“Idleness, so-called, which does not consist of doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself” An Apology for Idlers by Robert Louis Stevenson 1880.
Retirement at 65 was mandatory at the U of T in my time but for a professor, retirement is not a sudden discrete change of daily routine. I began drawing my pension but continued doing part time teaching for the next five years at a reduced pay rate. The University of Toronto doesn’t kick you out like you’re a spent asset. Before retirement I had a fully equipped office at home and after retirement I still do. As the technology developed in my later working years, I had access to the U of T computer on my PC at home and most files were kept electronically so lecture preparation and research could be done at either location. Interaction with students and fellow professors was of course done on campus. The biggest change imposed by retirement was the loss of contact with colleagues and students. However, an office is made available at the Business School for the use of retired professors and this allows some continued contact with old colleagues. Now after being retired for well over a decade I walk down the School’s halls and look into the open office doors and find more new faces than old. Life goes on.
When I retired I was approached and interviewed by the head of the U of T Computer Department for a position supervising the selection and purchasing of Statistical Computing Packages and making them available to the University community at large. Right up my alley, but it was a full time job and I was not prepared to give up our winters down south. This was the second time I sacrificed money for lifestyle. Freda and I had been managing to arrange two or three weeks in Palm Springs for years and escaping the Toronto winter even briefly appealed to us. We were now freer to travel. My pension was relatively small but it included good health insurance and we had acquired a few assets along the way. We were not rich but we had enough to satisfy our needs and our moderate wants.
Later while Freda and I were attending a conversational French course at Seneca Community College near our home, I took the opportunity to approach the Dean to see if she needed extra resources in the Computer Department and I was readily accepted. I was given assignments to teach part-time students elementary courses in MS-DOS, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1‑2‑3; they were the popular software programs of the day. DOS stood for Disc Operating System, the operating system developed by Microsoft that was in general use before Microsoft Windows was introduced. The money was not that good but it fitted in well with my schedule and I continued for several years. Some of my consulting continued but my contacts diminished and so did the contracts, so in 1990 I went into full and active retirement at the age of 72.
During the next decade we did a lot of travelling. Palm Springs every winter for two months, out-of-town simchas whenever they occurred including mispucha weddings in Baltimore, Winnipeg, Edmonton, White Plains and a synagogue reunion in Regina, not to forget Martin and Sharon’s wedding in beautiful Vancouver at which a bountiful collection of out of town family attended. Other holiday trips took us to Ottawa, Montreal, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Ogunquit, London, Paris, the French Riviera, Rome, Florence, Venice, Helsinki, Stockholm, New Orleans, Athens, Peloponnese, Rhodes, Crete, Southern California, Las Vegas, Washington, a Radar reunion in Clinton Ontario, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, Alaska, a second trip to Israel, and one to Scottsdale Arizona.
I became an active member of the executive of the YMRA (York Mills Ratepayers Association) as Treasurer shortly after I retired and am still a member today, although less active. We have a serious group of homeowners who are interested in protecting the general tone of the neighbourhood by attempting to enforce by‑laws without being against good constructive development. At present our house is one of the few bungalows left on our street.
Our synagogue has an active and vibrant seniors group called Temple Sinai Social Club 55+. They regularly organize excellent in-Temple and out-of-Temple programs including trips to entertainment events in and out of the city. I served on their executive for five years as membership chairman.
A Thursday morning walk-in coffee
group at the Faculty Club was organized for retired professors many years ago
by Jack Sword (one time acting-president of U of T) and Bill Foulds. I
attend periodically for coffee and conversation and we usually stay for lunch.
It’s a successful congenial group; but it’s slowly being eroded by attrition.
It continues today, but like most retirement organizations we gain only few
younger retiree; many do not want to associate with the “old guys” so they form
their own groups. Every year we lose more members than we gain. But the
relatively healthy Old Boys (and Girls) still show up on Thursdays and the
group continues to this day.
The cohort that retired from the
Business School around the time I did was small but from that small group I did
manage to organize a good bridge foursome that consisted of Barry Coutts,
Warren Main, George Leonidas and me. We met once a week at rotating host
houses and it went on for several years until attrition began to take its
toll. First Barry Coutts, a brilliant conversationalist but also a heavy
smoker, died of lung cancer. Bob Barron replaced him and that foursome
went on for several years until George's health began to fail and he died
mysteriously of another kind of cancer. One or two attempted replacements
lasted for a while but we finally were forced to disband. Later Bob died
of the big C, and when Warren's wife died unexpectedly, Warren moved to a
rest home in Aurora to be near his nieces and he died about a year later.
When you’re in your 70’s your health is relatively good. You still have the will and the energy to do a lot of travelling, attend plays and concerts, read books in ordinary sized print, walk as far as you like, play some bridge, serve on committee boards, entertain at home with brunches and dinners, and do lots of shopping. When you get into your 80’s both your will and your energy wane.
Your daily routines now have more doctors’ and dentist’s appointments than pleasure activities.
In January of 1992, I was shocked into the realization that nothing was forever. “The biopsy was positive!” That was the dreaded message I got from my doctor when he told me it was prostate cancer. I had to elect surgery or radiation. Nothing makes you more aware of your own mortality than the big‑C word. I was reassured at the time that if I had to have cancer, prostate was the best kind to have. Some consolation. I was also told that I had a 90% chance of a ‘cure’, which to me meant there was a 90% probability that I would die of something else before I would die of prostate cancer. There is presently no such thing as a cure for cancer. Radical radiation therapy was carried out in the spring of 1992. All medical treatments have side effects but more about that later. In May, to celebrate the end of the radiation regimen, Freda and I took our first and our best cruise tour. We went with another professor and his wife (the Mains) on a tour of Western Europe. The ship called at five interesting ports, and we topped it off with a 3‑day add-on stopover in London.
My oncologist has been monitoring my condition semi-annually at the Princess Margaret Hospital, a first class hospital. The cancer progressed slowly and at a steady rate and the monitoring procedure consisted of “watchful waiting” combined with periodic PSA tests and annual total body bone scans. The threat of aggressive therapy hanging over one’s head for years is not pleasant. You develop a more fateful attitude, as you get older. After 13 years of this my oncologist decided that further watchful waiting would be playing chicken, and he prescribed hormone therapy, a fairly aggressive treatment.
Our first grandchild, Alanna, was born in 1987, our second, Sarah, in 1996, and our third, Joshua, in 1998 when I was already 80 years old. Along with the births came sad news of too many deaths of relatives and friends in the decade. Freda lost her father in 1988 at the age of 91, and the two of us had the unwelcome task of going to Winnipeg to clear out the Furman house in 10 days. Freda’s mother died two years later in a rest home at the age of 90. I lost my sister Ruth in 1992 when she was only 78. The year 1995 was a bad one: we lost Freda’s brother Morry, nephew Brian, my brother-in-law Mel Shear, and Freda’s brother-in-law David Fisher. Our world was shrinking.
Carpe diem. Enjoy every day you have left. Each one is precious.