Paulo Coelho, wrote in his 1988 international best-selling novel The Alchemist, quote.
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
As we approach Valentine’s Day, I decided to share stories of couples that have changed Canada forever.
From mapping the continent, to fighting for union rights, to saving the lives of thousands in war zones, these couples have helped make our country, and the world, a better place.
So, grab a box of chocolates, sit back, and enjoy!
I’m Craig Baird, these are love stories on Canadian History Ehx! [TRANSITION]
We begin our lovely journey through Canada’s romantic history with two of my favourite historical figures, David Thompson and Charlotte Small.
They were born half a world apart, into two very different cultures.
Charlotte Small was from in the Northwest Territories, the daughter of a Cree woman and Patrick Small, a fur trader with the North West Company who abandoned the family when his contract with the company ended and he returned to Scotland.
This was the common practice for so-called country marriages which weren’t considered legal under the law because they involved no formality or documents.
These marriages were often done so a fur trader could get an advantage by marrying an Indigenous woman because she could help translate and foster exchanges. In return the woman would see her standing and security within the community increase.
For the most part, both the fur traders and the companies who employed them saw women in these arrangements as means to an end, and disposable.
After her father abandoned the family, when Charlotte was still small life was hard for her mother and sisters and they struggled until she was of marrying age because one way out of that difficulty was to marry a European man, as her mother had done.
An arrangement was reached, and Charlotte found herself a husband, but her country marriage would go on to be much different from her mother’s.
She was just 13 years old, when she agreed to marry… now that might seem young today but please remember that this story took place in 1799 and life expectancy was much shorter then and unions of this kind were fairly common.
On June 10, 1799, Charlotte married a 29-year-old fur trader — David Thompson — in a settlement called Sakitawak, located 370 kilometres north of present-day Saskatoon.
Thompson recorded in his journal on their wedding day,
“Today wed Charlotte Small.”
Soon after the couple journeyed across the Prairies and settled at Rocky Mountain House, where they remained for three years while Thompson surveyed the area.
It quickly became apparent to Thompson that Charlotte was intelligent, capable and resourceful. She could also speak English, French and Cree and could decipher the languages of other Indigenous nations.
Thompson wrote,
“My lovely wife is of the blood of these people, speaking their language, and well educated in the English language, which gives me a great advantage.”
Her knowledge of Cree ceremonies and customs also gave Thompson a deeper understanding of his trading partners.
She was also invaluable to surviving winters because she was a highly skilled hunter and gatherer, always able to find food even during the harshest winters.
On June 10, 1801, on the second anniversary of their marriage, the couple welcomed their first child, Fanny, who was born at Rocky Mountain House where the couple thrived in the unrelenting environment.
Thompson’s records show that from November 1805 to February 1806, she snared eight rabbits which may not seem like much, but it was but enough to keep from starving.
Not only did she keep everyone fed, but she also gathered and processed spruce roots for sewing and mending canoes and containers.
Over the course of her time with Thompson she journeyed across the Canadian West and covered 40,000 kilometres.
In 1812, Thompson was ready to retire and move east to Montreal.
He could have done what so many other men before him had done and leave Charlotte behind but that was not what happened.
They had been together for those 13 years, and the family they raised was not something Thompson wanted to forget, or abandon.
The couple and their five children moved to Montreal, where they were baptized on Sept. 30.
A month later o Oct. 30, 1812, the couple made their union formal at the Scotch Presbyterian Church, making it official and no longer a country marriage.
In Montreal, the couple had eight more children together, four of whom sadly did not survive to adulthood.
While the couple were happy, life was difficult because Thompson had made some poor investments and the family’s wealth declined.
By 1831, Thompson was so deeply in debt he had to return to work as a surveyor to provide for his family.
Eventually, things became bad enough that he was forced to pawn his beloved surveying tools that had served him well for decades.
In 1845, Charlotte and Thompson moved in with their daughter and son-in-law to save money.
On Feb. 10, 1857, Thompson died in Montreal in near obscurity.
He was buried in an unmarked grave at Mount Royal Cemetery and less than three months later Charlotte joined him on May 4, 1857.
Their marriage lasted 58 years and is believed to be the longest in pre-Confederation history.
Today, the couple is recognized for their significant contribution to the exploration of Western Canada together they mapped 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) of wilderness about one-fifth of the continent.
A decade after David Thompson and Charlotte Small died, David Thompson – no relation- met the love of his life.
