I might have dismissed the email, but the subject line caught my attention. “A Quick Past Memory,” it said. A fellow named Bryan Graham contacted me this past week to remind me that his dad and mine had known each other on the job 60 years ago. He explained that he’d tripped over my name in a military newsletter and decided to get in touch to tell me about our families’ connection.

“My father, Al Graham, was a district manager in Waterloo for the Globe and Mail in the mid-1950s,” Bryan explained.

Of course, since my father Alex had worked as a reporter and then columnist for the Globe back then, I took a bit more time reading his note.

“The Globe and Mail owned a property on the shores of Lake Erie with 12 wooden, very basic cottages and a small recreation building,” Bryan continued. “I’m confident our families spent a summer or two there together in the ’50s.” (more…)