Jason Rumball: On the Lookout for a New Kidney

The search for a new kidney is on for a second time for Jason Rumball.

The Stouffville volunteer and radio host is keeping everyone up to date throughout his sometimes hair-raising, sometimes emotional quest on his Facebook page at Jason Rumball Needs a Kidney. He is looking for someone to make a living organ donation. There is information on what is involved and you can learn more about all types of organ and tissue donations on his page. 

Right now, Jason is among the 1,600 people in Ontario waiting for organ or tissue transplants, which are overseen by The Trillium Gift of Life Network, a part of Ontario Health. 

Jason has already had one wonderful donated kidney make a big change in  his life. He loved it very much. It gave him freedom for 19 1/2 years. During that time, there was no need of life-saving dialysis three or four times a week, no more things like fistulas, no more watching like a hawk how much and what he could eat and drink. 

“I could travel and be able to work and go to the cottage,” Jason said, gratefully.

Af first he was told his donated kidney would function for about a decade. But it defied the odds, steadily filtering the toxins from his system for almost twice that long.  

In a stunning move, that first door to freedom and health was opened on Jason’s 23rd birthday, when his sister, Rachelle Nurnberger, announced she was willing to give him one of her kidneys. That had to be the ultimate in birthday gifts! Jason was born with only one kidney and spina bifida, so when the organ began to fail when he was in his early 20s, he had to be on hemodialysis to stay alive—for one year and ninth months, as he recalls precisely. Then came the miracle of that first kidney transplant. 

You can watch Jason and Rachelle describe that birthday announcement in a documentary, The Gift of Life, by Toronto film maker Nadia Zaidi. There were not many dry eyes as the cameras rolled and an overcome Rachelle said, “There is no greater gift”, and Jason found it hard to speak. 

Fast forward to now in the second teaser for the documentary. It shows Jason hooked up to the machine, his blood circulating through all kinds of tubes. It made me think: “Why does this young guy have to endure that?”

The documentary will air soon on social media and you can find out more at his Jason Needs a Kidney Facebook page.

But 20 years is a long time to be free and being back on dialysis again was “… a whole new learning experience all over again”, he found. You don’t have to talk to Jason long to realize he works from a position of quiet strength. “I make the most of it…I get to know the nurses”, he said of his dialysis experience. And because he sees them so often, they are “getting to be like family!”

During April’s “Be A Donor Month”, the push is on more than ever to have as many people as possible registered as organ and tissue donors.  It’s pretty easy: log on to beadonor.ca and sign up. “The whole process takes two minutes!” said Jason. The wonderful thing is that eight lives can be saved by one organ donor. Seventy five people can be helped by one tissue donor.

His 2019 Citizen of Character Award from York Region acknowledges his community involvement and volunteer efforts. One of them was serving as chair of the Whitchurch-Stouffville Accessibility Advisory Committee. When I heard him speak, I knew there had to be a radio announcer in there somewhere. Sure enough, he has been hosting the Block Party every Saturday night at 11 on Stouffville’s local radio station, Whistle Radio 102.9FM. At the beginning of this year, he hosted his 300th episode of the show which features “the Toronto underground dance music scene”. He is also the technical producer of the Freshwaves program with Bren Masson.

He also advocates for the York Region Gift of Life Association, encouraging  people to become organ donors; he himself is encouraged by the people he meets. Some of them have been living with successful transplants for decades, and are living full, healthy lives. Another of his endeavours is visiting schools to tell his story and highlight organ donations.

 “I see the kids light up,” he said. “It is very emotional.”

The youngsters who have had a parent, close relative or friend on dialysis feel a more personal connection to his story, he’s found.

“People need to realize that gift will help people live for many years healthy and happy,” he said.

 

Pandemic 1918: Double whammy--yet life went on

 

Photo Credit: (Left)Global News; (Right)Heritage Toronto

The sneaky Coronavirus was in our face on Friday, March 13 last year. That’s when the first lockdown started, bringing with it uncertainty and fear.

I didn’t even need to flip through my calendar to recall the lockdown date; it is seared in my memory. So what were we doing that day? What everyone else in Stouffville was doing—shopping and prepping for the unknown. That day there were 137,703 cases of the virus world-wide; now there are over 120 million. At the store, we took a photo of our shopping cart, heaped high enough with groceries and supplies to defy gravity. 

