January 27, 2013. Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico. Success.

It is so difficult to determine success.   About one hundred years ago, both of my grandfathers emigrated to Canada from England.    Thirty years after they arrived and settled with their families, one grandfather would have been considered a success while the other grandfather a failure.  But from the vantage point of approximately one hundred years, it is difficult to see the difference.

One grandfather, Walter Houghton, settled in Victoria with his wife and five children.  He was a builder and architect and very active in his church.  As soon as the five children completed their education, he and his wife volunteered to be an envoy, teaching the Indians in northern British Columbia.  He was soon diagnosed with cancer and he died.  Everyone spoke very well of him and he died a well loved, successful man, with five productive clever children with lovely families and children of their own.  The most important thing he did was having the children and passing on those genes because, today, no one knows what he did back then.

My other grandfather, Harry Buckley, was from Yorkshire, and was a shoe repair man.  He owned his own shop in Calgary and should have made a good living.  Harry and his wife Alice Swallow married in 1896 and their three children were born shortly after.  Unfortunately, Harry drank too much alcohol, so every so often he was back building his business from scratch.   When he died in his 70s, no one would have considered that he had a successful life, especially my father.   But his three children have done well and the grandchildren too and in truth, no one knows today that he drank too much, only what his grandchildren and great grandchildren are doing.

All I know that neither grandfather passed on funds to their children, which is probably a very good thing.    All the offspring were required to work hard in order to achieve and they did.  So after one hundred years, we can say that both grandfathers were a success, because I would not have been here without their success.