Ihad looked at that picture of my mother hundreds of times as it sat on her dresser in the nursing home where she spent the last 18 months of her life in Qualicum, British Columbia — a beautiful Scottish 19-year-old with dark long curls framing her face and silver wings adorning her dress. A young woman who would eventually immigrate to Canada to Clarkson, Ontario, now Mississauga, with her husband and young family.

But it was only after her death on May 29, 2024, at age 99, that I noticed the flyer’s wings on her dress. How was it possible that I had never registered them before?

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