As tea poured into the family china teacups and the freshly baked Scottish scones were smothered in butter, Joan Thorburn smiled while describing how 52 years ago, she and husband Bill brought to a halt their transient married life as, every time they moved home, she got pregnant.
No one blushed at the casual comment, of course, least of all the little, hand-knitted, un-named bear resting against the teapot which, in turn, was supported by the oak table, hand-made by Bill.
A few minutes earlier — as the boiling kettle whistled on the hob in the kitchen of their single-family home of half a century on leafy Seacote Road in southeast Richmond — Joan wistfully regaled of a childhood growing up as one of 11 kids in a “dysfunctional family” and going to school in a convent, run by the nuns of the “Daughters of Wisdom” in Hampshire, England in the 1930s.
It was there that she learned to sing, mostly hymns, and mastered the craft of knitting, that she still pursues today and to the benefit of impoverished children around the world.
“It was a nice place, (the nuns) taught us to knit, with the advice that the ‘devil finds work for idle hands,’” said Joan, who now, every year since 2007, puts her needles into knitting 100 bears for the Samaritans’ Purse effort.
“During the Second World War, the Red Cross gave us wool to knit for the Forces.
“We got to adopt a warship and we knitted socks for the crew and for the POWs.”
As my knife sliced through a second scone, baked, incidentally by Bill in my honour, Joan told how, after the war, she became a midwife and followed two older siblings to Canada in 1951, where she worked as a registered nurse at St. Paul’s in Vancouver.
In ’52, she moved east a little to Kelowna to work in the city hospital’s maternity ward and it was in that city she met her future husband, who was working for the Bank of Commerce.
“I got introduced to Bill on Halloween that year at a Kinsmen adult skate. It was a blind date,” said Joan.
She suspected that night that Bill was the one.
The pair married on May 8, 1954 and held the reception in the nurses’ residence.
“People didn’t travel that much in those days, so after the wedding, we went to Saskatchewan to visit his family,” said Joan.
The couple had their first two kids in Kelowna and, putting down their cups of tea to count with their fingers, totted up the birthdates and places of their other three children, which included Creston, Chase and finally settling for Richmond in 1963.
The Thorburns bought their current home on Seacote for $23,000 in 1964.
“If we sold now, the lot alone would maybe go for $900,000 or so,” added Bill.
Last March, they lost their eldest daughter, Jill, age 60, who had special needs and wasn’t expected to live past childhood.
The rest of their offspring are scattered from Regina to Nelson to Vancouver, spawning seven grandchildren, age 16 to 28, for the couple, who are long since retired, but still going strong at 88 years.
Joan sings in choirs and, of course, knits, while Bill dabbles in fly-fishing now and then and usually has a project of some sort on the go in their garage.
“I used to play the flute, but the ear is not so good now so that’s difficult and I’ve not (got) so much wind at 88,” laughed Joan.
She’s still handy with a knitting needle though and has woven socks and other garments all her life for family and friends, before the Samaritans charity came to her attention eight years ago.
“When people die, they tended to donate their wool to me, so it gave me a purpose,” she said.
Now, every January, she starts knitting the bears and finishes in October, taking about five hours to knit one and another half hour to stuff it with people’s old pillow filler.
The bears have no names, said Joan, who prefers that privilege be reserved for the kids around the world whose eyes widen when they open their Christmas present from Richmond.
“I say a prayer for the kids that are receiving them, that’s all they need from me.”
It was then, tank filled with three cups of tea and with leftover scones tucked into a Ziploc bag, that I departed the Thorburns’ abode, only for Bill to point out in the front yard the towering Norwegian spruce that yawned into the sky.
“We planted that as a tiny Christmas tree for the kids, 50 years ago.”
How time flies.
