{"id":591,"date":"2021-10-31T16:23:14","date_gmt":"2021-10-31T20:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/?p=591"},"modified":"2021-11-04T18:19:44","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T22:19:44","slug":"my-mom-dotty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/?p=591","title":{"rendered":"My Mom, Dotty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I want to write about mom, a woman who dedicated her life to service of others.  This included being a nurse, a mother to six children, a wife, and a truly active member of the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dorothy, Dotty<\/em>, June Wagg (Ehnes) born June 20th, 1923, passed away May 30th, 2015 at the wonderful age of 92!\u00a0 Mom grew up in Toronto in the Weston area, to parents May and Art Ehnes.\u00a0 She was the oldest of 4 sisters, and an active tennis player all while attending the University of Toronto, graduating as a Registered Nurse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom\u2019s career was short as she met my dad near the end of then war.\u00a0 Dad was a ham radio operator for the Canadian Air Force, while mom was doing some work with the Victorian Order of Nurses in Vancouver.\u00a0 Mom and dad met while waiting for a street car in Vancouver, fell in love, and were married a few months later by dad\u2019s dad, Frank, in Saskatoon where his family settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once married, I remember mom often reflected on the time where they lived in a one bedroom apartment in Toronto with a shared bathroom with the floor of tenants.\u00a0 Dad was finishing his University, graduating as a Geophysical Engineer.\u00a0 Oh, did I mention that\u00a0 they had twin boys at the same time?\u00a0 Dad studying, mom trying to take care of the boys while drying their diapers on a clothesline, during the winter months, frozen!\u00a0 Mom had to paint the toenails of the boys to keep them straight during such a busy time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad\u2019s work then offered an opportunity to move to South Africa.\u00a0 I wish I could find this photo of mom.\u00a0 Beautiful blond hair, fancy hat, pencil skirt and high healed shoes, right out of a movie scene tending to her twin 2 year olds.\u00a0 It all looked so romantic until mom sharing the memory of Rick and Dave, “The Twin\u2019s”, throwing their only shoes over board!\u00a0 She said the boys had to wear socks given by some of the sailors for the remainder of the journey over seas.\u00a0 How lucky we are today to have Instagram and Facebook to showcase our lives.\u00a0 Trying to piece this back together does no justice to what liked was like in those times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the six years spent in South Africa, Brian, their third boy, was born.\u00a0 He was quickly nick named \u201cCryin\u2019 Brian\u201d as he became the experimental guinea pig to test drive the many go carts built by The Twins!\u00a0 I never heard any stories about how hard life was over there, only that mom always missed the seasons that\u2019s we get here in Canada.\u00a0 My favourite memory from this time was told by my oldest brother at mom and dad\u2019s 50th Wedding anniversary.\u00a0 The boys were running in and out, fighting over who had gotten into trouble, and my 90 pound little Irish mom was stuck sitting on the washer, holding it down through the spin cycle, telling the kids “Once this spin cycle is done!!!”\u00a0 How she did it, I\u2019ll never know!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She taught me so many things that I didn\u2019t realize at the time, like so many of you and your mothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next adventure for the Wagg\u2019s was to move to Jerome, Arizona.\u00a0 It was here that, perhaps, the last child was born. Leslie,\u00a0a girl!\u00a0 I can imagine how excited mom must have been to finally have a girl to teach other things to.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong, my mom was tubing behind the boat at the cottage and tobogganing well into her 70\u2019s, but she did love to sew and cook!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thinkLes was about 6 when the family returned to Toronto where mom and dad both had their extended families.\u00a0 Not being the right fit, dad moved his company, Terra GeoTerrex, to Ottawa.\u00a0 Settling in Manotick, mom decided she wanted yet more children.\u00a0 Her thoughts were to adopt a baby that was a different nationality.\u00a0 What a progressive move in the 1960\u2019s, in a small village, Manotick, to do something that would most certainly make you the \u201cTalk of the Town\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there she was, Donna Lee.\u00a0 She was Chinese\/Italian\/French descendant and all chubby cheeks and smiles!\u00a0 More on Donna as she deserves her own blog because of our unique relationship in this amazing family!\u00a0 We were kind of the second set of twins in family as you can see by how mom dressed us\u2026.insert eye roll!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once Donna got to be about 4, mom decided it was time to adopt again.  Arriving at Children\u2018s Aid in Ottawa, she told me she came into a room with about 6 children.  She said I was so skinny and all eyeballs and l looked Iike I needed the most help.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My sister-in-law Wendy, since passed away, told me about her perspective of the day I came home.\u00a0 After school, everyone came to the house to see the new Indian baby.\u00a0 Can you imagine what that was like in 1968, how it was to bring children into your home that were different nationality and looked so different?\u00a0 I can honestly say, that my whole family has never treated me other than extremely special.\u00a0 I know I am blessed but did not always feel that way growing up.\u00a0 Being adopted is tough, and there are lots of times I fell different, like you\u2019re not one of the pack, but with perseverance and love, I came to know how loved I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I started this journey, I was on a Wine Wednesday Zoom call with my brothers and sisters about 6 months ago.\u00a0 I told them what journey I was going on with this blog. I was nervous because I am writing about my feelings and our family, when my oldest brother\u00a0 Dave said that adopting Donna and I was the best thing that had happened to our family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had never heard this thought before, so please, tell those in your lives how you really feel. It does make a difference because you can not always assume people know how important they are to you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to write about mom, a woman who dedicated her life to service of others.  This included being a nurse, a mother to six children, a wife, and a truly active member of the church. Dorothy, Dotty, June Wagg (Ehnes) born June 20th, 1923, passed away May 30th, 2015 at the wonderful age of Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-adoption-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chriswagg.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/img_6022-1.jpg?fit=2017%2C1512&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswagg.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}