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asitrita · 3 years ago

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Part 2

So this is my second part of the Frain hc. This is a bit more about them as individuals and how it may affect their couple dinamics, maybe? So it is more based on historical analysis, kind of. I feel I ramble way too much. Anyway, here we go.

First, I must say that I think Himaruya got their relationship dynamics right, more so the last years! For example when he shows Spain being a bit passive aggressive towards France, I thought that was spot on, very Spanish of him, particularly when France is somewhat involved (I’m talking about the time Antonio reminds Francis that he kind of owns him a dinner or something like that).

About their background... I imagine them as kind of close family, actually (that doesn't stop me from shipping them, I really don't care, it's fiction after all). I have yet to make up my mind on whether I imagine Hetalia characters as begin really biologically related or not, but in any case, their relationship would be that of first cousins. I do imagine at some point they saw each other as siblings, during the Roman Empire, and I do imagine they were related even before (Celts and Iberians, yes, there were also Iberian tribes in the very south western coast of France). They had a similar upbringing, in the sense they were regarded as “barbaric kids to be civilised” and both became heavily romanised nations, but had similar experiences growing up, plus they grew up together, kind of (also, Hispania supported and was integrated within the Gallic Roman Empire for a while). However, they became estranged after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and even though during the Middle Ages their relationship started off in good terms (even very good terms, at times), it ended up like a roller-coaster, so to speak XD Summing up, their relationship to me would be that of first cousins, sharing that sense of familiarity, but still very different from one another.

In terms of history I feel Spain kind of developed some sort of inferiority complex, maybe? He didn’t used to have it in the pass, but he developed it from the 18th century onwards, and most prominently in the 19th century, a feeling he hides in his passive aggressiveness. At the same time, I feel France used to have that feeling as well, but prior 18th century. However, the way he hide his insecurities was putting on a mask, creating a façade and projecting a better image of himself for others to like him better and for him to feel better about himself as well. And he succeeded. This leads me to believe that Antonio would struggle a little bit more with his emotions and find difficulties in expressing them, occasionally coming up in the wrong way, while Francis would be more “in control” so to speak, but on the negative side, this also leads people to perceive him as "colder" sometimes (not that he doesn’t struggle with his feelings, but can manage them a bit better, at least in front of other people).

This arrogant and prideful façade (and sometimes not so façade) of Francis will also bother Antonio a lot, so this may lead to some conflict between the two of them. Plus, Antonio is also very proud himself, and although he may seem arrogant, I feel his arrogance comes from a place of insecurity (while that of Francis is more of a mix, it used to be a way to protect himself from his lack of confidence, but it slowly became part of his personality when he became an empire and influential nation in the second half of the 17th century). Add proud but insecure Antonio to proud, confident, and somewhat arrogant Francis and you have yourself a Molotov cocktail. I do think there would be a lot of petty bickering in their relationship about silly things (food, wine, you know, neighbour and Latin countries things), but in a friendly harmless way. They wouldn’t have big fights often, but when things get serious, you wouldn’t want to be around.

I imagine Spain being very insecure about how others see him, and it is not exactly an inferiority complex, at least not always, it is rather about expectations. What he is really like, but how others expect him to be or act like. This would be hardly a problem he would have only with France, in fact, I think this is a problem he would have with every single nation, even with Portugal at times. But in a relationship with Francis these insecurities would become more obvious. This is a bit silly, but it resonated with me, so let me explain. I once read (can’t remember where, or whom wrote it) that 19th cent. French were in love with Spain, but not with the actual Spain, but with their idea of Spain, that of 18th and 19th Orientalist stereotypes of Spain. French were not really in love with the real Spain, but with a foreign stereotypical idea of Spain that was actually very very distant, and at times almost opposite, to the real Spain. I guess in a relationship Antonio would be wary and worried about whether Francis really loves him for who he is, or for who he expects him to be. However, at the same time, in a conference of British historians (scholars on Spanish history, really), they said French historians were always the ones who understood Spain the best, and the only ones who really got to know how Spanish history worked, and why Spain acted the way it did at each time. So, Antonio’s insecurities are most probably unfounded and Francis really really loves him, but he does need to demonstrate it quite often lest he wants Antonio to become paranoid and feel he’s just a luxurious and exotic trophy.

