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www.oakvillebeaver.com The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday February 10, 2007 - 3 Miles of memories for volunteer By Angela Blackburn OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF H elen Stainton marvels at the beauty of an orchid she received for Christmas -- her first ever -- yet others marvel at the many gifts the 93-year-old has given others. Quickly jumping to her feet and treading across her cozy seniors' residence apartment, despite a limp lingering from a broken leg last year, Stainton reaches to a shelf and gently pulls down a ceramic figurine -- a young woman wearing a large hat and feather -- yet another of Stainton's personal treasures. It was handmade by Lou, as its tag indicates, a special young woman who Stainton recalls was "so cute," who hailed from Montreal and succumbed in her late 20s to brain cancer. The young woman was one of many local residents Stainton drove to cancer treatments -- from Hamilton to Toronto -- over the 35 years she was a volunteer driver for the Canadian Cancer Society, Oakville Unit. "I just can't imagine anyone saying no to anything like that," said Stainton. She got involved shortly after moving to Oakville in 1952 -- when the Oakville unit was established. Stainton was among five women who gathered in the Rosemary Lane living room of Jean Malcolm Smith and founded the Oakville Unit. She had become involved driving cancer patients to their treatments through the mom of her daughter's friend from school. "They were lovely people, most of them were so nice," said Stainton. The decades racked up many memorable incidents for Stainton. There was the time her car was showered with white stuff while motoring along the Gardiner Expressway. Stainton remembers she put in long hours to remove, with her fingernail, all the white polka dots that spotted her car thanks to a roads painting operation on the other side of the highway. Then there was the January her car broke down over and over on the same Gardiner Expressway -- and Stainton had five patients en route BARRIE ERSKINE / OAKVILLE BEAVER GIFT OF TIME GIVEN: Oakville resident Helen Stainton will be on hand to mark the Canadian Cancer Society, Oakville Unit's 50th anniversary -- 35 of which she was a volunteer driver. home after treatment as passengers. "I didn't know your gas line had a filter, did you?" asks Stainton, noting, "When I got home I told my husband and he'd never heard of a gas line filter either." Helen and William Stainton would have been married 70 years, but William died a few months before in 2005. Now Stainton has sold their Glen Oak Drive home to her grandson and lives in an Oakville seniors residence. Stainton plans to attend the Feb. 24 Open House that will mark the CCS Oakville Unit's 50th anniversary from noon-4:30 p.m. at its current office at 635 Fourth Line, Unit 51. (Call 905-845-5231 for details). She still keeps in touch though it was years ago that she retired from her 35 years of volunteer driving. Actually, Stainton followed it with another decade of driving for Meals on Wheels, but she was no longer driving the people with whom she so enjoys interacting. "I'm not going to sit still," said Stainton, a Peterborough native who moved to Toronto with her family during the First World War when her dad, William Wilson, got work there as a machinist. Following the war, Wilson and his wife, Alice, and their kids -- Stainton was one of five kids, four girls and one boy -- moved back to Peterborough until a move to Hamilton, again for her father's work, when Stainton was 16. Stainton recalls her dad had cancer, had a tumour removed from his bladder when he was 73 and lived 15 years more, before dying at age 88. "It was remarkable, really," she said recalling she used to drive her dad to treatment in Hamilton. "I drove him for a couple of days, but then he said, `Helen, you don't have to come from Oakville,' and said he could get rides through the Cancer Society." Stainton herself was already a volunteer Oakville Unit driver. After high school, Stainton had various jobs in stores, once even in a sewing factory until her dad put a stop to it because the wages were too low, and eventually attended night school to learn typing and shorthand. Stainton met her late husband, William Douglas Stainton, at McMaster University where he was studying history and physical education and five years later they married. They lived in Toronto until William landed a teaching job in Gananoque during the Second World War. From 1942 to 1948, the couple lived there, where they also took in for a time a British woman and her son -- the family of an armed forces man, before moving back to Toronto where William's dad needed him at the family hardware store in Toronto. From there, William taught in Mitchell, Ontario and then St. Thomas, before the couple, and their four children settled in Oakville in 1952. The Staintons and their kids -- Sandra, now 69, Wilson, 68, Gordon, 65 and Keith, 58 -- moved into the only new housing in Oakville, in a subdivision on Glen Oak Drive where many of the new Ford of Canada head office employees also settled. William taught at Oakville Trafalgar High School (OTHS) -- then the only school in town -- and later moved to Thomas A. Blakelock, when it was built, and finally to Gordon E. Perdue (now St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Secondary School). "I'm one of the lucky ones," said Stainton, noting many seniors having problems whether it's with hearing, vision, mobility, or worse, their memories or brain functions. None of that for Stainton. Her birthday passed on Oct. 19 -- and she renewed her driver's licence. "It's good for two years, maybe I won't renew it after that," she said. With a book borrowed from the Oakville Public Library about the See Dear page 4 PREPARE FOR THE ROAD AHEAD. Next course: February 17th Saturday & Sunday (2 weekends) 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. March 9th Friday (4 days, March Break Course) 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. March 13th Tuesday (4 days, March Break Course) 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. www.youngdrivers.com 905.845.7200 MTO APPROVED BEGINNER DRIVER EDUCATION COURSE PROVIDER