That got me to thinking about how things were during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic which lasted till 1920. A look through some early editions of the Stouffville Tribune and other sources painted a fascinating picture of those times. Like many places in Canada, Stouffville and Whitchurch were still farming communities. The Stouffville Tribune carried ads for farm machinery and ran articles on good farming and planting practices and gardening tips. People skilled in the art of shoeing horses were becoming scarcer, as more newfangled motor cars were seen around the area. While most of us are used to full grocery store shelves, rationing and food shortages were a reality in 1918, after almost four years of war. People must have rejoiced when they opened their local paper to read, “The Food Board announces there will be sufficient sugar in the country for the preserving and canning season….To make sure of this, however, strict conservation will be necessary in the meantime”.

The flu was termed “Spanish” because that country was neutral during the First World War and was free to report on the new illness. That gave the impression that it was most severe there. Other countries minimized news of the flu to keep up morale.

Like today’s COVID-19, the Spanish flu came in waves. The first milder wave started in the spring of 1918; the most severe one was that fall, followed by another wave early in the New Year. The virus had one last hurrah early in 1920. It was one misery heaped on another. When the flu began its destruction, people had already been rattled by almost four wartime years, losing about 16 million loved ones. Then the flu took an estimated 100 million more lives. In our young Canada of under nine million people, 50,000 lost their lives to that virus. The flu hitched an unseen ride with troops as they headed overseas and moved throughout North America and Europe. Most of the people it killed were in the prime of their lives. Many children were left orphaned. There was no vaccine or effective treatment. 

And what about the first pandemic Christmas? With 60 cases of flu recorded the week before Christmas Eve in Stouffville, health officials urged people not to do last-minute Christmas shopping. They were also encouraged to not overcrowd the local post office. Although they didn’t call it social distancing then, it does sound awfully familiar. Contrast that with this past Christmas which saw us giving up festive gatherings and instead pushing our dinners onto our front porches or back decks to be picked up by family and friends. Then they went home. But we could feel less lonely just by opening our computers and ZOOMing our meals and gift-opening together.

It is interesting to see that schools sometimes had to be closed. The attendance register from Whitchurch-Stouffville S.S#10 (Bloomington) had no entries except the word FLU, written in large letters, during the weeks from Oct. 21st to Nov. 11, 1918. 

                                                                                                                         Photo Credit: The Globe and Mail

Mask wearing became part of the human landscape then as now. Old photos show rows of masked soldiers marching along, and doctors, nurses, farmers and fashionable young women wearing masks, hoping to protect themselves from the contagion. Many people complied with mask wearing, lest they be labelled a ‘mask slacker’. Others refused and anti-mask leagues sprang up. Cases rose alarmingly near the end of 1918, probably spurred on by all the crowded celebrations marking the victorious end to the First World War. 

News of the war dominated the Stouffville newspapers. There were articles on the usefulness of keeping on the cavalry for war and the extent of enemy spying in Allied lands. One story titled “Seagulls detect U-boats”, explained how seagulls gathered around the ripples left on the water by U-boots which came too close to the ocean’s surface. Well into 1919, there were stories on the bravery of the troops, the defeat of the enemy and the slow road back to peace.

The “boys” overseas were on everyone’s mind. Various fundraisers were held for them. In the June 6, 1918 Stouffville Tribune, residents were encouraged to attend “A  three act drama, Miss Fearless & Co.”, with the proceeds from that June 14 presentation in the Auditorium, Stouffville, going “…to purchase comforts for our boys and your boys.  Admission 25 cents. Reserved seats 35 cents. Do your bit.”

When the boys came home, there were celebration evenings for them in town. 

Social notices chronicled who visited their mother, who invited their friends for Sunday dinner, and  who bought a car, as well as births, deaths and weddings.  Sometimes the pandemic was mentioned: “Mr. R. P. Coulson, who is recovering from a severe attack of “Flu” has moved back to Stouffville for the summer”. Then there was this gem: “Mr. and Mrs. J. B. Hoover, Mr. E. Lehman and Mr. T. Nighswander motored to Toronto on Friday last,” (from the May 1/1919 Stouffville Tribune). 

