The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

wen Belfry, right, and David St. Denis are proof that you're never too young or too old to support ‘the efforts to better your com- munity. Five-year-old Owen, of the Port Perry Beavers, was out seling apples for the Boy Sour pole Day when he met up wit Perry Legion poppy canvasser David, on Saturday, paved ). two volunteers met wie canvassing outside the Pioneer oes station on Scugog Stree ito by J. Peter Hvidsten May your home be blessed with happiness, your business with good fortune, and your family with good health this holiday season. 193 Queen Street, Port Perry 905-985-7306 = 1-800-387-5642 16 FOCUS - DECEMBER 2011 DECEMBER FOCUS.56.indd 16 Continued from page 13 ship rather quickly, so Lesley was the only one in the fam- ily who was not a bona fide Canadian. Her family bugged her constantly to get her citizenship, but Lesley felt she was managing just fine as things were. Life was busy and rewarding and she was happy with her life in Port Perry. Two events led Lesley to rock her status quo. Her husband John ran for a seat on Scugog Township council in 2010 and this brought home to her what the lack of Cana- dian citizenship really meant — she couldn't vote. e fact that I couldn’t vote really bothered me. This is our home. This is where we live and it is important to take part in all aspects of our community,” Lesley says. It was around this time she was involved in a serious car accident that sidelined her at home for a long period. She recalls that during the many months of healing, she had time to contemplate the importance of family, friends and community. In March of 2011 Lesley began in earnest to get her citizenship. She began the paperwork maze, learned the national anthem and studied Canadian history and how the country works. After all the studying she was called to Oshawa for verification of documents and to take her citizenship test. She was the last one called, and the woman doing the test- ing looked at Lesley and said something to the effect that “this is your lucky day”. It turns out Lesley was too old to do the test. Says Les- ley, “All these other poor souls, many for whom English is not their first language, and they have to write the test. I am exempted because of age. I felt bad for some of them.” Three months later Lesley attended the Citizenship Ceremony in Oshawa, with her husband and good friend Christy Stone Curry in attendance. Recounting the ceremony, she says, “There were 40 of us, from 23 different countries. The judge was a wonder- ful, jovial character who talked about Canada and how his family had arrived many years ago. He was serious but also injected wonderful humour into his talk. He spoke passionately about respecting each other. Each of us was called upon to say ‘congratulations’ in our own language and we were asked to shake hands with at least three people. I shook the hands of people from Rus- sia, Guyana, Italy, Iran and China. I think the judge made the ceremony absolutely amazing.” As an experience, Lesley says the ceremony was special, quite emotional although not as formal as she had imagined, due she thinks, to the efforts of the judge. Lesley came away from the ceremony really un- derstanding how special it is to be Canadian. The judge impressed upon them their responsibility to vote, to volun- teer, to be part of your community, to get involved. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else. When our friends and family from England and Australia come to visit they totally see why we moved here. When you look around the world you understand how lucky we are to live in Canada. Personally, I am lucky to live in Port Perry,” she says. By Marjorie Fleming Focus on Scugog 41/21/11 9:24:52 AM