Goals - Keeping Up with the TImes

Goals

 
Nonagenarian Iva Sanderson conquers cyberspace with a little help from her teenage friends.
By Ed Hughes

When I ask people what they see in this picture, invariably they respond: “Grandpa’s probably storytelling about his boyhood years.” Maybe they’re right. Yet, if Rockwell painted the same picture today, a contemporary interpretation might have the boy explaining to his enrapt grandpa the intricacies of the Internet.

That’s today’s reality. We live in an age where complex communication systems are the norm. Those born in the horse-and-buggy era, who have first had to gear up to automobile speed, then jet travel, can be left speechless by the dizzying power of the Internet, this worldwide web that links people, societies and cultures across the world. A generation ago, pen pals writing across the ocean were fortunate if they could exchange letters and pictures once a month. Today, the Internet and web cameras allow face to face audio/visual visits from anywhere to anywhere.

Where seniors marvel and fear, kids simply learn to use the Net. But, seniors can learn too—even seniors whose birth was only slightly preceded by the invention of the telephone and radio—and who were well into adulthood before TV entered the home. Iva Sanderson, born in 1912, is one of these seniors. A preacher’s kid, she grew up in a home where any extra money would have been spent on indoor plumbing rather than on a radio or telephone.

Iva attended school in three different provinces before graduating from a BC high school in 1929. Ten years (and three children) later, Iva’s husband Willie McConnell answered the call of king and country. He was away for five years before being honourably discharged with medical problems that would trouble him until his death in 1966. As Willie’s health deteriorated, Iva balanced work outside the home with running the family that now included the care of their youngest son who contracted infantile paralysis. One of the 839 people in Manitoba who fell victim to the 1952 Polio epidemic, four-year-old David eventually recovered.

In 1952, Iva received her Winnipeg realtor board license, becoming one of only four women realtors in the city at that time. Office computers were beginning to make their appearance then, but none had crossed paths with Iva. In fact, Iva and computers never formally met until she was 90 years old. During a visit to her son Lloyd in Abbotsford, BC, she became curious about his computer. When he showed her how he exchanged emails with his brother Keith in Minneapolis, Iva was fascinated. Almost immediately, she took the plunge into cyberspace. This is how she tells it: 

“I got a computer, but I hadn’t a clue where to start. A friend mentioned that her 13-year-old grandson was a computer whiz. He was just what I needed.”

The 13-year-old whiz walked Iva through the basics of email posting. As her skills grew, Iva wanted more. Happy with her progress in sending emails successfully to family members across the continent, Iva itched to master the graphics and word processing programs that would allow her to edit and send pictures and letters via  snail-mail. She enrolled in a computer class held in a local high school. After two sessions, she could see clearly that she was already beyond what the instructor was giving the class. Forfeiting the balance of her $49 course fee, Iva attempted to enroll in a Government of Canada program offering seniors free computer instruction for beginners. A university student was assigned to teach her. When he came and found out what she was already doing on the computer, he informed Iva that she already knew too much to qualify for the program.

“All that time, I was also trying to learn online,” Iva says. “But the instructions might as well have been in a mixture of 20 foreign languages—it was all goobledygook to me.”

Like so many women of her generation, Iva didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘quit.’ A combination of determined hands-on playing with the computer plus occasional help from friends and family members extended her computing abilities to the point where she was able to search the Net for information on any subject.

“I use it mostly to research health questions,” Iva says. Now 96, she admits to some health problems. “Someone told me tea made from olive leaves would be good for me. I Googled it and discovered that olive leaf tea would have a bad effect on some of the medication I have to take. My doctor confirmed that was the case. I felt good that I could check it out myself.”

Still able to travel, Iva visits family members across Canada. “This year alone I went to Calgary, Abbotsford and Guelph,” Iva smiles broadly. “I book my tickets online. I would book my insurance too—except I’m too old to be insured. So I travel with God-insurance.”

When Iva’s brother in Lindsay, On. was sick, Iva got online and successfully ordered flowers from a store close to the Lindsay hospital. “Sometimes I hit the wrong button,” she says. “One day, I accidentally opened a video showing a medical team doing stem cell injection surgery. It was so interesting, I watched the whole thing.”

Iva knows she’s simply scratching the surface of computer power. She also knows that kids today live in a brave new world of cyberspace. When we talked about Rockwell’s plate, she recognized that 96 years of living has given her lots of wisdom to share with kids. She also recognizes that it’s a reciprocal process. Iva has learned that, as technology tumbles forward at breakneck speed, sometimes the easiest way to keep up is to ask the kids—and listen to their reply.

Photo by Ruth Bonneville