After it was all over, the world had changed. The Canadian government founded the Department of Health. With doctors, nurses and many soldiers away at war, the provincial Board of Health formed an “Ontario Emergency Volunteer Health Auxiliary” in Toronto early in the pandemic. Volunteer nurses were trained at the Parliament Buildings in Toronto to work together with local people, mainly women, from neighbourhoods, schools and churches to bring medical aid, food and supplies to the sick. The role of women kept changing. Many were able to vote in Canadian federal elections and some provincial ones by 1918 and were on their way to entering the work force in greater numbers. 

                     Photo Credit: University of Waterloo

 I got the sense that no matter what was thrown their way, people kept on with their lives and thrived. As the economy grew, the Roaring 20s brought a renewed zest for life. Now we are in our own Roaring 20’s, with movements afoot to help us respect each other more. We look forward to vaccinations that will help the economy to reopen and allow people to again hug each other, have lunch together and play with their grandchildren—without looking over their shoulder in fear of the virus. We now appreciate what we have always taken for granted.

Sources:  Stouffville Tribune 1918 and 1919; YRDSB Museum and Archives Collection; Parks Canada; Archives.gov.on.ca; TVO.org, When the Spanish Flu Came to Ontario by Jamie Bradburn; A hardship of the merchants and the people alike during the 1918 flu pandemic by Jamie Bradburn; Toronto Daily Star, Christine Sismondo, March 13/20.

School at home: Kindergarten is a fascinating state of mind

Now that brick-and-mortar schools are slated to open for business tomorrow, I find myself reflecting on our at-home school journey. 

Kindergarten is a fascinating state of mind. I’m amazed at how much my grandson and I have learned in the past month after school buildings emptied out to thwart the dastardly virus. 

And we weren’t the only grandparents, either live-in or podding for the purpose, who were called on for “HELP!”

It all came down to this: no engaged adult sitting right beside the youngest students = no learning, despite teachers’ best efforts. But with many parents working during school time, a lot of arranging had to be done. That’s where grandparents, and sometimes friends and neighbours, were called to assist.

With my grandson, I learned to write the letter M, among others. I realized when you are first starting out at four years old, it isn’t as easy as it looks. You have to stay between those two lines. M goes up and then down and then up again and down again. That’s just the letter M. There are 25 more. Your little student is beginning an adventure that starts with a few letters and—presto-change-o—you get a whole word. Add to that a whole bunch more words and this little kid may use them in future to change the world.  

In one way, it is hard to learn at home when you are four. You are squirmy. Your attention span is shorter than you are. Is little sister playing with the Ninja Turtle Sewer Set? It is so tempting to go pick up Raphael, but as soon as you slip away from your seat, Oma calls, “Come right back here.  It’s still school time!"

This whole at-home school experience gave me some insight into a teacher’s in-school day, where  25 or 30 kids in the class are all trying hard to concentrate on their assignments and not leap up from their chairs and run around madly, hooting and hollering. You see the wide range of ability in each class, and imagine how hard it would be to do justice to each child to make sure they learn the best they can.

In our on-line class in the living room, we learned about emotions—It’s OK to be sad sometimes. What can you do to feel better? Can you ask your friends to help you? or What makes you happy?  or It’s nice to help your family and friends. The message is clear: when you help each other it makes for a better world. We can only hope these Kindergarten lessons carry on to the adult world more and more.

Before that we had gym class and got to practice our yoga, walking, running, jumping and the Chicken Dance. Chicken Dance? Wedding? We are good to go for any such celebration post-COVID. Our grandchildren will be the stars. And I’m proud to say Oma got pretty good, too, even when the music was really, really fast.

We carried out science experiments—will snow melt faster in a tub on the kitchen counter or in the freezer? Write down how long each took.

Let’s learn our numbers. With pencil and paper, we went around the house counting up the number of lamps, beds, couches, you name it. And then charted them with tally marks. That concept takes awhile when you are four. This exercise really emphasized the idea of not just looking, but actually seeing. Reminds me of the time Sherlock Holmes asked Watson how many stairs led up to their apartment, after they had clumped up and down them for years. Watson was stumped.

