Doreen Sproule:
CLASS OF 1969
Ross Sheppard High SchoolClass of 1969
Edmonton, AB
McQueen Elementary SchoolClass of 1963
Edmonton, AB
Doreen's Story
Life
After high school I worked for eight years for four different organizations. I was married in August of 1976 and continued to work at the Alberta Teachers' Association as an evaluator, putting my husband through Law School, until August of 1981 when my husband and I moved to Ottawa where he began his career as a Foreign Service Officer. Our first child, Graham, was born in January of 1983 in Ottawa and the following summer we moved to Singapore where my husband served at the Canadian High Commission as a Political Officer for two years. Our second child, a daughter we named Sarah, was born in July 1984 in Singapore.
We returned to Ottawa in 1985 and spent the next four years there. I was able to get a part-time job working from home in 1988-89.
In August of 1989 we moved to Bangkok, Thailand where my husband again worked as a Political Officer at the Canadian Embassy. While in Thailand, we adopted three Thai children, two girls, Laura and Leigha, and one boy, Thomas. I was able to work part-time at the Embassy in the Immigration Section and the Consular Section during that time. The Consular work was extremely interesting in that my primary duties were to take care of Canadian prisoners. This included monthly (or more frequent as warranted) visits to three Thai prisons. Needless to say, all Canadians in prison in Thailand at that time were there due to drugs. My last year in Thailand was primarily spent caring for our children and doing volunteer work with an organization affiliated with the Department of Public Welfare in Thailand. Those were the most fulfilling years of my life. We left Thailand in 1993 and moved to Rockville, Maryland which is a suburb of Washington, D.C. Once again, my husband worked as a Political Officer at the Canadian Embassy there, and was the Executive Assistant to the Ambassador (Raymond Chretien)during ...Expand for more
our fourth and final year. I had a part-time job as a bookkeeper for a Preschool for my last year there. In August 1997, the weekend that Princess Diana was killed in that terrible car accident, we were enroute to Ottawa. David had left the Foreign Service and taken a job in the Privy Council Office in Ottawa. After a year in that position, he returned to the Foreign Service. I was not able to find employment because of my lack of skill in the French language, but did volunteer work and held down a job as a word processor for a consulting firm for a few months in 2001-2002. David and I separated in September 2001, four days after 9/11. Our adopted son, Thomas, moved out with David because his behaviour was becoming a threat to our other four children. I went back to school in January 2000 and completed a Certificate Program in Bookkeeping in December 2002. I moved back to Edmonton in July 2003 with our youngest daughter, Laura. Laura is attending high school and I have found a job and we are very happy to be back home and close to family. David has gone off to Bangladesh to serve as High Commissioner at the High Commission in Dhaka for the next three years. I will take Laura and Leigha to visit him there next summer. Our eldest daughter, Sarah, is in her second year at Dalhousie University in Halifax and is doing very well both academically and socially. Our eldest son, Graham, is attending Algonquin College and completing a program in Archives and Records Management which he hopes will land him a job at the National Archives in Ottawa. Leigha is still living in Ottawa and attending high school as is Thomas. My hopes for the future are to serve overseas in some voluntary capacity once my children are grown and independent. I consider myself extremely lucky to have had a wonderful life so far and I am looking forward to the years to come.
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