Our daughter Mary was seeing the young man she had met up North, he had come from Richmond, originally; they wanted to get married. Mary was only 16 and we wanted them to wait, but their minds were made up; with or without our permission, they would marry - so we gave it. They didn't want to be married in a church, because Steve didn't think his parents would go there...they were married by a registrar, in White Rock.

We couldn't afford a wedding dress for her - so got the closest thing to it, from the Salvation Army (white background, with green flowers, etc.) We had a reception at a restaurant in Richmond: Steve's parents helped with the finances. Later, the bride & groom were given the “bridal suite” at the accompanying motel...courtesy of the restaurant. They flew North, the following day; Steve still worked up there. A couple of weeks later, friends of our's performed a Christian ceremony for them - followed by a reception for them...many of our x-farm friends attended.

I hadn't felt well since the hysterectomy that I had up North; what part of it was stress, I don't know. Doctor put me on hormone pills; they didn't seem to help. I had a lot of trouble with sensitivity to noise (later to learn it was because of thyroid disease) and there was a lot of it in Surrey, so we decided to move more out in the country. We found a house not far from where Joe was working. Across the street there were some unusual neighbors; their children were friendly (as it turns out, the daughter was overly friendly with our boys). We found out, years later, that there was incest in the family.

Joey was on his own, now. He was a meat cutter for Lawrence Meats, in Dawson Creek, B.C. He began living with an Inuit woman named Kathy - they had a daughter named Elizabeth Lee Girouard.

Mike had gone North, also. He rented an apartment in town - it was there that he met Julie (they would later marry).

That year, we had four of our children leave home: Joey, Mike, Mary, and Peter - it was rough on Mom! “Empty nest” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I continued to cook for a large family, and we didn’t have one…there were so many left-overs.