Also, I have to say, Spain is quite the Francophile even if many deny it XD And mind, I do think there are many things France does Spain does not like one bit, or is even disgusted by, but there are still many things he likes about France as well (he won’t admit it, though, because France is way too full of himself already, no need to inflate his ego even more u.u).

On a lighter note, and a little bit off topic, but linking to points 5 and 6 above, there’s this new theme park in Spain based on Spanish history (mind, it is only based on, you’re not going to see much real history there, just different historical settings, and it relies a little bit on stereotypes too, though not too much) which is being a complete success. It really is astonishing. And even though it is certainly not real history, it does a hell of a job portraying some key events in Spanish history as heroic deeds. It really brings up patriotism, which is something Spain I feel sometimes need (it’s not good to overdo it, but being a constant masochist is not a great idea either). Thing is, the park is French XD I mean, its creator is French, the company is French, and they have the same park (based on French history, obviously) in France. They have projects all over the world, but the first place outside of France they decided to expand to was Spain. And many people in Spain are “complaining” (secretly loving) the idea of “We Spaniards hate or ignore our own history and it has to be the Frenchies the ones to come and teach us to love it and be proud of it”. Again, this links with my hc in point 5, in which I believe Francis is actually very supportive of Antonio in their relationship, and helps him a lot to gain confidence on himself, at least now a days (in other time periods Francis was actually the very reason Antonio felt insecure, but times change and Francis must make up for it u.u).

Edit because I forgot to mention the name of the theme park 😱: Puy du fou España, in Toledo, which is one of the most beautiful cities in Spain, by the way (you should check the one in France too, they’re both awesome). And here is the playlist of their park in Spain in case you don’t mind the spoilers. Love it.

And this will be it for now. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of ideas and thoughts I have about them both individually and together as a couple, but I think they are too many and too disorganised in my mind to make much sense of them. Thanks for reading 😊

Part 1

#aph spain #aph france #aph frain #frain #headcanons #hetalia hc #antonio fernandez carriedo #francis bonnefoy

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sociologyontherock · 6 years ago

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Of Time and Serendipity: Sociological Roots and Surprising Swerves

By Anne Martin-Matthews

In October 2018, I stood on the stage of the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre at a Memorial University Convocation ceremony as Dr. Holly Pike, a professor of English at the Grenfell Campus, gave a 10 minute “oration” on my career. I was receiving an Honourary Degree. Her perspective on my career was fascinating (certainly to me, anyway!), in its clever juxtaposition of prospective and retrospective views of time, and how I have integrated both throughout my career. It conveyed a sense of consistency and logic to ways of thinking that I had (apparently) manifested throughout my career – something that I had certainly not “seen” (in myself) before. Few of us have the opportunity of hearing others describe us, and our careers, in this way – with a perspective that was, with Dr. Pike’s deft touch, both thoughtful and reflective (without boring the young graduating class).

At the time, I was keenly aware of how social gerontology considers reminiscence as part of a life-review process, a typical aspect of socialization for old age. Often thought to be an inherently internal, psychological process, reminiscence is generally considered to be adaptive, enabling individuals to assess and reintegrate their lives. A well-known sociologist of aging, Victor Marshall, advanced understanding of a life review as much more than a mental process. He re-conceptualized it as a social process: not just thinking about the past, but also engaging with others in talking about the past, where in true symbolic interactionist fashion others help us in confirming or (re)defining our lives: “When people get help from others in re-writing their auto-biographies, they are more likely to develop ‘a good story’ of their lives” (Victor Marshall, 1980, Last Chapters: A Sociology of Aging and Dying).

Anne Martin-Matthews

This life review of a sociologist’s career is in response to Stephen Riggins’ invitation to write for this newsletter. However, my agreeing to do so, with my own reminiscences and reflections, was prompted by a recent sequence of events. First, in July 2018 came the 40-year milestone anniversary of my first academic appointment, at the University of Guelph. The death of Victor Marshall, my doctoral supervisor, mentor and collaborator, in August 2018, was a genuine loss, and prompted my reflections on how his life and career had impacted my own, as I collaborated with long-time colleagues in publishing about him in the Canadian Journal on Aging (2019, 38(2)). Then, in October, the MUN convocation oration mentioned above. And so, in this process of reminiscence and life review, I hope to convey the “good story” of the career that Newfoundland, Memorial University, and sociology have given me.

