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A picture of the ship Joan and her son traveled to Canada aboard.

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Joan found life in Alberta to be fairly similar to the life she was used to in Scotland. In both places there was no electricity, cooking and heating was done using wood (which was very similar to peat), and lighting was provided by Coleman lamp. There was one family mishap that stuck with Joan over the years though: on her first morning in Canada, she came across a cup of yeast that Bob's mother had prepared in the warming oven. Joan threw it out, thinking it was some foodstuff that had gone bad; she had never used yeast back home in Scotland, since bread was always bought at the store. Despite this mistake, Joan was still welcomed into the family.

After Joan and Bob settled into their life of farming in Alberta, they had two more children: a daughter in 1948 and another son in 1955. Although Joan did not have the support network of family that she had left behind in Scotland, she did develop friendships with her new neighbours and found companionship with them. In an attempt to better adapt to her Canadian surroundings, Joan (despite protests from her eldest son, who had tried in the past few years to relearn the language) stopped speaking Gaelic completely. However, she remained fluent in the language and was able to converse in it whenever it was necessary. After moving to Canada, Joan saw her mother only one more time, when in 1954 she and her son (aged 10) and daughter (aged six) made the trip by boat and train to England and Scotland. She didn't make another trip to her homeland until 1969, but by then her mother had passed away. After her children grew up, Joan and her husband made several more trips to Britain. Joan and Bob lived on the family farm near Innisfail until 1995 when they retired and moved to town. In 2000, Bob's failing health forced him to move into the Rosefield extended care centre in Innisfail. In 2002, Joan moved into the Autumn Glen lodge. In August of that same year, Bob passed away. Currently, Joan is living in the Rosefield Centre where her husband was before his death.