Ken and Grace

So who are we, exactly?

Well, we’re a young Catholic couple who discerned and heeded the call to marriage, and who — almost exactly a year afterward — have just welcomed our first child, Ella, into the world. Of course, there’s more to the story than just that.

Although we were both born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, we didn’t both live out the majority of our lives there. Ken did, both living and attending school in Edmonton for essentially his whole life, and would doubt very much if the cumulative total of all the nights he has slept in a place that is not Edmonton was close to even two years in duration. Indeed, until very recently, Ken had never even left Canada, save for about an hour, and the only in the loosest sense possible.

On the other hand, Grace’s family moved to Vermilion, Alberta, when she was quite young, and she lived and went to school there. She has also traveled a fair bit further afield in her life, including making the trip to be at a friend’s wedding in the Dominican Republic.

Ken began attending the University of Alberta in 2000 to pursue a degree in Computer Engineering. Motivated by a memory from early on in childhood, he started attending weekly Mass at St. Joseph’s College, the Catholic college on campus. He also enrolled in the U of A Mixed Chorus, and as he began to sing with that choir, he decided to get in a little extra vocal practice by joining the music ministry at church as well.

Fast forward one year.

Grace had graduated from high school and had moved to Edmonton to pursue a degree in nursing. Looking for a place in the city where she continue to practice her Catholic faith, she found out about the chapel at St. Joseph’s College and began attending Mass there.

Imagine, if you will, late 2001, early September. Across the chapel at Mass one particular Sunday, Ken noticed a brown-haired young lady in a black jacket (and erroneously identified the logo on the jacket as being from St. Joseph’s High School* in Edmonton). And for some reason, he couldn’t quite stop stealing an occasional glance in her direction as the service progressed.

Some weeks later, Grace unknowingly surprised Ken when he arrived to rehearse the songs for Mass, and found that she too had an avid interest in liturgical singing and had thus joined the music ministry at St. Joe’s.

They introduced themselves and talked a little bit, but were both basically there to sing. And, in fact, that was more or less what they did every Sunday for the next three or so months — show up to Mass, talk for a few moments, and then sing. They started to get to know one another a little bit, but not to any great extent.

It took Ken a good three months (and change) to work up the courage to ask Grace for a date, which he did on January 13th, 2002, just after Sunday Mass.

Now the Reader may be thinking something along the following lines: “Wait a minute…2002? That was like…five years ago! Isn’t that a bit on the…er…’slow’ side?” And realistically, you’d be completely right to think so in one sense, completely wrong in another. In that first sense, both Ken and Grace would completely agree with you that they probably should have gotten married a good couple of years earlier than they did. In the other sense, however, five years is hardly the longest courtship on record.

And at any rate, their engagement — clocking in at barely eight months — was uncharacteristically short when compared against the average. So if the engagement took forever to actually arrive, its completion wasn’t long in coming at all.

Of course, a lot happened in five years, and indeed that has been the case in Ken and Grace’s lives. They could regale you with stories of their trials and triumphs, but two things suggest that they should refrain from doing so in any great detail: a) this section of the site is going to be long enough already, and b) you — the good Reader — don’t need to know every last little detail, do you?

So let it just be said that in those five years, Ken and Grace had their share of ups and downs, good times and bad, trials and triumphs, sickness and health. In a sense, in fact, they’ve been well-formed by their experiences as a dating couple for their life together in marriage.

But let’s continue the story, shall we?

Grace graduated from the Faculty of Nursing with her BScN in 2005, and accepted a position working in a surgical (post-operative) ward at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton. She has been working there for almost two years now.

Ken, on the other hand, graduated in 2006 with a BScEng in Computer Engineering, and currently works for Cranesmart Systems in an IT support/data backup role.

They began their engagement in December of 2006, and were married at Holy Name church, in Vermilion, Alberta, at 1:00 in the afternoon. They honeymooned in Greece, touring through some of the sights of Athens and enjoying a stay on Crete as well.

Ken and Grace chose, throughout their dating and engagement, to abstain from living together prior to our marriage, and to save themselves for marriage, both of which have turned out to be extremely positive choices in their lives. They now live together just off of Edmonton’s downtown area, in a small apartment that is just adequate to their needs. That living arrangement will change in a few months, however, with the arrival of their first child!

Thank you for taking the time to read this long and somewhat rambling and unspecific history of Ken and Grace’s courtship. Feel free to keep checking back with the site here as the weeks and months progress, as they will not only be posting further details about their new life together, but will also be slowly converting the site into a family website for use “down the road.”

* there are a lot of things in Edmonton named for St. Joseph