I have known Thelma Finlayson for close to a half century, yet what remains dominant in my mind is the benign aura of calm she brought to my early days of immigrant life in Canada.  I know now, it was not an easy time for her, but her even tone of warm interest never wavered. 

In the India of 1965, we believed we knew something of British attitudes and American patronage.  But Canada was an unknown quantity.  My own association with the country had been limited to a school assignment of a report on a dreary book called The Settlers in Canada, where the men were eternally felling trees and the women, boiling kettles.  I had also chuckled and giggled over Stephen Leacock, without ever knowing he was a Canadian.  Over the days and months and years since then, Thelma has come to personify all that this country stands for.

 Thank you Thelma.