Time – and timing – are central features of enquiry for those of us interested in the sociology of aging/social gerontology. In research on aging, we make distinctions between age, cohort and period effects. “Age effects” reflect changes (typically, physical) with the passage of time (typically measured as time since birth; more recently being measured retrospectively in time from death). “Cohort effects” are related to the historical time of a person’s birth, with those born around the same time often sharing a common background and view of the world. So, I am a baby boomer – and that tells you a lot about me, my habits, values and lifestyle. Finally, “period effects” are due to time of measurement, when circumstances and events may have different influences on different age cohorts. So many aspects of (what I now look back on as) a wonderful, dynamic, stimulating career have been influenced by my experience of cohort and period effects.

Typically, I have attributed these influences to a fortuitous serendipity of timing. I was born in St. John’s two years after Newfoundland joined Canada. Thus, I started at MUN in September, 1967, in the glow of Canada’s Centennial Year celebrations, and benefiting from Premier Joey Smallwood’s offer of free tuition to Newfoundlanders as first-year students. My career aspiration was to become a journalist, and hence I enrolled as an English major (taught by prominent Newfoundland scholars such as Patrick O’Flaherty).

As a requirement of my English major, I had to take an Introduction to Sociology and Anthropology course. That brought me to the memorable day of social anthropologist Elliott Leyton’s introduction to the concept of “cultural relativity.” On the board, he wrote: “Nothing that you have ever been taught is true.” This notion truly challenged me – a product of an Irish Catholic family and a Catholic convent-school education – on multiple levels. There was a world view that was an inherent part of being an Irish Catholic in Newfoundland back then; one of the very first things you would know about a person (reflected in their name, or at the very least, which school – in a parochial school system – they attended) was: “are you Protestant or Catholic?” The concept of cultural relativity brought another level of understanding and insight about others’ beliefs, values, and practices. Concepts such as this hooked me on the idea of switching my major to sociology!

In the maze of portable buildings (where the QEII Library now is), at the entrance to the Department of Sociology, graduate students in the department had, at some point in the early 1970s, erected a banner: “Welcome to the Department of Sociology: Home of the Minnesota Mafia.” The banner’s message reflected the many connections between the two sociology departments: Minnesota-trained faculty (such as Roger Krohn and Noel Iverson) had left MUN before my time; but during my two years as a sociology Major (1969-1971), Minnesota-trained faculty included Ralph Matthews, Jack Ross, Robert Stebbins and Fraine Whitney. Other (then) current Minnesota faculty were visiting professors at MUN: I remember a fascinating 1970 summer course in Urban Sociology taught by Gregory Stone, who brought his family to St. John’s and attracted much attention, driving around in a converted hearse, painted white.

One course in particular was an especially impactful experience for me: Fraine Whitney’s research methods class. There, he offered us an opportunity to help Morgan Williamson, a graduate student in sociology, to complete the data collection for his Master’s thesis – subsequently completed under the title “Blackhead Road: A Community Study in Urban Renewal” (1971). Several of us volunteered to be trained to conduct interviews on “the Brow” (now known as Shea Heights). The Brow was a completely “other world” back then: dilapidated housing, no water and sewer facilities, known even then for its “night soil” trucks and what were called “honey buckets.” The lack of basic sanitation services, and the poverty of the living conditions of residents, was unlike anything I had seen in St. John’s. But the people were quite welcoming, and gave me an exceptional opportunity to experience first-hand how sociological inquiry could advance insight and understanding. As I completed my assigned roster of interviews, I became increasingly committed to the idea of a career in sociology.

There were comparatively few female professors during my undergraduate years at Memorial, and in sociology the only one was Lithuanian-born Marina Gorodeckis-Tarulis (briefly at Memorial before returning to her home in Venezuela). In a one-on-one directed studies course that I took with her in the fall of 1970, she strongly encouraged me to consider application to graduate school – an option that I had been completely unaware of prior to that. No other professor had ever, in any way, implied that I might possess the aptitude for a graduate career.

