Please excuse this handwritten material, but I am in a nursing home. I can no longer type. When I was 18 in 1937, July 27, I woke and felt sick so I took a drink of water, and it came back through my nose. We called the doctor, who looked down my throat, and he thought it looked all right.

I became delirious for two days, and then a red blotch appeared on my right leg. It worked its way downward and once it got to my foot, the leg turned white and my foot "dropped."

I had polio.

I was in the University of Alberta Hospital for seven and a half months. I came out of the hospital and went to Victoria, B.C., to a friend of my mother's. I wore a caliper on my right leg, which was three inches smaller. I also wore a steel body corset.

In Victoria, my mother's friend took me to the Crystal Gardens swimming pool. The first time the lifeguard helped me into the pool, I only played in it. Afterwards, when I was having tea, the lifeguard came to me.

"How long do you intend to wear that thing?" He pointed to my caliper.

"No longer than I can help it," I replied.

"Then you come every day," he said, "and I'll teach you to swim."

I did so, and in three and a half months, I passed my bronze medal exam for swimming. I had to throw the caliper away because my leg filled out so much.

On the way home to Glaslyn, I stopped for a muscle test. The old doctor said, "I see you threw your caliper into the Pacific Ocean. Good for you, girl -- nothing will stop you now."

I stayed home for a few days, and then Mother sent me to North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to obtain my silver medal. At the boarding house I met my husband. The first time I saw him, he was crawling on the floor. He had been 22 years old when he walked into the Biggar Hospital on September 27, 1937, and never walked again. He had polio. His family had all told him he was finished. I told him that he was just beginning. We became very friendly.

I passed my silver medal exam and then Mother sent me to the YWCA in Edmonton, Alberta, to use their swimming pool. My throat worked perfectly from all my exercise. So, I washed dishes for my room and board, and lifeguarded and taught swimming for my own swimming lessons. I also worked at the Blind Institute for a dollar a week, so I kept quite busy.

Then Eddie came to Edmonton for treatments at a nurse's place. I visited him when I could. The nurse had invented a special walking chair. The first day he came to her place, she took him and the chair to Jasper Avenue and left him. She told him to get back to her place any way he could. After that experience, he no longer was self-conscious. Then he knew he could make a living.

So Eddie proposed to me -- not exactly a romantic proposal: "With your legs and my mind, we should make one person."

We decided to marry secretly. My minister was hesitant about marrying us, so I told him if he wouldn't there would always be some other minister who would. On April 1, 1941, we were married at the nurse's place. I worked until seven o'clock. I had exactly 15 minutes to dress and catch the streetcar. I arrived at the nurse's place at 7:30.

We sat together on the chesterfield and we were married. The nurse and an old-age pensioner were our witnesses. We had Christmas cake and coffee. All I owned in the world that night was a quarter and two-for-a-nickel streetcar fares. I went home to the Y, and Eddie stayed where he was. In the meantime, Eddie studied law, accounting and secretarial duties. My husband, with me helping him, worked at a good job in a rural municipality.

12 years ago, Eddie was in the hospital with post-polio syndrome. I held his hand when he died.

Now, years later, I also have post-polio syndrome and live in a nursing home. I have two daughters, six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

-- Catherine M. Buckaway

"Saskatchewan Dusk"

-- C.M. Buckaway

Because dusk comes

swiftly to Saskatchewan

the day is torn by night.

I have built the hours myself;

my body taking on the luminous glow

of frost that snow-birds spill.

No wasted motion, raw with scraping

rime, only an acrid fragrance

of terrible blizzards.

Whenever the noisy winds are moving

across a ruin of stubble

I will sing my dusk like the sea.

The sun and the shadows mate,

always pointing in one direction

meshed tight in the red veins of winter.

No one knows how empty

night is of day, nor the true form

of the prairie gathering in the dusk.

From Abilities magazine, Issue 23.