A kerfuffle in the corner leads to marriage for these central N.L. seniors
CBC
It started with the chance encounter of two people banging into one another — literally.
And last week, it culminated in a wedding.
George Faulkner, 89, and Barbara Paddock, 85, say you're never too old to fall in love and believe a little bit of destiny helped them along the way.
Faulkner, best known as the first professional hockey player from Newfoundland and Labrador, had been living in the Hollett Retirement Centre in Grand Falls-Windsor for about a year before his bride-to-be moved in just down the hall.
Paddock was living across the road in a seniors' cottage when she says a voice inside her said someone at the home needed her help. A few days later she was looking at potential rooms with the manager. Within months she was moved in.
Five days after settling in, while heading back to her room from breakfast, she rounded a blind corner and collided with Faulkner.
"I wasn't looking. I don't think he was either," she said.
"I just stood there and it was just like my feet were glued to the floor. I wasn't moving, he wasn't moving and here we were waiting for somebody to move, or to speak, or to do something — get out of the way. So anyway, when we got our composure back, he said, 'Let me give you a hug.'"
Paddock said she hadn't had a hug all through the COVID-19 pandemic and was "dying for a hug."
"I would have hugged a bear, I think, if I'd had to come around the corner. So anyway, he gave me a hug and I went back to my room and … I looked up and I said, 'Oh god, it's not him, is it? It's not him that needs me.'"
Faulkner piped in with a laugh.
"That's exactly what happened … and I didn't have my skates on either yet, so I couldn't get away from her, you know," he said.
After that encounter, they became fast friends and started spending more time together.
"When I found out he was the famous, the one and only hockey player, that traveled the world, went everywhere ... I said, 'Oh, no, how is this going to work?,'" Paddock said. "I don't know anything about hockey. I don't know a thing about sports. This is not going to work. We're from two different worlds."