Eventually, I accepted an offer of admission from the Department of Sociology at McMaster University. That decision was influenced by a combination of several factors: McMaster’s generous offer of scholarship support; Hamilton’s proximity to Toronto (where my Dad, who was in the hardware business in St. John’s, would periodically come for trade shows); the familiarity of other MUN sociology grads “going to Mac” too (though, ultimately, they’d be homesick and leave before Christmas); and one of the MUN professors, Ralph Matthews, was moving there too. (I might add that I was third on the “alternate” list for admission to McMaster, after all their “first choices” had made their decisions. This fact – and the subsequent requirement that I take additional sociology courses to make up for the deficiency of a 4-year MUN degree that was not an “Honours” degree – made my receipt, 25 years later, of McMaster’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, all the more sweet, I must say.)

Although I could not have known it at the time, what would become the framing for my entire academic career was, in fact, cast almost immediately upon my arrival in Hamilton. First, I rented a flat in the home of an elderly widow, Mrs. Pelma Erskine, and quickly became aware of – and at times immersed in – her social world of older (often widowed) women, their mutually supportive friendship styles and their issues and concerns.

Second, I enrolled in Victor Marshall’s sociology course on Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology, and chose to present one of the elective readings, David Sudnow’s book Passing On: The Social Organization of Dying. This is an ethnographic study of “death work” in an acute care hospital, and the relevant social treatment associated with dying. Both these experiences opened my eyes to aspects of living as an older person (and a woman, especially) and to the social aspects of dying and death in modern society.

While I retained my core interest in social and organizational aspects of transitional life events and my commitment to my Master’s research on Newfoundland migrants living in Ontario, I was greatly impacted by the timing of a period effect. Almost simultaneously, numerous countries were establishing professional organizations to promote the study of aging and gerontology; Canada was no exception, with the establishment of the Canadian Association on Gerontology (CAG) in 1972.

A newly-minted PhD himself, Victor Marshall was highly involved in building this new field in Canada, and as a founding member of the CAG. His scholarship and enthusiastic advocacy of studies of aging quickly engaged a cadre of my fellow graduate students in sociology at McMaster. The field of social gerontology and the sociology of aging was, quite literally, born in Canada just as I embarked on my graduate studies and, in working with Victor Marshall, I was right at “ground zero.”

No courses yet existed, but I became the Teaching Assistant for the special topics in an “Age-Related Studies” course that Victor Marshall offered at McMaster in 1972, and the next year I enrolled in his graduate directed-readings course, unofficially known as “sociology of aging.” While I took the course out of personal interest (with no particular aspiration beyond that), in the process I researched and wrote a lengthy paper on role changes associated with widowhood in later life – with the purpose of collating and synthesizing a body of inter-disciplinary research (much of it, social psychological) on widowhood. Constructs of role exit, role loss, and widowhood as essentially a “roleless role” pervaded the literature. I became interested in whether role change (or “exit”) was in fact the basis of identity change in widowhood, or if, rather, a redefinition of self, along with the behaviours of particular others and attitudes and structures of society in general, contribute to the social (re)construction of self and identity.

In 1974 (after being “advanced” to the doctoral program and completing PhD course work before I had even started collecting data for my Master’s degree), I completed the MA thesis (“Up-along: Newfoundland Families living in Hamilton, Ontario”), based on interviews with 61 Newfoundland families who had migrated in the previous two decades. (The interview data are now on file in MUN’s Centre for Newfoundland Studies.) I applied Frederic LePlay’s constructs of “stem” and “branch” families, to understand ties to Newfoundland and extent to which Newfoundlanders had established a community (formal and informal) in Hamilton and area. And, indeed, many study participants told me that, “lately, we’re tending to see more of foreign people, too” – foreign people, in this case, meaning non-Newfoundlanders.

