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Digital Dating
The ways we meet may change, but the laws of attraction never grow old. BY GAIL GRANT
COURTESY K ATHY ANDERSON
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o you remember your first crush? Your first kiss? How about “going steady”? I’m guessing these are memories we have all stored away to revisit occasionally. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s met and mingled in our neighbourhoods, our community halls and churches, our schools and universities. Later, we hooked up in watering holes, or perhaps at work. The fallback position was the newspaper personals column. Though the social accep tance of these ads has waxed and waned with the times, “matrimonial” agencies were helping lonely bachelors find wives through printed ads as long ago as the 1700s. I remember helping my widowed mother move into her retirement residence many years ago. We finished the heavy lifting, tidied ourselves up and headed to the dining room for dinner. As we walked to our table, I was keenly aware that all eyes, particularly
male eyes, were directed toward Mum. “Sizing her up” came to mind – and it dawned on me that the laws of attraction never change. They might take slightly different forms, but they’re definitely there. Always. Just as we interact at many of our online meetings and classes, so it is with the current digital dating scene. There’s no dress code, and if you time it right, you can enjoy a martini while browsing through pictures and bios of other singles – without the need for a designated driver. So are you a single senior interested in a relationship and curious about the process? Are you being nudged toward dating sites by friends and family? Or do you think of internet dating as more like a downed power line, inherently dangerous and unpredictable? Many of us probably know online dating stories that fall on both ends of the spectrum, from horror to happiness forever.
In 2021, Kathy Anderson and Michael Coombs, who met through an online dating site, celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary on their sailboat Escape.
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t 80, Imtiaz Ahmad says he is “still working on becoming a better human being.” When he retired in 2012 from a distinguished academic career, Imtiaz and his wife, Rita, moved to Caledon to be closer to their children, who live in Toronto. In Caledon he has continued the volunteer work that has been a touchstone of his life. He is now the international service chair of the Palgrave Rotary Club, a position that involves supporting worldwide humanitarian projects. As chair, for example, Imtiaz learned of the plight of Egyptian children who were dying of congenital heart disease because treatments were inadequate. So in partnership with Rotary Clubs elsewhere, he guided the Palgrave club to join a project that gives
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these children a new lease on life. Born in India but raised in Pakistan, Imtiaz first came to Canada to do graduate work in electrical engineering at the University of Ottawa. University computer science departments were nonexistent at the time, but computers were the coming thing – and the focus of his electrical engineering studies. Several years later, with doctorate in hand and married to Rita, a Franco-Ontarian, he moved back to Pakistan to resume his career. But Imtiaz was uncomfortable with the social norms he encountered there. So in 1970, he and Rita, now with two children, returned to Ottawa, where he was welcomed to a faculty position at his alma mater. With his computer skills in great demand, he moved