Learning at home put teachers under a lot more scrutiny from all those  parents and grandparents sitting beside their kids. Everyone was on a learning curve, but everyone soon got it. Kids got into the groove and were masters at teaching Oma how to log in to the classroom, how to mute the mike, how to raise your hand virtually. Most of all, it showed that, like much of life, you need a team to make the whole thing go.  What a thrill to see my little grandson master those letters, numbers and ideas and slowly get the idea that you have to practice, practice, practice. It made it all worthwhile.

We celebrated alone--but there's hope for 2021

 

                                               

              Our whole world shrank this year during the Great Pandemic Christmas.

                 But seeing how people coped during this time gave me hope for the New Year.

And it reminded me of the first time I was alone at Christmas, several years ago.

The door slammed shut, it was quiet. Quiet. That was a sound I hadn’t heard for a long time.

It was the first time I wasn’t part of our large family gathering of cheerful people, lots of food and Christmas joy.

But what a Christmas Eve that was! Nobody was clinging to my legs, saying, “Mommy……mommy!”

No one was drawing on the walls or upending giant containers of Lego blocks all over the 

freshly washed floor. The cushions were on the couch; they were not part of a kid fort.  Nobody was crying, or wailing (us or the kids) and no bottles were heating up on the stove.

Snow was gently falling. The manger scene beside the fireplace looked peaceful.

I made a cup of coffee and listened to Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.

But after a few hours, I began to think, “When are they coming back?” 

I looked at the front door, waiting for my husband and our three little ones who added so much joy to my life to come back.

It was close to midnight. At last the door flew open and everyone tumbled in, snowsuits flying everywhere. They couldn’t wait to tell me what Santa had brought them at the family party (yes, he was there in person).

It’s funny that a bad case of the flu had forced me to stay home that year. 

And now the whole world has the flu and now the whole world has to stay home.

For another month, we’ll be following the edict that came down just before Christmas. Stay home. Stay out of other people’s houses. For Heaven’s sake, try to avoid shopping in person. Here we go again.

This year’s peculiar Christmas made me realize even more that we who have a safe place to live and are pretty healthy are really the lucky ones. 

Even with all the bad stuff coming from the Pandemic, it was amazing to see how people coped.

I look to my 92-year-old aunt for inspiration. In the old “normal” days she went out every day to visit her friends at her favourite coffee shop. That got taken away on March 13 when our first lockdown happened. She lives alone. And somehow she has managed to adjust and even thrive. Relatives and friends kept in regular phone contact throughout the year and she still went out to shop once a week. She keeps her place spotless, is interested in everything going on around her and has managed to keep her spirits up. On Christmas Eve, she lit the candles on her Advent wreath, and celebrated with a nice piece of Stollen (German Christmas cake) and freshly-brewed coffee. She got out her list of people to call and was on the phone for a couple of hours to share Christmas greetings with them.

In other parts of our larger world, people shared what they had. Researchers have been toiling to bring us vaccines against the virus. Local merchants and businesses bent over backwards to keep their staff and customers safe.

Christmas decorations and lights began popping up all over the place earlier than any year before, as if to say, “We will not be defeated by you, virus!”

I read that someone in Alberta left $250 gift cards to many people, along with a letter asking them to pay it forward if they didn’t need the money. Local food banks and charitable organizations have served more people than ever. In Stouffville, it has been a tradition for volunteers to prepare a Christmas dinner for anyone who needed it. It began as a large sit-down affair complete with Santa, but later changed to volunteers delivering the festive meals on Christmas Day. And despite the pandemic, the group was still able to provide Christmas dinners for people in need. 

In our smaller world, we heard about children making outdoor visits to their grandparents and opening their gifts at their own house by the shining light of their computers. This way, their grandparents could be part of the fun, too. We also took to the outdoors. Since we couldn’t invite anyone over, we exchanged festive food with another family while the kids played on the lawn and made snow angels. After dinner at our respective homes, we huddled by the computer to open our gifts with the other family, ZOOMing all the way. People made Christmas videos to tie their families together, and to say, “We are still here for you”. 

Maybe these are some of the things that give me the courage to say Happy New Year 2021 to all of you and hope that it will really be a better year.

Scammers calling? Want your information? Say NO! and hang up

 

I wanted to write this because of suspicious e-mails I received from a friend and also because I got two phone scammers to hang up on me!