On the other hand, I was quite intrigued to find evidence of another pattern: Newfoundland migrant families told me, “The last three years have made a difference with the Newfoundlanders here. With the children growing up and getting married, you go to your children’s houses to visit, instead of your friends…. You visit the kids, and if there’s time, you see your [Newfoundland] friends later. Then the hours are gone when you would have been together.” Quite unexpectedly, then, I was confronted with a generational, age-related explanation for what otherwise might have appeared to be evidence of assimilation of Newfoundlanders into the social life of Hamilton.

While I had hoped that the issues identified in that early widowhood research paper would be the basis of my doctoral dissertation, external constraints rendered this impossible. My PhD studies, initiated when I was still completing the Master’s research on Newfoundland migrants in Hamilton, were funded through a doctoral fellowship in Urban and Regional Affairs, from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. CMHC, understandably, expected my continuing research focus on issues of housing, migration, or urban affairs. In my original proposal to CHMC, I had proposed to study women’s experiences of long-distance family relocation. Thus in order to keep my funding, I pragmatically decided to rekindle my interest in this topic, completing a doctoral dissertation applying Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’ concept of status passage (1971) to examine women’s experiences of relocation and the “moving career.” My commitment to research on aging would have to come in my post-graduate life, it seemed.

I have described, in some detail, this early stage of my career, the stage of developing my sociological roots and training, because, in fact, this was to be the most consistently and overtly sociological phase of my career. For, in 1978, I swerved.

In her best-selling book Becoming (2018), Michelle Obama describes several swerves in her own life: consciously making an abrupt change of direction, often involving moving away from a previously chosen career path. In 1978, on the job market, still ABD at Mac, and only seeking academic work within a 100-kilometre radius of my home life in Hamilton (I had married Ralph Matthews in 1974), I received two job offers from the University of Guelph. One was a one-year contract as a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology; the other, a two-year contract as a Lecturer in the Department of Family Studies. The position in Family Studies would allow me to teach courses in social gerontology.

The opportunity to teach social gerontology prevailed. As a result, I spent the next 30 years of my career (20 of them at Guelph, 10 at UBC) in more “applied” social science departments, working alongside colleagues with training in economics, psychology, sociology, education, nutrition and dietetics, and focusing on issues of the life course, aging and behaviour.

But here, once again, the serendipity of timing propelled my career forward. When the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada launched its Strategic Grants Division in 1980, one of the three themes identified was in “Population Aging”! It took a bit of doing to persuade the Senate of the University of Guelph to endorse a proposal initiated by a couple of untenured Assistant Professors in the Department of Family Studies, supported by a senior colleague in sociology and another in psychology – but they did. We developed a competitive bid and won in the 1982 competition (competing against the University of Toronto, I should add). I led the Gerontology Research Centre at the University of Guelph for 12 years, from 1983 until 1995.

Yes, the research and scholarship were primarily “applied social science,” but those years certainly provided me the opportunity to bring a sociologically-informed perspective to my research on aging and later life. And, in a research context that was becoming ever more focused on multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary research, I gained valuable experience in collaborating with geographers, psychologists, family economists, and even researchers in nutrition education and public health. This proved useful when, in 1990, I became one of four Co-principal Investigators on CARNET: the Canadian Aging Research Network. CARNET was the first Network of Centre of Excellence led by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and including, among its 26 network members, researchers funded by all three federal funding councils. This level of multi-disciplinary collaboration was unprecedented at the time.

Throughout those years, I maintained my own active research program (independent of the Gerontology Research Centre): writing a book on Widowhood in Later Life; publishing with my doctoral students (some with backgrounds in sociology) and colleagues on the gendered nature of filial care, care and caregiving, social supports in later life, aging and health behaviour, home and community care. Female colleagues in the sociology of aging (Ingrid Connidis, Western; Carolyn Rosenthal, McMaster; and Sarah Matthews at Cleveland State University) assured me that my work was sociological, even as I doubted that I was, any longer, a real sociologist. I recall that my doctoral supervisor, Victor Marshall, who maintained a strong reputation as a sociological theorist while active in research on aging, occasionally let me know that I was going a bit too far into “this caregiving stuff.”