John Sparrow David Thompson, was a Protestant lawyer in Nova Scotia in 1867,
He was getting over the death of his father six months earlier, when he met Annie Affleck.
She had grown up down the hill from where John’s parents lived but was a Catholic and three years older than him.
When she met John, she immediately became attracted to his intelligence and modesty.
For John, she became his most important advisor and confidante because she was passionate and intelligent.
Despite coming from different worlds, they quickly became inseparable.
By Autumn 1867, John was spending six days a week with Annie and her family.
Whenever he could, he took her on long walks where he taught her French and shorthand which she used to write about their relationship in her diary.
Her mother read the diary and to keep her from reading the steamier bits, Annie coded those sections in shorthand.
Three years after they met, John and Annie married on July 5th, 1870.
A year later John converted to Catholicism at the risk of losing his Protestant clients, but none left.
Over the next two decades, the couple had nine children, five of which survived childhood.
During that time John shifted from law to politics, and briefly became the Nova Scotia premier from May 25, 1882, to July 18, 1882.
In 1883, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald pursued John Sparrow David Thompson to become a candidate for Parliament.
As a skilled lawyer, he would make an excellent Minister of Justice.
John was reluctant because it would mean moving to Ottawa and possibly spending long stretches of time away from Annie and the family.
But Annie convinced him, and John entered federal politics in 1885, when he was elected to the House of Commons and soon became the Minister of Justice.
Less than a decade later Sir John Sparrow David Thompson became prime minister on Dec. 5, 1892, following the resignation of Sir John Abbott. This meant working long hours, and John began to gain weight and his health declined.
But he couldn’t slow down since he was made a member of the Privy Council by Queen Victoria.
He was burning the candle at both ends but stopped long enough to have lunch at Windsor Castle on Dec. 12, 1894.,
In between courses John suffered a massive heart attack and died at the table.
Annie was devastated by his death.
Six months later she moved to Toronto and took with her 30 trunks of letters he had written her during their life together.
Heartbroken, Annie never remarried and the rest of her life doing charity work before her death in 1913.
Another important couple that helped shape Canada met in the late 1920’s.
John Diefenbaker met Edna Bower when she was working as a teacher at Mayfair Elementary in Saskatoon.
He was a lawyer and aspiring politician who wasn’t having much luck getting elected.
The couple married in 1929 and Edna began to help John with his quest, but it was no easy task.
First, he had to overcome crippling shyness.
She helped when meeting new people in new towns by arriving first and gathering information She then gave it to John with tips on how to use it to connect with the voters. This is how he built a “man of the people” persona.
She also drove him to meetings and edited his speeches.
All that work by Edna helped get John Diefenbaker elected to Parliament in 1940.
And she wasn’t done yet.
Edna was a constant presence in the House of Commons visitor’s gallery.
She also helped John foster a close relationship with the Ottawa Press Gallery.
But then…in 1950, Edna fell ill.
Doctors diagnosed her with leukemia and her health quickly declined but her devotion to her husband and his career was unstoppable.
John returned from a Commonwealth meeting in Australia in January 1951, and he went to see her in the hospital.,
At her bedside he heard the story of a young man charged with manslaughter in a train crash which occurred on Nov. 21, 1950, near Valemount, British Columbia.
Jack Atherton, a telegraph operator, was alleged to have passed an incomplete message which caused two trains going opposite directions to collide with each other killing 21 people, 17 of whom were soldiers on their way to fight in the Korean War.
Edna told John to take the case which became known as the Canoe River Crash and defend Jack who had professed his innocence in the crash.
But there was a problem… for John to be able to represent the telegraph operator he would have to pass the British Columbia bar which cost $1,500.
Meanwhile, Edna had already committed him to take the case.
John had no choice; he did what needed to be done to represent Jack Atherton and, in the end, got him acquitted of the crime.
The court case made national headlines and raised John’s profile within the Progressive Conservative Party and among Canadians coast to coast.
But Edna never saw that courtroom victory.
She died on Feb. 7, 1951.
Upon her death, Members of Parliament eulogized her on the floor of the House of Commons.
Two years later in 1953, John remarried and took Olive Palmer as his new bride.
In 1956, he became the leader of the Progressive Conservatives and one year later, was elected Prime Minister of Canada, serving until 1963.
His success as Prime Minster would not have been possible without Edna who first helped get John out of his shell and was his biggest and most unrelenting supporter.
