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Oak Bay couple celebrates seven decades of wedded humour

Now 90 years old, Nora first met Ted, 92, at St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Ottawa, Ontario
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Ted Drysdale holds the photo of his wife Nora

Fridays are busy in the Drysdale household.

Ted heads for orchestra practice in the morning and he and wife Nora flit out for carpet bowling in the afternoon. The rest of the week is filled with Monterey Recreation Centre visits when the weather is cool or strolls on Willows Beach at this time of year.

The Oak Bay nonagenarians like to keep busy and as they approach 71 years of marriage, they still enjoy doing most everything together.

“We just always enjoyed each other’s company, right from the start,” says Nora.

Raised in Victoria, Ted started his military service with the Canadian Scottish Regiment here and when war started, wound up with the 31st Field Company in Ontario.

Now 90 years old, Nora first met Ted, 92, at St. Alban’s Anglican Church in Ottawa, Ontario where the ladies played and sang for the military men. They dated for a couple of years and when he was sent to Petawawa she followed, moving to nearby Pembroke.

They spent the weekends together until they wed Aug. 6, 1943, not long before Ted was shipped overseas to Nijmegen in the Netherlands.

“He got sick over there and he came home on a stretcher,” Nora recalls, perched on the sofa in the sunroom of their bright home.

By 1945, the military sent Ted back where he came from and the Drysdales settled on the Island, building a home on Carrick Street – “the Victoria side” Ted notes – on a veterans lot. They’ve been in their Oak Bay home beyond four decades now.

Back then the roads were always muddy with a bump outside their home so big that a bus thumping over it would crack the plaster, Nora says with mirth.

“It’s been greatly improved, the roads in Oak Bay,” Ted adds.

 

They had two daughters close in age then a son 13 years later, Nora says, the memory prompting her to grab a photo book created to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary last August.