And, of course, I collaborated with Ralph Matthews on several research initiatives – the most substantial being a SSHRC-funded study titled “Social and Psychological Responses to Infertility and its Treatment.” Ralph, indeed, likes to remind me that, despite my many publications in social gerontology and the sociology of aging, my highest citation is of a publication with him titled “Infertility and involuntary childlessness: The transition to non-parenthood,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 1986, 48(3): 641-649.

Despite all those years outside a Sociology Department, a major source of academic connection for me became the Research Committee on Aging of the International Sociological Association (ISA). I found a true scholarly and intellectual home there, alongside colleagues with “real” sociological credentials and affiliations. Research Committee 11 provided the perfect context for presentation and discussion of my scholarly interests, the focus on the study of aging in multiple contexts, but quite explicitly within a sociological frame.

By the time I was elected President of the ISA Research Committee on Aging (2010-2014), I had spent more than a decade at the University of British Columbia. Again, there was some serendipity at play in that process: with an email unexpectedly landing in my inbox at the University of Guelph in the fall of 1996, inviting applications for the position of Director of the School of Family and Nutritional Sciences in the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at UBC. (The School at UBC was much like the department in which I had spent nearly 20 years at Guelph.) Although another swerve, this time into academic administration, was not something I had ever considered, it became a vehicle for a mid-career move at a time when I was ready for a change. So, instead of moving east (as we had long thought we might do one day), Ralph and I, with two teenagers and a dog, headed west to Vancouver in December 1997.

Having assumed that moving to such a large, research intensive institution after nearly 20 years at a much smaller one would guarantee anonymity (a new little fish in a VERY big pond), I was surprised by the array (and pace) of challenges, opportunities, and some quite unanticipated swerves of those early UBC years. Within six years, I was in the Faculty of Arts, serving as Associate Dean, Research and Graduate Studies, and then, for 10 months, Dean pro tem. Surprisingly (!) enjoying some aspects of academic administration, but worried about its impact on my research career (which I was not yet prepared to abandon), I was just settling back into life as a “regular” faculty member, when the opportunity for making the most unlikely swerve in my career, unexpectedly came along.

It began, of course, with another coincidence of timing, another period effect. In June 2000, the Medical Research Council of Canada and the National Health Research and Development Program of Health Canada (from which I had received funding) merged to become the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). With a mandate to excel, according to internationally accepted standards of scientific excellence, in the creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians, more effective health services and products and a strengthened Canadian health care system, CIHR was composed of 13 national institutes, one of them an Institute of Aging (IA). I had been serving on the IA’s inaugural Institute Advisory Board and was very engaged in that role, working to support the Institute’s Scientific Director in setting a research agenda in aging across biomedical, clinical, health services and policy, and population health research. When the Scientific Director (a geriatrician) resigned unexpectedly, I had the opportunity to apply for a job that, I immediately realized, I really wanted. This was as far away from sociology as I was ever going to get, and yet it afforded the opportunity to help set the national and international research agenda in my field of research, in aging – an extraordinary privilege and opportunity. I became the first (and, to date, only) “card carrying sociologist” to become a Scientific Director of a CIHR Institute – a position I held for two terms, from 2004-2011.

In my Scientific Director position, I was seconded from UBC on a .60 full-time equivalency basis (crazily unrealistic, in truth), but this “balance” enabled me to champion initiatives for the Institute, as well as maintain my own program of research. That research had assumed a particular focus when, in 1999, my mother was paralyzed by stroke, and, as I later wrote (in “Situating ‘home’ at the nexus of the public and private spheres: Aging, gender and home support work in Canada,” Current Sociology, 2007, 55 (2), 229-249), “home care entered my family biography.” For the eight years of my research stipend from CIHR while I was Scientific Director (and otherwise ineligible to apply for CIHR funding), I conducted research on the roles and perspectives of publicly-funded home care workers, older people as clients, and family members at the intersection of the public and private spheres of home-based health and social care services.