The festive season is a good time to be reminded about scams so we don't get caught. There seem to be an extra lot of them this time of year.

The first e-mail asked, “Can you do me a favour?”  When I replied ‘yes’, the second one followed--pronto. I was suspicious after the first two lines. First of all, the language used didn’t sound like her. The e-mail said to rush right out and get gift cards so she could give them to her niece for a birthday. Couldn't go herself due to her suddenly bad knees. So I phoned her right away. Luckily, she had already been alerted and was working to get rid of the e-mails. I suggested that she let her groups of friends know about this scam. Unfortunately, someone had already fallen for it  and lost money.

Lately, more and more phone scammers are telling me about my compromised credit cards or threatening me with jail time.

But how, I ask myself, can I have had a chance to commit a crime? For the past seven months, our main outings have been venturing to a grocery store, taking out a coffee or visiting friends as we sat just outside of hearing range.

Everyone that I talk to has these pesky phone calls.

So it gave me great satisfaction when I got two scammers to hang up on me! 

The first one was a man with a lovely voice. He was raising money: he invoked the name of the police, fire fighters and first responders. Honestly, how could I resist? When I heard that voice, I was convinced he was the kind of person who could carry me out of a burning building safely—from the top floor. I thought we were getting along fine. He asked how I preferred to donate. “I no longer donate over the phone,” I said. “Could you give me your website so I can donate there? I’ve got my pen and paper rea….”

CLICK!

Our relationship was over so suddenly.

Then there are the fake credit card company calls.  I got several ; sometimes two in the same day. Each time, the amount supposedly taken out of my account was different. My curiosity was piqued. When they said, Press 9 if you want to talk to a fraud officer, I did. Unfortunately, I yelled at them. This is a scam, I said. Stop calling me. Now if they had my financial interest at heart, don’t you think they would at least have allowed me to finish ranting and then tried to help me? Not a chance.

All I heard was the gentle CLICK! of a scammer crawling back into its hole.

That made me think of all the vulnerable or distracted people who will be caught by them. So when I phone my 92-year-old aunt, I’ll ask her every so often if she has had any suspicious calls. Oh yes, she says, but I know what to do. “I hang up!” 

Get the word out about these scams that take so much money from too many people and keep talking about them to your friends and family. Make sure to check up on people who could become their victims.

The variety of scams listed on the York Region Police website (yrp.ca) alone is enough to make your hair curl. The site is a good place to check for more information on how you can protect yourself.

          

Boo to scary 2020

 

2020 is on its way out and good riddance.

It’s been the scariest year for many of us. Natural disasters, unnatural job and business losses and too many heartbreaking deaths in long-term care settings, all fuelled by COVID-19, have made everyone unsettled.

And Halloween, that pseudo-scary time with a promise of some respite from all the doom and gloom, is just around the corner. Almost every kid has been dreaming about Halloween for weeks, even months, imagining their costumes and how many treats they’ll get and who they’ll go Trick or Treating with. Many people are still putting up imaginative Halloween displays. But will the virus stop this fun time for kids?

Festivities and celebrations are something we take for granted—until this year. In the old days, they gave people a chance to celebrate their harvests, bring brightness to a long-cooped-up winter or herald the beginning of a joyous spring. And of course, a chance to exorcise all those scary spirits on October 31st.

But it looks like things may be grinding to a halt. Those wretched COVID-19 numbers are going up again, so public health officials are advising: no Halloween parties, no Trick or Treating in COVID ‘hotspots’.

Where does that leave the kids? As confused, probably, as are many adults. Everyone is trying to gauge the situation.

What happens in municipalities where there is not yet a stop sign to Trick or Treating? With the pandemic the bizarre social experiment that it is, it is causing some dilemmas. Should everyone talk to their neighbours to see what they are doing? Or will they risk going down in the annals of the Great Pandemic of 2020 as the ONLY person on their street who had the audacity to hand out treats? Will they be featured on our local news outlets? Or will people ‘region-hop’ for an old-fashioned Trick or Treating? With directives changing so rapidly, we have to sift all the information we get from health and government authorities and use some common sense to see what everyone does on October 31st. 

This year our Halloween will be different, but we still want life to go on. 

