We did that. And today, all our kids are included. And enlighten me,

because I feel like I might be a little bit of live under a stone or something. So take this question with a very big grain of salt, just as a curiosity's sake. If you have the two separate schools, what was so important of having them all in one? When you think about your own kids, your kids learn, any child learns from, being with other children. Babies learn how to talk. Babies learn children early childhood education.

They learn by being with other kids. If kids are segregated, there is no opportunity for the kids that are segregated to learn. It's common sense. So for example, if you have a child that doesn't run all that well. You still want them to be part of a soccer team. Which makes sense. Right? Because they're going to learn. I guess the theory behind it, yeah, I was just, you know, part of my brain immediately goes, you know, and this is coming from not understanding the world and honestly just learning. That's why I say a curiosity sake question. By having a different school, you assume, you know, from a guy on the outside, not knowing any of it, goes, you have a separate school so you can give more focus to the children and help develop them and focus on what they need and, etc. Except that they don't have regular typical kids around them to learn from.

Right. Right? They don't have the ordinary daily activities of a regular school around them. They don't have, and the most important thing is by doing, by segregating, we don't develop citizenship amongst regular typical students. They never then have to take the responsibility of growing up with diversity, because they in the end are going to be the employers and the politicians and the system officials down the road. And they would never, like I, never grown up with a person with a disability. So how would they employ? How would they include?

How would they spend their schooling completely segregated from diversity? How? Today we talk about diversity. It has a bigger meaning to it. It's people from all over the world. But the human diversity is people not just from all over the world, but it's people with different abilities. Yeah.

Different skill sets. Once again, I think, you know, if I, take a step back. I don't think there's a nefarious plan by keeping them off to their own side, that in theory, you're trying to help them. Absolutely. But what you're saying is, is by separating them, you're actually hurting down the road because they aren't actually a part of society. Absolutely. Canada's history for people with development disabilities, very much like the residential schools are big institutions where kids, people with disabilities were warehoused. Okay, we've

Hit away. We've understood what that did to First Nations kids. We're hearing today all the trauma that they went through. We haven't yet got to the kinds of hospital-like institutions that people with disabilities were tied to their beds, were raped, were completely taken advantage, it was sedated so they were in trouble to the staff. We've got these firsthand stories.

So that's the history that we come from. And for those of us who have been working hard for the last 38, 40 years, we realize that this was wrong. That you can't take people. Well, you saw it firsthand then. You can't like the residential schools. You can't take people out of community. Once again, when I say I live under a rock, I don't remember a time where there was a separate school. So I come after the time that obviously it all changed.

So for you, it's normal. Yeah. Natural to grow up with everybody. But it wasn't at that time. It took a lot of work. Took a lot of work to bring people out of these institutions and back into community, to be able to give them jobs, to be able to give them the skills that they could work at,

to be able to teach them and allow them to live independently, to be able to allow them to have a family, to be able to allow them to experience life as life is experienced about all of us. It's huge. And there are people in this community who worked hard. And because they worked hard in Lloyd Minster, they were able to contribute that stuff provincially, nationally, and grow on it.

And you're going to be, I think from what I understood from the Lloyd Minster archives, you're going to be interviewing the current president of Inclusion Canada. Raffith and I were both presidents of Inclusion Canada. You're going to be interviewing Robin Acton. Okay. Okay. So this community has produced some leaders. This community, the work we did in this community has produced some, I can't talk about myself, but Raffett certainly, and others who have been very much involved, provincially and nationally. But we've got three presidents that came out of Lloyd Minster.

So this has been powerful work. It's been work that we've been able to get one school division person, one at a time, one teacher at a time, one other parent at a time, right? It's not been easy. It's not been easy work, but it's the right work because everybody belongs. Look at the contributions people are making. So all about that being, if I can make a contribution to where I live, soak in a person with a disability, and why not? It might be a different contribution that I make,

but it's a contribution all in itself. So yeah, it's, Sean, till these things touch you, you don't necessarily think about it. It's not a deliberate attempt to not understand. But the more we can get out there is Inclusion Canada, and the more we can talk about what is happening, what needs to happen, that the awareness all people should have, well, maybe tomorrow somebody will hire somebody with a disability, because, hey, we can. we talk to them. Well, I just, I give the example, is we're all in our little bubbles. Your bubble can be Lloyd Minster,

it can be a heck of a lot smaller than that, right? And so, yeah, it's just, it's interesting. I just go back to, if you break down why they'd put them separate, in my brain, it goes, you know, so you can give specific, right? Maybe that makes sense. It's a good thing, right?