At CIHR, I had inherited from my predecessor a commitment to explore the feasibility of a Canadian Longitudinal Study of Aging (CLSA); a very “big science” initiative; and I did. I am not a “visionary” and I would not ever have developed the idea for a CLSA – a 20-year study of 50,000 Canadians between the ages of 45 and 80 (at point of entry to the study), to examine the complex interplay between biological, social and behavioural aspects of aging. But I am a “process person,” and once convinced of the unique potential of the CLSA to advance understanding of aging, it became my driving mission to work with the research team to secure CIHR’s support for, and funding of, this ambitious initiative. The CLSA was launched in 2009, with one of its 10 Canadian research sites based in the Health Sciences Complex at Memorial University.

There were other initiatives over those 8 years at CIHR, with an especially meaningful one for me being the launch in 2006 of what has become an annual week-long Summer Program in Aging, bringing graduate students from all fields of aging research together from across Canada. But the CLSA is the key legacy of those years.

I returned full-time back to UBC in 2011, to an appointment in the Department of Sociology! At last, my sociological career had come full circle. (The move into sociology had actually occurred in 2008, while I was still part-time with the CIHR Institute of Aging, fully 30 years after my first academic appointment at Guelph). Aging is a very marginal research focus in this department, and so all but one of my PhD students have come to me via the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program.

Nevertheless, I graduated my first PhD in sociology in 2017. I taught my first (and only) graduate course in Aging and Society in the Department of Sociology the same year (with 2/3 of the course participants coming from disciplines other than sociology). And in 2016, I published a paper, “The Interpretive Perspective on Aging,” in Vern Bengtson and Richard Settersten (Eds.), Handbook of Theories of Aging, 3rd ed., pp. 381-400. My name appeared between two bona fide sociologists, my doctoral supervisor Victor Marshall (then at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and Julie McMullin of Western University. By then I was beginning to think that, just maybe, I am sociological enough, after all.

Recently, in cleaning out my sociology office (I retain a .20 full-time equivalency appointment in sociology as I assume a new role of Associate Vice-President Health at UBC), I came across a paper that I cited in my 1978 job talk in the Department of Family Studies at the University of Guelph. I could not have imagined then how the words of Stella Jones, in a publication titled The Research Experience, would so aptly capture the essence of my own academic (and, indeed, coast to coast, geographical) journey: Jones described doing research as “analogous to a journey across the country. [It] can be an experience with many serendipitous turns.… The traveler and the researcher alike find that the best laid plans must frequently be altered in transit. Unexpected delays occur; last minute changes in routing are sometimes necessary.… Such unexpected factors may add to or detract from the total travel or research experience” (pp. 327-328).

Certainly, I swerved – and often – between sociology and social gerontology (and various academic footholds around and between), and between scholarship and administration. Best laid plans were, indeed, altered in transit. And, as Dr. Holly Pike so insightfully deduced, my research has indeed juxtaposed prospective and retrospective approaches in the effort to advance understanding. This has become particularly pronounced now that I have become what I have been researching and teaching all through my academic career: a senior citizen. This has occasioned some self-reflexivity in my approach to my research, as I bring the “perspective of time” back to topics that I have researched and written about previously.

But there have also been two constants. While some other contributors to Sociology on the Rock have described themselves as an “accidental sociologist” (Porter, 2008) or a “reluctant sociologist” (Felt, 2012), my roots in sociology run deep. Memorial and McMaster gave me that. Victor Marshall, as my career-long academic mentor, and Ralph Matthews, as the sociologist who has been my life’s partner for 45 years, have kept me grounded in sociology even as more applied science, health research, and academic administration pulled me frequently away.

And then there is that other constant for me – The Rock itself. As I said at the end of my convocation address, “The Future is Aging,” to the graduating class at MUN’s Grenfell campus in October 2018: “For those of you who are from Newfoundland, or feel that you now belong to Newfoundland, I encourage you to honour these roots. This is a special place, and please don’t forget that. I recall how full my heart was at my graduation from Memorial 47 years ago, knowing that I was leaving soon to go to graduate school ‘on the mainland.’ I did not know then that I would not return to live here permanently – though I did marry a Newfoundlander, and have come back countless times almost every year since. I took it as a tremendous compliment when my mother said of me, shortly before she died, ‘Anne left Newfoundland, but Newfoundland never left her.’ Please do not ever lose the Newfoundland in you.” As for me, I’m inclined to think that I never have.

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