In the Beginning: The Grampies Get Rolling

September 20, 2017

Our plan is to start each blogging day for this trip with a brief retrospective to a year (in order) of our 50 years together. But that will start tomorrow, when we will actually get on our bikes. Today we are just doing things like cleaning out the fridge (oogh). But fifty years ago we were gearing up too. Fortunately we did not have to clean the fridge then. I guess our mothers did that. (We don't remember, but I bet they noticed the chore.) No, we were busy getting to know each other and soon, plotting a life together. The first known Grampies photo is this one, probably from 1964:

The first photo of the Grampies together. Dodie dreamed up a Valentines party and invited other people, but the whole idea was to get Steve to come.

It wasn't long, even then, before we went out on a bike trip. Bikes were always part of our lives. But it would be another 45 years before we made room for serious bike tripping.

Grampies started out in the big city of Montreal, but very early they were eager to bicycle out of it. In 1966 this was not easy, but they did make it over the bridges and they escaped on their bikes to the country.

It was a problem, in 1967, to convince our parents that getting married right away was a good idea. They thought that at 19 we were too young, and neither set of parents thought the other family, or the other partner in the match for that matter, was all that great. But, as happened so many times after that, Steve and Dodie saw what they wanted to do and just did it.

The Grampies were married in a chinese restaurant. Steve shaved off his beard for the one day because Dodie's grandmother thought it looked "old fashioned". The bride, of course, was beautiful!

1967 was certainly the "60's", but in our corner of the world, the full force of social unrest and youth culture had not quite hit. "Our" song, then, was nothing like The Times They Are A Changin', which Bob Dylan had already published in 1964. Rather it was the gentle love song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", which was written by Ewan MacColl in 1957. Dodie used to sing it to me often, and later it was sung by her to our children and grandchildren. You can listen here to one version, released by Peter, Paul, and Mary in 1965.

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