This is what we're trying to do. They thought that, they thought it was. No question they thought it was. But in saying that, I asked that question because by the time I'm in school, there wasn't, that wasn't there. I don't remember it. Maybe my older siblings do, but for me, I never, ever grew up in that. And so it's an interesting to hear you talk about it and obviously how passionate you are about it.

Right. It's just, it's interesting to hear you discuss why it's so important to have everybody there. As far as Rafah and I concerned, as I said, he was in it before I ever showed up, before even we were married. To me, it made a difference being a parent and understanding the differences in people. And actually, it meant understanding and knowing how to enrich and enable not just my children, but all children. My work in play school was to have an inclusive play school. Everybody came, right? Everybody came.

It never happened before. It never happened before. Wade Redden helped us so much nationally, too, because it's the people you get to. And it's the people that you kind of take that rock away from them so that they engage in a conversation and understand what people's worth and people's abilities and people's contributions can be.

And it just helps to make. our citizenship think differently so that we embrace each other so that we allow each of us so we don't so we get to maybe know somebody and we understand that this is all normal natural human diversity what it was you know coming from india across the pond to Canada to Lloydminster what was what was something that I'm trying to think of how to say this what was one of the things that was tough

you come from a world of like seeing different cultures seeing different people seeing different everything you come to a little Lloydminster and we're just kind of isolated and I know we've grown immensely since since the 70s

but we're not even you know we're not eminent we're not even asked him. We're a little farming, oil community. Like, what was, because you've, by this time now, you've come from seeing a big chunk of the world, or at least have it come through your country. What was one of the tough things about coming here and being in Lloydminster that people were maybe not educated on? That's an interesting question. I did find that you got to know people at a particular level.

You got to know people that were absolutely passionate about hockey. You got to know people who were farmers. You got to know people who were literally living in smaller communities, doing things that was everyday normal, natural to them. And

the amazing thing was that even if people lived in that small bubble, you could still have conversations with many of them about everything. about the world, about history, about everything. There were some people that you couldn't have those conversations with, and I had to learn that. I had to learn that we did live in a small environment

and that people didn't maybe have my view of the world and didn't have the experience, especially as I started doing all this work. What really, really made me grow was the opportunity to be able to go out, whether it was to the UN or to Egypt, or whatever it was, and to do the work that I was doing. And sometimes it was hard to come back.

And it was rough, that was my sounding board. They were maybe, and again, remember, I never talked about the work I did, and I never talked about myself. So there was no way that I was going to have conversations with people about what I learned about the UN and the girl child being denied health. I brought it up lots of times,

but there wasn't a reference in a lot of places. There wasn't that understanding. There wasn't that education. There wasn't that. And I'm not, I don't want to be insulting. I don't, this is not about. I don't think you come off as insulting. This is, this is about the limit that education in Lloydminster can place on us.

It's about the fact that people grew up in very different places, so they did not have a worldview. And that to me sometimes was difficult. But I can tell you that that was probably the fleeting thoughts and maybe the only difficulty. I never had difficulty in Westminster because I was fortunate enough to be able to go out there and get whatever I needed to grow

and to be passionate about and to be stimulated probably and to be able to raise my kids as much as I could as citizens of the world. I didn't have difficulty in Lloydminster. I only had difficulty in talking about myself, talking about the work I did, so I didn't necessarily have huge references to be able to discuss that with.

