Story by Gord McLure (BBO: elgordo1)

Our bridge story begins in 1966 when I proposed to Susan. She replied” Yes, but only if you promise to learn to play bridge.”  I thought she might be kidding but at that point, smitten as I was, I would have agreed to anything. Fifty-eight years later, Susan is still my best friend and my best bridge partner!

For many years we mixed social “kitchen bridge” and duplicate bridge. Later, when the kids had grown up and left home, we got hooked on tournament bridge and travelled to many venues in Western Canada and the Northwest USA.  We eventually reached our goal of becoming Life Masters and decided we could live without the stress of tournament play.

Our travel plans included house exchanges in many parts of the world – England, Ireland, Spain, Netherlands – and we found that bridge clubs everywhere provided us with a real entry into the local communities. We met bridge players who shared our love of hiking and were invited to join their expeditions.

The pandemic caused our local bridge clubs to shut down but thankfully BBO opened a whole new world where we could play against distant friends and a multitude of strangers around the world. As we are slowing down from our hiking, skiing, biking days, online bridge provides us with a lot of enjoyment.

There is one downside to our bridge life. In our first year of marriage, my parents asked us to house-sit for a couple of weeks and keep an eye on my two younger brothers.  To this date, my brothers, now in their seventies, break into a sweat at the mere mention of bridge – they claim we kept them up past midnight every night learning bridge – they suspect PTSD from the trauma we inflicted on them! All is not lost – five grandkids are ready for indoctrination!

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