Thursday, 2 April, 2026
Some decades ago, I made a decision that changed my life. I don’t know who I would have been if it hadn’t happened. After a fairly average pregnancy, I felt a pull to support people through their own experience. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. I was agoraphobic from a young age and, once on the road to recovery, stepped into the directorship of an organisation that helped others cope with their phobias.
To make a long story short, I found somewhere that trained prenatal teachers who had no university or nursing background, and I applied. They told me they accepted 1 in 10, so I was thrilled to be one of them. The training was long and serious. I had a very young baby, but I knew I was where I needed to be. It’s a vocation. It has to be because no one ever got rich from it. During my 100 classroom hours, I learned something (enough?) about a staggering number of things. Anatomy, anaesthesiology, pharmacology, embryology, massage and other complementary therapies, pain theory, pain management, exercise, nutrition, parenting, newborn care, high-risk pregnancies, and much more. I attended births as an observer and as a labour supporter. I swaddled babies, held hands, talked to children who were expecting siblings, and led tours for teenagers where I had a chance to shape their understanding of pregnancy and parenting. I attended and ran conferences. I met some incredible women – my fascinating and strong fellow teachers, and the amazing experts in my field. Many are dead now, but they live in my head, my heart and my resolve.
I loved to write, and so I was accepted as a contributor to the national pregnancy and parenting magazine and gained fans. It felt good and important.
I taught for years, then was asked if I’d consider joining the hospital I was working for as admin support. My main job was to bring their registration system into the present by working with the IT department. I would also be writing their patient/client literature. Life was sweet. Out and about, I’d be stopped by young families – “You were our teacher. This is our child.” I glowed. I stopped teaching and began instead helping to train new teachers, and in the age of the internet, I counselled people on an online parenting site, and I began writing articles for the hospital outreach – branching out to all women’s health issues. Through my work online, I was offered a co-author (localisation) of a Dummies book. I’m not sure I recommend it – the American side of it is “off” – but it’s here. NB Writing a book is many, many, many hours of writing and rewriting, and in the end, might pay a few pennies an hour. Lesson learned.
I left in 2002. I had had a cancer diagnosis, and I wanted to get back to London. I tried to teach there, but it wasn’t the easy path I’d found in Toronto. It was also going to be costly. I felt sad, but my vocation was over. But it wasn’t really. My heart is still there, even now. My interest is still high, and I still challenge how things work for women. It’s such a feminist issue. I’m here for it.
Endings? Oh, yes. On Monday i went to Sunnybrook Hospital to meet my friend, Leslie. My department had moved there from a women and family-centred hospital downtown (Women’s College Hospital)Â to a much more corporate hospital with a patriarchal system (Sunnybrook Health Centre). About a month ago, the hospital informed them that they were closing the service. I could say a lot about this, but I’m not sure it’d help my stressed brain to do so. Closing. After I don’t know how many years, to be honest, maybe fifty. There’s a lot of opposition, frankly, it’s about profit and nothing else. The women’s and families’ needs come second. It’s brought up a lot of memories for me. So many good ones, including those I’ve talked about here. I feel like I’ve lucked into many golden ages of many things in my life. Perhaps that’s just ego, each generation believing they lived the best. I don’t know.
I didn’t ever get a chance to see their new premises. It came and went without me, as so many things have and will. I looked at Leslie’s windowless room, thinking about the luxury of windows and space we’d had at Women’s College Hospital and how informal and friendly everything had been. No matter how busy or how large a task I took on, it never felt like work. How lucky I’ve been. I photographed the collection of teaching tools and the wonderful cubby hole cabinet we’d used that once had the teachers’ names at the slots. It was beautifully custom-made by a teacher’s husband. Where would it be next? There was anger, sadness and despair in the air, so we made our own happy memories and thoughts in this new, now vanishing, space. With such interesting and independent-minded women on board, we could recount many ridiculously funny stories.
Everything ends.
We have decided to stay in this flat for a full year at least. Have we resigned ourselves to being here and leaving London behind? Hell, no. We are both far too conscious of what we left behind. We know that things aren’t always rosy there, and there are many changes – many that make us very sad – but what we’ve lost wasn’t ever about those things. Will leave this here.
The rest of the photos tell the story of what I’ve done, where I’ve been. Hint – not much and not far! Ha.
Friday Photos
