Happy Anniversary to us! In the first wee hour of September 7, daughter Audrey came by after we had dressed up in our wedding finery so she could take a picture to complete the musical slideshow Gayle has been working on to document our 15 wedding anniversaries in several far-flung areas of North America.

The music is one of our favourites, Robbie Burns’ “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose” which Ian sang to Gayle at our church reception following the wedding. On this slideshow the singer is Kenneth McKellar, the famous Scottish opera and concert virtuoso. If Gayle ever figures out how to isolate Ian’s rendition of the song from our wedding day video, she may one day substitute Ian’s voice for that of McKellar’s.

For the most part our anniversaries have been happy occasions celebrated first in Manitoba, then in Mexico for two years, nine years in British Columbia and now back in Manitoba for the last three years. Only our fifth anniversary photo illustrates the wedding vows “for worse … in sickness…” as that anniversary found Ian in the Intensive Care Unit at Vernon Jubilee Hospital in British Columbia having been felled into a life-threatening situation by sepsus and BOOP (bronciolitis obliterans organizing pneumonia). By the time of our anniversary he had just come out of an induced coma but was unable to talk due to a tracheostomy tube. Gayle had been visiting every day and singing to him as he slowly recovered. She couldn’t bring flowers, wine or chocolates into the ICU to celebrate their anniversary so instead substituted two appropriately decorated helium balloons. These, however, caused Ian to freak out on anniversary night when he mistook them for ghosts as they floated around above his bed, so they had to be taken away. Frightening memories for him that we can now laugh about!

We hope you enjoy a second musical slideshow of our 15th wedding anniversary to a rendition of Ian singing one of his signature Scottish tunes, “Come In, Come In, It’s Nice Tae See Ye” (written by Andy Stewart and Ian MacFayen for the White Heather Club). This is from a CD of Scottish songs Ian recorded just before we left Mexico in early 2007. We hope you’ll enjoy it.

Regarding this slideshow, we’ve really laughed at the likeness to Churchill that Ian shows on the first photo, when Ian was caught unposed. Guess he looks like Winston when he is serious. We went out for dinner late on our anniversary NOT in our wedding finery. Just getting Ian kilted up for photos was quite a task now that he is not in very good health again. It was much easier when he could do it for himself. We do love his kilted look, though, and wish he could wear it more often.

As a last chuckle, we share this photo taken a few years ago at the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park when Ian was hamming it up with his “twin.” We were struck by the facial similarity to Mol’s Winston Churchill bust. Leo Mol is the professional name for renowned Ukrainian Canadian stained glass artist and sculptor Leonid Molodoshanin (1915-2009) who died in Winnipeg at age 94.