I had people that were doing the same work, but they were doing it locally, and I was doing it globally. So there was a little bit of a... It's just have a nice evening. you know well as we wind down when you look back over your life maybe what's one of your biggest accomplishments that sticks out to you that you hang your hat on that you're like man I'm super proud of that I would say number one would be my kids and my family I would say

the fact that Rapheth and I have a relationship that transcends that transcends that transcended coming over the pond, that transcended deciding to live in Lloydminster versus, you know, going to the U.S., going to the Australia, and then going back to India as he planned. I would say those and being able to make a home in Lloyd Minster with my family has been my biggest source of pride. If I were to have a second source of pride, it would be what I've learned in Lloydminster and the people that I've shared not just work, but shared community involvement and volunteerism with. All the work that I've done has been as a volunteer. And I'm really, really proud of that.

Now, the people in Lloydminster got me going. So my family, my husband, first, pushed me out the door to learn how to drive, who pushed me out the door to go to a women's sorority that I never wanted to go to because I was scared of getting involved without him. And, you know, he was on call all the time. And the one evening that he would be home, I would be not wanting to go to a meeting of women. pushed me out the door. So I'm really proud of what he did for me.

I'm really proud of the accomplishments that I took it and flew with it. But my children, my kids. What is the hardest thing about being married to a doctor? You just said on call all the time, that kind of thing. Raffetz, uh, Ruffet's an old-fashioned country doctor, which I didn't know,

existed when I lived in India. I didn't know there were old-fashioned country doctors. I read books about old-fashioned country vets, but I didn't know about old-fashioned country doctors. I came, drove into Lloydminster on the 27th, I believe it was, of July when Raffa drove me from Edmonton, and we drove up to this house where he had said he was going to carry me over the threshold, and this house was mine and ours, and the phone was ringing. Inisha. So he wasn't carrying me over any threshold. He was trying to find a way to get into the house to answer this home.

And the family that had said to him that they would wait to have their baby till he came back to Lloydminster was having their baby that night. I should have known then, but he's always been on call. Not necessarily official call, which he's done too, but he's always. been there for his patients. I understand that on a deep level. There are times on a superficial level that I think, oh my God, we had all these plans. We were going to do this. But hey, I know the kind of person he is. So it's hard to be married to a doctor because there are times when you know you don't come first. It's hard to be married to a doctor

when you're sick yourself and you're in a hospital system where I drive two and a half hours to go to see a specialist and I'm told, well, you're a doctor's wife, you know, really, you need to expect this. I laid dying in the University of Alberta Hospital 20 years ago. And they said to me that I was a doctor's wife and that I should understand the limited resources they had. What?

Yeah. Yeah. What happened 20 years ago? Oh, I had a really bad lung condition. They didn't know whether it was one of ten things, including cancer, including TB, including sarcoidosis, including something called boop that I'd never heard of. And I was in a university hospital literally on six liters of oxygen for five weeks. And they hadn't done surgery. They hadn't done a biopsy.

If I didn't have my husband and a couple of really close friends as advocates for me, I wouldn't have come out there alive. They did the biopsy. The tube slipped. I ended up in intensive care dying. But I had to understand all that. They sent a psychiatrist after me the whole time because he had to understand if I was abused wife or an abused child or whether this was all in my head. I was on six liters of oxygen. I told him I couldn't talk to him because I couldn't talk.

But he chased after me because he had to know whether this was in. I was a doctor's wife. Had to know what? He had to know if this was all in my head. What was all in your head? All this being sick. Whether I was manufacturing it, whether I was neurotic because neurotic because I was a doctor's wife. Hey, I've been through the whole gamut.

But let's go back to your first question. Is it hard to be married to a doctor? Awfully hard. Awfully hard. But I loved it. I've done it. I'm still doing it. I understand it.

I have resented it. But I know that my husband has his people. And his people are really, really important to him. And I can't stand in his way. He's gone back to work. He's working three days a week. I won't stand in his way. He loves it.

How many years are you in Ralph been married? 43. 43. Yeah. On 43 years, what is the best piece of advice you can give anyone who is entering into marriage? Hang in there, understand each other, give and take, and let go of the small stuff. Your final one for you. If you could go back to your, well, at 20, you're moving.

