Didn't get to Mount Royal cemetery as planned, though, for complicated reasons that don't belong in this blog, but I had hoped to show the kids and grandkids these markers that I just noticed for the first times last week. They are for Billy Christmas and his wife. He was an athlete at the turn of the 20th Century, and his beloved wife (apparently she convinced him to give up contact sports when they married) died early of breast cancer. They also lost a daughter to a brain tumour when she was 15. According to the citation proclaiming him a member of the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, in the 1930s he was an early champion of hospitalization insurance for ordinary folk.
I only discovered that latter fact today when I stated looking into who he was. Nice to give him credit for that fight, as well as his prowess on the playing field. We didn't get universal hospitalization insurance all over Canada for another 30 years, but it finally came. Now why can't our friends to the South get their act together do something similar.
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