While we met in 1984, and began our coupledom that summer, it was initially in a casual realm without firm commitment on either side, both of us being careful to proceed without feeling particularly rushed. I was boarding at a friend's large heritage house, in Ottawa's Byward Market area. By coincidence, Sid lived only a few short blocks away, a five minute walk. When my friend (and landlord) had decided to sell his house at 164 Murray Street, it was time for me to look for new digs. This was about a year after Sid and I had been seeing one another weekly. Since we had already established a firm bond and a growing relationship, we knew that my needing a new place to live was kick-start to the inevitable. Meaning, it was time for us to live together. So I packed up my few belongings and hauled my stuff a few blocks over to Sid's home at 132 Beausoleil Drive. His then room-mate (Ghislain Valiquette) also moved on, so that I could move in. And so, Sid and I lived together and walked to work together each day, benefiting from the fact that our workplace was just minutes on foot (at 319 Laurier Avenue West, in the Canadian Building as it was called). It all worked out rather well, and splendidly. One day, early in this stage of cohabitation, Sid had a fall coming up the steps from the basement, and he split his finger open. This was the first fall he had (that I was affected by), and with greater-than-initially-perceived significance. I was so affected by his fall and his injury, so genuinely concerned for him, that I was panicking more and crying more than he was as we prepared to go to the emergency. It was then, in my inept but heartfelt manner, that I knew with a sudden realization, that one fact was inescapably drawn from the incident. Which was, that I recognized that I now loved Sid. Our time together had led to its growth. So from that day onward, I told him I loved him. And he reciprocated. Things hummed along nicely, and with the lighter side of life being felt when new love is afoot. Until, that is, the landlord (landlady in this case, named Hilda O'Brien) served us her notice that she required the place for a family member, and so we would have to move out. So we had just over a year and a few months, in the crummy run-down apartment which was to be our only Ottawa home. But since both of us did not enjoy the location other than for its convenience, we took it again as a signal that it was time for change. Only... what? And more to the point, where? The answer eventually came in the form of a cottage, on the Quebec side, since Sid knew of cheap properties in Perkins, thanks to his cottage-owning friends Bill Rehder and Richard Blythman (both of them former DND personnel). Since I was raised in Quebec, I wasn't deterred by the French speaking populace nor their culture per se, but neither of us was particularly enthusiastic over the Quebec government's language requirements and its iron-fisted ruling over same. But, it was a choice, and we did end up making it and living with that, with more or less a begrudging acceptance of the hassles.