Sunday, July 20, 2025

The many moves of the Seventies and Eighties…


 Toronto, as seen from Mississauga
watercolour and crayon
©2017 Charlene Brown

After being transferred from Colorado back to Canada, we lived in Ottawa again, this time for eight years, then two years in Vancouver before Ottawa again, this time for only three years.  Then we left our government jobs and my husband went to work for Wardair in Toronto.  We lived several miles south of the airport near Lake Ontario, in Missisauga.

We probably would have stayed there until my husband retired, but the airline was bought by CP Air, and the former Wardair pilots sensed that their future prospects were less than excellent.  Many began looking elsewhere, and twelve of them including my husband, were scooped up by a brand new, rapidly expanding airline many of us had never heard of.  In 1990 we moved abruptly to a city we also hadn’t heard of and had only recently located on a map of the Middle East. I’ll tell you about it next week.

Sunday, July 13, 2025

My first logical move


 Ottawa
watercolour, ink and marker
©2017 Charlene Brown 

In the summer of 1968, the Canadian government launched a cross-country recruitment drive for computer programmers.  Fortunately for me, one of the departments requiring more programmers was Fisheries and Forestry.  

Within two months, we’d moved to Ottawa, found an apartment and a babysitter, and I’d settled into my new job (the first one ever for which I was completely qualified). Within a year, I’d had a promotion and a retroactive raise and actually bought some furniture! And I’d met an RCAF pilot of whom I was quite fond.  

But this happy situation looked to be falling apart a few months later when he was transferred to Colorado Springs…  Fortunately, undeterred by the fact my daughter and I were kind of a ‘package deal’ he returned to Ottawa briefly at Christmas time in 1970, married me and our next move was to join him in Colorado.  

There’s a painting of Colorado in my May 11 blog post, and in the next post I talked about how this painting launched this series about places I used to live.

“We lived in Colorado Springs for a couple of years (in fact our younger daughter was born there) and the painting gave me an idea for a series of blog posts.” 

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Alberta ̶ where I lived first and where I still say I'm from

Banff
watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

I was born in Banff, lived there until I finished high school, and returned to work there each summer until I finished university.

This is the only one of my Alberta paintings in which the place looks almost exactly the same as when I lived there.





Edmonton
watercolour and crayon
©2016 Charlene Brown

I lived in Edmonton from 1959 to 1962, my first three years at the University of Alberta.  However, the city pictured here was not there at the time. The only structures in this painting that I remember from my university days are the Provincial Legislature on the far left and the Fairmont MacDonald Hotel, which is just about exactly in the middle – and it is quite different from the MacDonald I remember. Back then, the hotel had a huge ‘Brutalist’ addition, and the whole structure was referred to as a ‘tiny perfect chateau and the box it came in.’ Anyway, the box has been removed, and dozens of much nicer boxes have been added to form today’s Edmonton skyline.

Calgary
watercolour, crayon and marker
©2012 Charlene Brown         

My final year at University of Alberta was completed at the Calgary campus, UAC, which became the University of Calgary a few years later. 

This painting of Calgary was based on photos I took from a 2012 WestJet flight to Calgary and most of the buildings in it– bank towers, Calgary Tower, Suncor (the fact the building is red is only part of the reason it was initially referred to as Red Square), the Bow Building, Olympic Park ski jump, and the Alberta Children’s Hospital  ̶  were not there when I was at university.