The stories I’m sharing today are about how love makes the world better… regardless of location and Lucille Teasdale and Piero Corti made their impact felt half a world away in Uganda.
In 1955, Lucille was a young woman interning at a hospital in Montreal while pursuing a medical degree when she met Piero who was doing his residency.
The two immediately felt a connection, but according to Piero, she only had eyes for her career.
He said,
“I must say, I didn’t see much of her then, she was too busy. Apart from being very hardworking, I find her extremely good looking.”
Lucille’s dream was to be a surgeon, and although male colleagues scoffed at the idea, Piero believed in her.
But it seemed everyone was against her, their colleagues told Pierro no one would trust a female surgeon and if he supported her, he wouldn’t be hired anywhere in the city.
He didn’t care, and neither did Lucille.
At the time, the law stipulated that to become a surgeon, part of the training had to be outside of Canada.
Looking to complete her final year of residency abroad, Lucille applied to several hospitals in the United States.
They all turned her down despite having high grades and an excellent record as an intern.
She believed she was turned down because she was a woman.
In 1960, she travelled to Marseille to do her final year internship at the Hopital de la Conception.
While in France, Lucille sent Piero a postcard asking him to visit.
He had been working in Northern Uganda as part of a UN mission. and was preparing the first air cargo of equipment to be airlifted.
At the time, the country was known as the Protectorate of Uganda, and was moving towards independence from being a British territory since 1894.
Instead of going to France to meet Lucille, Piero asked her to join him for a couple of months in Gulu, Uganda where he was starting a surgical facility. a.
A true romantic, he offered to pay for air travel, as well as cigarettes and toothpaste.
She arrived on an Italian Air Force plane and soon she hoped to work as a doctor in Uganda.
But first she had to obtain a licence, which required a two-month internship and was assigned a position in St. Mary’s Hospital Lacor, a non-profit hospital established in 1959 about five kilometres west of Gulu.
It had a 40-bed maternity ward, and an outpatient department, but the operating room was still under construction.
Then she extended her stay a few extra weeks when Piero briefly returned to Italy to care for his ailing father.
Upon his return she flew back to France to finish her studies.
But that wouldn’t last long.
As soon as Lucille returned to France, Piero followed her.
He begged her to be by his side and professed his love for her.
She was madly in love with him and agreed to go back to Uganda.
The couple married in a tiny chapel outside the hospital on Dec. 5, 1961.
From then on, they ran the hospital and provided critical care for thousands of people.
In the meantime, Uganda became independent from Britain on Oct. 9, 1962, and just over a month later, Dominique, the couple’s only child, was born on Nov. 17.
Locals called Dominique the word for being born far from home, Atim, and Lucille was called min Atim, which means mother of Atim.
She was respected for her tireless work ethic and boundless energy because it was common for her to see 300 patients a day, while performing back-to-back surgeries.
In 1967 alone, Lucille performed 554 major operations, almost two a day.
And for each, she charged $15, if the family could even afford it.
Often, she performed operations for free.
Meanwhile, Piero treated 3,500 patients and helped 52,000 out-patients that year with the help of three other doctors.
The couple also set up a children’s hospital for patients suffering from leprosy where they could receive schooling and consistent care.
During the 1960s, the couple operated their hospital in relative peace.
That did not last.
In 1971, Idi Amin staged a coup, overthrew the government and became president.
Now that name might sound familiar to you.
He was a brutal ruler often referred to as the “Butcher of Africa” or you might know him as the Last King of Scotland.
In 1972 he expelled between 50,000 and 70,000 of Uganda’s Asian population and gave their properties and businesses to his supporters, causing the economy and infrastructure to collapse.
In 1977 he broke diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and claimed he was the Conqueror of the British Empire.
Under Amin’s tyrannical rule many expatriates left the country, but Lucille and Piero chose to stay.
The couple organized a support group in Italy to provide the hospital with used clothes, prescription drugs and equipment.
But they sent Dominque away to ensure her safety and so she could get a better education as conditions in Uganda deteriorated.
In 1979, Idi Amin was overthrown during the Uganda-Tanzania War and the disbanded army ransacked the hospital several times as they fled.
For months, the hospital was cut off from the world during the conflict, and Lucille was often operating on wounded civilians.
Despite the turmoil around them, the couple upgraded the hospital to 482 beds, opened three health centres in nearby villages, established a health worker training program, trained laboratory technicians, and opened a nursing school.