There are all kinds of ideas for a safer Halloween: people are installing big pipes to slide the candy down to waiting ghosts and goblins; they are thinking about using hockey sticks or tongs to make the candy transfer safer. One young mom plans to hide Halloween candies throughout the house, put on some eery Halloween music and turn off the lights with much drama and fanfare. Then her kids will wield flashlights to find their treats—indoors. 

Or maybe youngsters can share their Halloween evening with one friend.

For the first time ever, our family will be doing our Halloween ‘in-house’. We’ll put on our costumes and hand out treats for our grandchildren from our front and back doors. A mini spooky adventure in the backyard will lead the kids to a few treat stations, ‘peopled’ by many garden gnomes (courtesy of their Great-Opa) along with a few rubber spiders, a couple of styrofoam gravestones and a skull or two. 

If you want a bigger activity, local churches and municipalities are worth checking out, too, for various safety-minded Halloween events and drive-throughs.

But the person who displayed the giant numbers ‘2020’ in his front yard as the scariest thing he could think of had it right.

That’s the spirit to emulate. We have to laugh in spite of the tears of 2020 as we try to have a happy and safe Halloween.

 

Magic Staircase to history at Schell Lumber in Stouffville

                                    
Glen Byer operates the foot pedal on the mortise and tenon machine dating back                                                    to 1922 in the Schell Lumber Sash and Door Shop.

From Stouffville Free Press, August 18, 2016

By Hannelore Volpe

There’s a magical-looking staircase that leads directly to the past at the Schell Lumber Home Building Centre in downtown Stouffville.

Climb up the well-worn stairs and you enter into a heritage woodworking shop dating back to 1878.

Called the Schell Lumber Sash and Door Shop, it is presided over by Harry Schell, the 89 year old Schell family patriarch who still comes in to work every weekday. The head craftsman is Glen Byer, who learned woodworking and related trades from his dad. Mr. Byer has been working with the Schell family for around 20 years. His first assignment was to make 40 windows destined for the British Virgin Islands.

Working with him is Mr. Schell’s grandson, Jeremy, who can be found on any given day involved in such projects as producing dozens of dogleg balusters destined for local homes.

The workshop is a fascinating place. With its high ceiling, now insulated, and exposed brick walls, it wouldn’t be out of place in a fashionable downtown Toronto coffee shop-except for the machines and sawdust, although these too would be a drawing card.

In fact, two machines, the band saw with its 18 foot long blade and ‘Harry’s Sticker’, used for cutting out intricate trim shapes, date back to 1878. The mortise and tenon machine from around 1922 produces custom window frames. All three machines, as well as many others, are in regular use.

 The solid maple floor was installed by Harry Schell himself. A giant boiler that was located downstairs at one time produced steam to run the belts that drove the main shaft in the workshop upstairs. It was in use until the 1970s, when the business converted to electricity.

“This was one of the first commercial buildings in Stouffville,” noted Schell operations manager Ron Schell, who is the grandson of the original owner, Wesley Schell. The building was first used as a planing mill in 1878. Wesley Schell bought the building with a partner, Clayton Stouffer, in 1922. It was then home to the Canadian Bee Supply and Honey Co. “They had a planer and a saw to keep the customers. Farmers wanted wood to fix their wagon or their manure spreader,” Harry explained.

After a few years, Wesley Schell became the sole owner. “After World War Two, my brother Percy and I started to work with Dad and carried it on and we are still here,” said Harry. Back then, he managed the mill workshop, and Percy managed the office.

The shop still produces windows and doors and is also sought after by people looking to restore the trim, mouldings, windows and doors of their traditional homes here and in surrounding communities. In the early years, the business produced 14 inch high baseboards and door trim, Ron noted. Now, the Sash and Door Shop fixes doors, does replications of historic designs, builds mantelpieces and “whatever is related to wood,” he added.

When you head back downstairs, you are right back in the 21st century in a bustling place with trades people and residents coming in and out. You can sense the camaraderie between the staff and customers. This is a place to come, not just for building or lumber related supplies, but because the knowledgeable staff will answer your questions and point you in the right direction with your project. These days Harry and Percy Schell’s children and grandchildren work in the shop, the Schell hardware and design store and the lumber yard.

But the wood working shop still retains its link with the past. It is unique, said Mr. Byer, because it “still uses the old machines” and the work is done “the old-fashioned way”.