My Grandfather Dave was a pharmacist in Vancouver. He and my Grandmother had a drugstore together on Oak Street. Here is Grandpa getting into a car outside Brail Pharmacy in 1944.
This gif distorts his movements, of course (it has come via super8, transferred to video, digitized into .mov, then exported as .gif, every 3rd frame).
When I knew him, my Grandfather moved with a dreamy, lumbering slowness. He often walked with his hands behind his back, his walkman blaring and half-off his ears.
His desires were simple: He loved to be on the move, riding buses to the horse races and ferries to Nanaimo, swimming at the Simon Fraser pool, or strolling aimlessly.
A series of strokes slowed him down, and his last few years were spent in a hospital bed, staring at the walls at the Louis Brier home. It is obviously sad to hear of lives ending this way, but especially heartbreaking considering my grandfather, who craved motion.