Then, in the early 1980s, while operating on a patient, Lucille cut her finger.
She thought nothing of it after treating it, but little did she know that the patient was infected with a mysterious illness not yet widely identified.
By 1982, the disease started to show up more frequently at the hospital and Lucille started to experience symptoms.
In 1985, she traveled to Italy where testing was available.
The disease? was HIV.
She compared being infected with the virus to wartime journalists who die on the job or, or men who work in mines.
She said,
“I caught this disease instead of another one. Why should I be upset about it?”
She was given two years to live.
The unstoppable Lucille Teasdale kept working as her condition worsened over the next decade.
By early 1996, she weighed less than 100 pounds but was on her feet four to six hours a day in the Ugandan outpatient clinic.
Often, she was too weak to get out of bed and needed an IV to rehydrate but as soon as she was able, she got to work.
Piero and Lucille were aware that the end was near, and they planned for their legacy.
They trained surgeons, and their daughter Dominique, now a doctor too, joined her parents at the hospital in Uganda.
Lucille said,
“My husband has had two heart attacks and I have my disease. We know we are not going to be around for many more years. We have practically Africanized the hospital and they are well prepared to take over.”
Lucille died in Italy on Aug. 1, 1996.
Eight years later, Piero followed when he died of pancreatic cancer. He is buried next to Lucille.
Their hospital continues to exist to this day… a testament to their love and Dominique became the president of Corti Foundation to not only carry her parents’ legacy but also share her love and compassion with the needy.
St. Mary’s Hospital Lacor receives billions from the Corti Foundation annually to fund its budget. Without it, the hospital would be one of the most expensive in the country.
Helping those in need and looking out for the collective is something that Madeleine Parent and Kent Rowley did as well… not in Uganda but here in Canada….
In 1936, Madeleine enrolled at McGill University to pursue a bachelor of sociology.
At the school, she took part in her first collective action through the Canadian Students Assembly as they campaigned to seek financial aid for students dealing with poverty.
In 1941, she met Val Bjarnason, a student from British Columbia and got married soon after but this isn’t a story about them and by the end of the decade, they divorced.
Meanwhile Madeleine graduated and began working as secretary of the Montreal Trades and Labour Council organizing committee.
In 1942, she started working as the key union organizer with Kent Rowley for the United Textile Workers of America in Quebec.
The two felt a strong connection, but as Madeleine was married.
They focused on the union and grew it to 6,000 textile workers by 1946In June of that year, on behalf of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union they began a strike against Dominion Textile in Valleyfield and Montreal to improve working conditions.
Maurice Duplessis, the premier of Quebec, declared the strike “illegal.”
On Aug. 13, 1946, Madeleine and Kent were arrested.
She was charged with seditious conspiracy and public charges that she was a communist.
Sentenced to 30 days in jail, she was freed when the Court of Appeals reversed the verdict.
The arrests didn’t dampen her and Ken’s efforts as they continued to fight and eventually, the strikers won!
For Madeleine this was the first strike of many.
Less than a year later the couple was back on the picket lines as 700 wool workers went on strike with the United Textile Workers of America on April 10, 1947.
Between May 2 and May 7 Madeleine was arrested three times, she was charged with influencing employees to go on strike, and was eventually released on $2,000 bail,
Kent was arrested and released as well.
Gilbert Ayers, president of Ayers Limited, the company they were striking against, said,
“The truth is that Rowley and Miss Parent through this latest move are seeking personal vengeance against me. Rowley and Miss Parent will soon learn that we cannot be blackmailed or scared.”
On May 21, Madeleine and Kent surrendered to police because there was another warrant for their arrest on charges of seditious conspiracy and intimidation.
Judge Aime Chasse sent Madeleine and Kent to trial on June 27.
While awaiting trial, they criticized companies in Quebec, and spoke at union events to raise support for the Canadian Congress of Labour.
Madeleine was also appointed as the acting Canadian director of the United Textile Workers of America.
The trial of Madeleine and Kent began on Nov. 26, and continued until Feb 7, 1948, when a jury deliberated for only 45 minutes and found Madeleine and Kent guilty of seditious conspiracy.
Kent was sentenced to six months in prison, while Madeleine was sentenced to two years.