So let's say your 18-year-old self, because by 20, you've made the choice. At 18, if you could impart some wisdom on that rebel girl, and whether or not she'd listen, what would you tell her? I'd tell her to be really careful because there's a big, dangerous world out there, particularly today, even then. as a young girl at 18 who was busy trying to be a rebel that were dangerous that I didn't know existed. But I grew up to be my own person. I had been overshadowed a lot by being part of a well-known family. And I was learning to develop my own opinion.

It was very important. It's very important for an 18-year-old to know who they are, to have the sense of values and beliefs and convictions and to understand what they want from their future. And it's all based in values. I know that now. I didn't know that then. Can you expand on that for a second?

Before I let you go, now you... What are values? What are they? Are they just things that we live for today or are they things that we live for down the road in our lives? What's important to us? What's important to us now after we're 18-year-old becomes our family, at 18, maybe we don't think about that too much. But we need to think about who we are. We need to think about our convictions. What is it that we really believe in?

We need to start thinking about making some contribution, not just to us, but to others around us. We need to open our eyes and take a look at what that slum means. We need to turn around and look at what it means that people are treated not equally. Poorly. Right? Even here. And that's young for an 18-year-old to have all of those thoughts. But I would tell the 18-year-old just to stop and view the world a little bit.

Even in the limited view that you have, view the world. View the things that make you who you are. View the things that will make you who you are. Realize the importance that you will have on your community and that you can have on your life. Those are the values that we need to impart in our kids, not just enjoy the, that seize the day, certainly sees the day, but sees the moment in terms of life as well. One more for you before I let you go. On your bucket list, do you have one more thing you'd like to kick off or multiple things you'd like to kick off? Is there something out there you'd like to go do, see, talk to?

Sean, before COVID, I had a lot of places on my bucket list that I wanted to go to. That I wanted to really understand older civilizations and civilizations that have been there for a long time, Turkey being one of them. I'm not sure I have too much travel on my bucket list now. My bucket list now has been reprioritized in my mind. And for me, now it means spending as much time as I can. with all of my kids together. We don't often get together.

But now that's my priority. That's of shrinking that bucket list into really what is important to me because I think COVID's taught us all that, yeah, we can go out there and we can see places and see countries. I still want to do that. I don't know how or when.

But what I can do right now is really spend my time with adult children. understand who they are, get to know them as adults, get to know what they're thinking about their lives down the road, help them, explain to them, be there to share my thoughts of them. Because as they're busy raising kids or they're busy making a living, they may not have time to ask me those questions, but I want to give them that time and the time to spend with Rapheth that we have now. Too many things are going on and happening to people around us that are not pleasant health things. It comes fast. So let's seize this moment. I've learned that.

I've slowed down tremendously in the last few years. I've had health issues, but I've slowed down enough to try and work at living for the moment and living for the day. It doesn't come easy, but I know that's what I have to do. Well, I appreciate you hopping on with me. This has been thoroughly enjoyable. I hope you've enjoyed it. Oh, certainly. And yeah, no, well, thanks again.

Excuse the emotion because I, you know, you forced me to think about more than just what I've done. You forced me to talk about stuff that I've really not talked about before. So I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you opening up about it. So thanks again. Thank you. Hey folks, thanks for joining us today.

If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time.

Hey, Keeners. I was going to give, well, there's a whole bunch of it. Like, if you haven't listened to Monday's episode with Ken Rutherford, we talk about a bunch of different things. But he gets going on different statistics about kids. That really seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people. So if you haven't tuned into that one, I highly suggest you go back and listen to Ken and I go. But there was a ton of feedback on that episode. It just poured it in.

So thanks to everybody who listened and then reached out and gave me their thoughts. You know, and it's always, I always find it interesting when you guys and ladies, reach out and tell me what you're liking and not liking and, you know, I can't, I can't read mine. So I really appreciate it when you shoot me a text or you lend me or shoot me a message on social media. It's super cool to just kind of hear all of our brains are rolling along with, you know, being a year into a pandemic. and just seeing what everybody's thoughts are. But it's Wednesday, so it's hump day. Get out there, do some good, smile a little bit. We'll catch you on Monday, and if you're the champ, you know, feed up off the desk, big fella.

Work to do, all right, pitter-patter. We'll talk to you guys next week.