Lane Changer — Christine Mounsteven, nine decades, still driving forward on life’s highway
Christine joined me at a MAiD fundraiser
By 90, most people have been in a few lanes. Christine Mounsteven is no different: immigrant from Scotland at 12; bride at 20; staffer at Imperial Oil; mother; shopgirl at Simpsons The Room; singleton in her 50s; seniors’ advocate; housing co-op member; CHFT lifetime director; and so on. In this profile, however, I want to hone in on two difficult lanes Christine navigated which helped make her the force she is.
Difficult Lane #1: Grieving young mother
Christine and Bill were married eight years before their first child, Lori, was born. The couple had already endured a couple of miscarriages, common, but often not discussed even now. Even the pregnancy with Lori wasn’t easy — Christine developed toxaemia, now called preeclampsia. Lori was a healthy toddler though when the family attended a birthday party for another child. Unknown to the guests, the community was in a German measles, or rubella, outbreak. This was a decade before Ontario rolled out the MMR vaccine inoculating us against measles, mumps, and rubella. Lori had a mild case, which was worrying enough, but so did Christine who was in the first trimester of another pregnancy. Her doctors knew rubella could cause birth defects so monitored Christine. Everything seemed fine until baby Andrew was two days old. The obstetrics staff became concerned he wouldn’t latch and instructed Christine to switch to a bottle. Within hours, she saw her son whisked to Sick Kids where tests revealed holes in Andrew’s heart. Christine hurtled across the highway from the millionaire family lane (a girl and a boy) to the grieving young motherhood lane in just five days.
Worse yet, Christine, who was laid flat by some post-labour issue, was unable to say goodbye. Bill attended to Andrew’s burial in an effort to protect his wife from the excruciating emotional pain she was experiencing. The concern, help, and information that would accompany infant death in 2025 was simply not provided six decades ago. As squeamish as people are about death now — particularly infant death — it was infinitely worse then; neighbours in the new suburban neighbourhood of Don Valley Village avoided Christine as though grief was contagious.
Having an infant die is not something you recover from. Two years after Andrew’s birth and death, when Christine had just delivered her next baby, Judith, hearing of another newborn being transported urgently to Sick Kids ripped the wound wide open again. That said, while the death of such a young child was, at that time anyway, often forgotten in family history, Andrew’s was not. His name still comes up in Mounsteven conversations, even among the next generation of the family.
The other result of her time in this lane? Well, Christine Mounsteven is pretty pro-vaccine. If the MMR had been available in the early 1960s, Andrew would be a man in his 60s now. Needless to say, she worries about the measles outbreaks of the past few months in southwestern Ontario communities and wonders how to make vaccination mandatory. And oh yes, she’s up to date on COVID jabs too
Difficult Lane #2: Spouse of an addict
When Christine was 18, she met the charming and handsome Bill, eight years her senior. I love their origin story — both singers and dancers, they met as choristers in a production of The Pirates of Penzance. While Christine doesn’t come right out and say it, I gather she was a looker too. I’ve no doubt they were an electric couple. On the outside, Bill was a happy guy, but that masked the deep sadness of losing two brothers at a young age and then his mother. His father had married again and Bill was not a welcome member of their household. Christine saw he drank a little more than some but she didn’t think much about it. She married him after a two-year courtship.
A decade into the marriage, though, his daily drinking began to interfere with his lithography work and with their social life too. Everyone loved Bill — he was a happy drunk — and Christine was an active member of their community so leaving him and uprooting her and the girls didn’t feel like an option. The economics of living with a drinker and a gambler too (as she’s only lately realized) were not easy. When rent cheques started to bounce, Christine got part-time work to help with household finances. Only recently did she think about how different it would have been had she been able to have her own bank account, an impossibility for women in Canada until 1964.
In the early 1970s, with three small children, Bill lost his job due to his drinking. He agreed to enter the Donwood Institute, the public addictions treatment facility founded in 1967 now part of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. The 12 years during which Bill remained sober were a time of great transition for Christine. She and Bill did some work together leading groups at the Donwood, but Christine took it to the next level. She studied and then worked as an addictions counsellor, and then cofounded the community mental health and addictions program at George Brown College serving the needs of the downtown Toronto community. Someone who didn’t have her own bank account two decades earlier suddenly had her own career, her own connections, and her own life. Their daughters too were starting to develop independent lives. Absent anything new in his own life, Bill turned back to the bottle.
This time, though, Christine wasn’t prepared to do nothing. Armed with therapy and her new life, and with the encouragement of her father who reminded her that the teenage children deserved more, Christine asked Bill to move out. Four or five years later, it was Christine who got the fire department to enter his place to find him dead of complications from alcoholism. It was their middle daughter’s 21st birthday. Not yet divorced, Christine was technically a widow experiencing relief, sadness, anger, and shock. For their 30 year relationship, she’d fantasized about his death. Now it was reality.
That was 40 years ago. Soon after, Christine left their house in Don Mills for Charles Hastings Co-op, next door to the George Brown campus where she worked. She eventually retired from paid work but has never stopped her social advocacy for co-op housing and for seniors. Click here to read the profile I wrote when CHFT, where I work, honoured Christine as a lifetime director.
I commend and thank Christine Mounsteven for letting me share the difficult lanes life has taken her. Through it, I relived life with my own late husband, Jack, who was a nicotine addict. Christine’s story is a reminder that for most of us, life’s highway isn’t always smooth. Her resilience will doubtless inspire others to avoid the potholes.
Missed previous Lane Changer profiles?
Peter Chandler, how it all began for me
Cathy Crowe, her lane is the street
Marissa Bastidas, same lane, new direction
Pam Hudak, living on a multi-lane highway
Jennifer, crossing lanes from Phuket to pup-minderEmma Simpson, from taxiway to writing terminal
Jessica Waraich, changing lanes on the career on-ramp
Michelle Simmons, straddling two lanes in her mid-40s
Sybil Chandler (1928-2025), proud to find life’s off-ramp
Faiv Noelle, solo on a global highway
Karly Wilson, waiting aside life’s highway for the next lane
Marya Williams, when life’s lanes bring you full circle
Carolyn Whitzman, lanes inspired by mother and grandmotherValerie Groves, when the lane is bordered by perennials and pollinatorsElana Harte, Changing lanes on the “Being of Service” HighwayFaren Bogach, the fast lanes of lawyering
Cathy Mann, finding the lane to Nova ScotiaDenese Gascho, finding common ground in different lanesSafiya Randera, lanes that cross land, community, and art
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