Madeleine appealed and was released on $3,000 bail and two years later she a new trial was ordered on May 31, 1949
She said,
“Every autumn, we went to the court, and each time the attorney general stated that it was not in the public interest to proceed with the new trial at this time. It was an injustice, but part of my life, part of history, a McCarthy-like attack on people standing up for their rights.”
As her legal troubles continued, in 1952, she founded the Canadian Textile Council with Kent Rowley, as president. A year later, Madeleine and Kent finally married.
Then in 1955 after what seemed like an eternity Madeleine Parent was acquitted, after the clerk in charge of the case died, and nobody could read his handwritten notes.
No new trials were ordered.
The entire affair became the longest trial in Quebec history to that point.
She said,
“I think it was worth it. I’ve been called a witch, a moll, a lesbian, everything you could think of.”
But it came at a great cost.
She had wanted children but didn’t want to go to jail while pregnant or as a mother and by the time she was acquitted, she was 37 years old and felt it was too late.
So, she focused on making Canadian unions independent from American interests.
Until then most Canadian unions had U.S.-based headquarters, and after a split from their American counterparts the couple pushed for an independent labour movement as they continued organizing workers in Canada.
In 1956, Madeleine and Kent led a strike of 700 workers against Harding Carpets who was backed by the provincial government.
The company ran a full-page ad in the newspaper stating,
“Kent Rowley is a communist, as is his associate Madeleine Parent.”
The strike lasted for 91 days as The Canadian Textile Council sought reduced weekly hours without a reduction in pay, an improved pension plan, and better medical coverage.
In the end, workers received a pay raise along with a better pension and medical coverage, but not a reduced work week.
Eventually, Madeleine and Kent’s efforts to form an independent union, caused the United Textile Workers Association to push them out of leadership.
In 1958, Kent moved to Ontario, while Madeleine remained in Quebec and they lived apart for the next decade not for a lack of love, but for a higher calling.
Madeleine said,
“Every time we thought of starting a family, something more pressing came up. Another strike, another cause, another negotiating session.”
They sacrificed so much as they toured Canada, to speak to workers, and help them form unions. They stood side by side on picket lines and lent their support in strikes.
The couple reunited in Ontario in 1968 and founded the Council of Canadian Unions closing the chapter on their 15-year struggle for independent unions.
While they had faced criticism at times, their commitment would stand the test of time and cemented their legacy as determined, forward-thinking, widely honoured activists.
But the couple’s union wasn’t meant to last because Kent died ten years later in 1978.
After his death, Madeleine returned to Quebec.
Her advocacy as a labour organizer was fundamentally connected to her feminist and anti-racist activism and she became a founding member of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and took part in women’s marches throughout the next three decades until her death in March 2012.
Fighting for a more equitable world is something Jim Egan and Jack Nesbit did as well.
They met for the first time in the spring of 1948, at the Savarin Hotel in Toronto.
Local gay men had known the intersection of Queen and Bay as “The Corners,” a place where they could surely find each other, and the hotel was located at 336-44 Bay Street.
At that time, it was one of the most popular gay spots in town. It was by no means exclusively gay but a great many of the customers were gay men because bars were strictly segregated in those days – there were no women on the men’s side.
In his book, Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence, Jim Egan wrote,
“I was smitten with Jack.”
Two weeks later, they met again at the King Cole Room at the Park Plaza Hotel.
Jack was sitting with friends and Jim sat a little distance away when, Jack walked over and said,
“I’ve been asking all these guys if they wanted to go steady with me, and none of them will. How about you? Would you like to go steady with me?”
Initially shocked, Jim stated they should at least go on a date first.
The next night, they had their first date.
It was simple. A long walk together as they got to know each other.
Being gay was illegal in Canada and they needed to be careful.
On Aug. 23, 1948, they committed to each other.
With Jack’s support, Jim felt more at ease being a gay man.
He decided to tell his mother who told him that if he was happy, that all that mattered to her.
Jim wrote in his book,
“When I brought Jack home for the first time, she took to him like another son, and they had a wonderful relationship for as long as she lived.”
Jack’s parents also welcomed Jim into the family and treated him like a second son.
Jack’s mother said,
“You know, now I can die happy because Jack’s found someone who can look after him.”
Their loving and welcoming homes were the exception, not the norm at the time.
In Toronto, homosexuals had to keep their love secret. If discovered, not only did they face jail time, but they would lose their job.
That’s because following the Second World War, papers such as Justice Weekly freely spoke of quote “disgusting sex orgies” and the quote “limp wrist club.”
