Today's Featured Biography

 
Kathleen Farrelly Gabbott

In 1977, I trained as a travel agent and airline reservations/ticketing agent through Northwest Schools in Portland with one month hand-on training with Braniff Airlines
(remember them?)in Dallas, TX. Moved to Portland to work in 1977. I am Canadian, our family had moved to Longview in 1969. In 1978 I decided to return home to Canada so I moved to Vancouver, B.C. which is where many of my relatives reside.

My parents now live in Ferndale, WA where they moved from Longview when Dad retired from his position as superintendant of Power & Recovery at Weyerhaeuser, Longview. My brother Jon lives in Everett, WA and my brother Tom lives in Abbotsford, B.C.

In April 1979 I went to the UK and travelled around England, Scotland and Wales for six months. I met my husband Stephen, we fell in love, I decided to stay in the UK.

I worked in the travel industry from 1979 to 1989, travelling to Switzerland and Ireland on business occasionally. I've worked in many areas of travel including managing a travel office specialising in student travel. I worked for British Airways for three years until we had our first child, Edward, in September 1986. In September 1988 our daughter Amelia was born. We lived in Muswell Hill, North London.

In March 1989 we moved to Canada. We have lived in Maple Ridge, a town 35 km east of Vancouver, since August 1989. We've home schooled our children from 1994 to the present. I was lucky enough to be a stay-at-home Mum until September 2004 when I went back to work in the travel industry. I now work half the year for a local web-based travel company specialising in skiing holidays in California and Colorado. Most of our clientele is American. :0)

I have the best of both worlds, I work from September to March and am home for the spring and summer. Bliss! :0) I have a large'ish flower and veggie garden and am always happy to spend my days digging, planting, harvesting, designing and planning. I have been a co-leader of the Haney Hounds 4-H Dog Club for 4 going on 5 years. Our daughter Amelia is a club member, she does obedience, agility and showmanship (conformation)with Raleigh, competing at local fairs. I've also been the secretary for the North Fraser 4-H District Senior Council for the past 2 years and have just been re-elected. When the kids were younger I was the secretary of our local archery club and I also ran a homeschool support group for 4 years.

One of my other hobbies is sculpting small character dolls from FIMO or Sculpey when I have the time to sit still which lately, isn't often. :0)

We're always busy.

In 2002 we finally made a trip back to England with our kids, the first time since we left in 1989. We were there for 5 weeks and had a brilliant time revisiting our old haunts and re-introducing Ed & Mia to their birthplace. We still miss a lot about living in the UK and if we someday became independantly wealthy, we'd live there again in a heartbeat. :0)

I am a firm believer that we are where we are now for a reason and am content to live my full and happy life wherever my family is. Both our kids will be off living their own lives in the not too distant future so we are enjoying their company while we can.

We have a 19 month old Border Collie pup named Raleigh who is a very happy go-lucky handful as only Border Collies can be. Sadly, we lost our old Dog, Oscar to cancer in May 2004, he was only 10.

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