The Beginning (storey 1 of 40)

I am a little girl. My feet stick out in front of me on the worn green leather seat. Across from me on a duplicate seat that turns in to face mine, are my three younger brothers. I snuggle deeper into my fake fur coat. It is the most beautiful coat I have ever owned. It is blinding white in colour with a big shawl type collar that hides my nose if I want it to; my grandfather says that I look like a baby polar bear. It is a recent Christmas present from my grandparents.

It is very cold; we are between Christmas and New Year’s sitting on the frozen tarmac at Edmonton’s Municipal Airport. This is the early morning; the sun has lots of sleeping time left yet. The year is 1965. A DC-6 airplane of the Pacific Western Airlines (PWA) vintage is struggling to warm up enough to start one last engine and get airborne in the minus -35F temperature. Northerners referred to PWA as the “please wait awhile” airline.

Windows on the old plane are mostly frozen over. My brothers and I have been blowing on the glass and scraping the frost away until our fingers burn with the cold. We stick them in our mouths and suck the frozen out. No one has stuck their tongue on the frozen steel that rings the window. This is luck only; knowledge is acquired harder, later.