Articles meant to inflame, not bring about understanding for the gay community.
Which meant that men like Jack who worked for the Provincial Audit Office at Queen’s Park could in no way reveal they were gay without risking their livelihoods.
In contrast, Jim was self-employed and was able to take a stand which he did in 1949 when he began writing letters and articles advocating for gay rights in Canada.
For the next 15 years, he wrote letters to the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and any other publication that were prejudicial to his community.
In one piece he wrote,
“The acceptance and integration that every thinking responsible homosexual desires will come some day.”
It was not without a cost.
In 1963, Jack told him he couldn’t deal with the growing attention and the couple broke up Jim said,
“Activism was very important to me. I couldn’t just walk away from it.”
Jim Egan continued his work and slowly there was progress.
Publications moved away from articles condemning the LGBTQ2S+ community and towards understanding.
In 1964, The Homosexual Next Door, one of the first positive portrayals of homosexuality was published in Macleans.
Jim described the two-part series as fair and objective. He said,
, “Considering that they were written by someone like Katz, who was not gay, the articles were refreshingly non-judgemental for the time and very informative.”
Although Jack and Jim had broken up fate would bring them together in May 1964 when they ran into each other at the Parkside Tavern at 530 Yonge Street.
Jack invited Jim back to the apartment and the two had a long talk.
Jim wanted to be with Jack, even if it meant abandoning his activism and he would do it if they left Toronto.
They got back together and a month later they left with three chihuahuas, ready to begin their new life in British Columbia.
For the next twenty years they lived a quiet life in a more welcoming environment where they were able as openly gay men in Merville, a community on Vancouver Island.
In 1981, Jim ran for the position of regional director of Electoral Area B of the Regional District of Comox-Strathcona and became the first openly gay man in a relationship to be elected to public office in Canada and served until1993.
Jim may have been done with activism, but activism was not done with him.
When he retired in 1986, he started to collect his Canadian Pension.
The couple had been together since 1948, apart from one year in the 60’s so Jim applied for Jack to receive spousal benefits under the Old Age Security Act since they met all the requirements.
Health and Welfare Canada denied their claim based on the fact they were a same-sex couple.
In 1988, Jim launched a case in the Trial Division of the Federal Court of Claim, stating that they were being discriminated against for being a same-sex couple.
He argued it violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In 1991, the Federal Court dismissed the case deeming their relationship, not spousal They appealed the decision and the Federal Court of Appeal ruled against them in 1993.
The next step was to take their case to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of Canada.
In May 1995, the Supreme Court dismissed Jack and Jim’s appeal.
But…
They also ruled unanimously to include sexual orientation as a prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
While they lost the battle, they won the war.
This Supreme Court decision would set a precedent for several other landmark LGBTQ2S+ cases including Halpern v Canada in 2003.
That case ruled that the common law definition of marriage, defined as between a man and a woman, violated section 15 of the Charter.
It allowed for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada in 2005.
Following their landmark case, Jack and Jim were made the grand marshals of the 1995 Toronto Pride Parade.
Sadly, Jim Egan died in March 2000.
Three months later, his lifelong partner, Jack Nesbitt, passed away.
In 2018, Jim Egan and Jack Nesbitt were the subjects of the first LGBTQ Heritage Minute.
They didn’t get a chance to see same sex marriages become legal, but their love made Canada a better place.
Jack and Jim opened the doors for all Canadians to be able to marry.
Six years before Jack and Jim met Anne and Charles Muise got married.
Little did they know on July 13, 1942, that their wedded bliss would become one of the longest unions in Canadian history.
They first met at a church dance, and it was love at first sight.
They got married as the Second World War raged and two months later Charles was shipped off to Europe.
He was gone for three years and almost every week he wrote to her Anne sent him care packages of chocolate and cigarettes.
Once the war ended and Charles returned home.
Anne said that Charles arrived shell-shocked, “he did not understand me, and I didn’t understand him, so we had to get used to each other all over again.”
They bought a house in Yarmouth Nova Scotia for $2,000 and raised eight children.
Nearly 77 years later the couple turned 100 years old in that same house.
On July 13, 2022, they celebrated 80 years of marriage together, they love lasted through three British monarchs, 15 Governors General and 13 Prime Ministers.
Their secret to a long life and marriage?
“If you stay in love, you don’t have too many problems,” said Charles.
“I don’t think there is any secret. You just love from day to day,” said Anne.
