Fifty Years from Riverview

Disclaimer: This story reflects the author’s recollection of events. Some names have been changed to maintain privacy of those depicted.

FIFTY YEARS FROM RIVERVIEW

In early December 2023, I was browsing the sports news, desperate to find reasons for optimism for the Blue Jays’ upcoming season, now that the Ohtani hopes had been dashed. A surname caught my eye. It was the same name as a couple I knew when I lived out east a long time ago. I’ll call them “Goodman.” I knew the husband was “Stan.” The wife could be “Angelica,” but I feared I might have mixed up the pair of first names with characters from a retro comic strip or a sitcom.

Why not try to find Stan? I’m not savvy about social media. Strictly old school. Not expecting to find him, I typed into the search engine his name, along with “Moncton New Brunswick.” Up popped a very short LinkedIn page of one Stan Goodman. I don’t belong to LinkedIn, so all I could see was his name, followed by a sequence of seven capital letters with a space in the middle. It was scanty. But I didn’t give up. I typed in the letters. Turns out it’s a New Brunswick Government department with a generic sort of name. It seemed to me it could involve training, among other things. I could imagine Stan as an instructor – he used to be a school teacher, after all.

Checking their website, I found a list of several offices around the province, each with a general email address. He could be anywhere now, or six-feet-under for all I knew. What if he stayed near Moncton? I wrote a short note to the Moncton office, politely asking if they could forward it to one of their past employees, Stan Goodman. I explained we’d been neighbours in a townhouse in Riverview around 1974, and I was hoping to contact him, just to say hello. I provided the names of my first husband and me, and a hint for Stan – that I attended choir practice with him. I apologized if I’d contacted the wrong person.

The next morning, up popped a message from Stan! He remembered the townhouse and some of his neighbours. He said his memory wasn’t too sharp, but “with some digging” he was sure he could make the connection. He’s fully retired now.
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Back to 1974. Our townhouse complex was on a hill leading down to the meandering Petitcodiac River which flows between the town of Riverview on the south side, and the city of Moncton to the north. The massive picture window at the back of our unit provided a pleasing panorama.

One summer day I was in a lawn chair at the front of the house, soaking up the sunshine on our slender strip of grass. I probably wore a wide-brimmed hat and cradled a paperback novel in my lap.