Retired couple completes unique quest

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2019 (2250 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some people get the travel bug after they retire but for one local couple it’s become more than a bug — their travel bug is a quest.

Heather Paterson retired last year after more than 30 years of service at the University of Manitoba. Since then she has been travelling throughout North America with her husband, former RMTC associate artistic director and esteemed local actor Robb. They have been on a mission to visit every one of America’s presidential libraries.

There are 13 of these libraries scattered across the United States, administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. Robb and Heather’s quest has now taken them to each one.

Heather explained that their quest began quite innocently 39 years ago, when they happened to chance upon the Kennedy Presidential Library while on their honeymoon in Boston.

The presidential libraries are far more than book depositories. They are museums that showcase slices of American history from the term of each president. They are established at the end of a president’s term and are usually located in the former president’s home town.

They said the nicest one was the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark., which is an environmentally friendly building located in an old industrial estate and modelled on Trinity College in Dublin. Not skimping over anything, there’s reference to a certain intern, Bill’s old saxophone is on display and apparently they serve the nicest lunches at this library. 

Nixon’s library in California contains the infamous Watergate tapes, which you can listen to if you’re not easily shocked by profanity. But don’t expect to hear the missing 18 minutes — they really are missing.

The Patersons have travelled by both air and road over the years, and with an organization known as Roads Scholars, which is very pertinent, as their daughter Tara was once a Rhodes Scholar, having won that prestigious award while studying at University of Victoria a few years ago.  

They told me a bus driver on one of their trips wouldn’t accept credit cards, and when they didn’t have the right change, he realized they were tourists. He asked where they were from and when they said Winnipeg, he proudly pointed out the New Flyer logo on his vehicle and waived the charge.

Robb and Heather completed their quest this past year. While driving to their son’s wedding in Montreal they detoured and called into the Ford and Roosevelt libraries in Michigan and upstate New York.

Trevor Smith is a community correspondent for River Heights. You can contact him via email at smitht@mymts.net