It started with a nice walk and ended with one of the most unexpected reunions.
One summer day, Lyle Hardy took his doctor’s advice to stretch his legs and take a half-hour stroll in the neighbourhoods around his Lacombe Park home. Indeed, the fresh air and movement can help keep a 77-year-old limber and happy, as it would anyone.
After stopping to take a breather, he was approached by a nearby resident named Wayne Knight to ask if he was all right.
“I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m just resting my leg.’ I looked at him and I said, ‘How old are you?’ He said, ‘I just had a birthday.’ I said ‘When?’ He said ‘July 24’. I said, ‘That's my birthday’,” Hardy exclaimed, continuing on with what would elaborate into a great coincidence.
“I said, ‘Where were you born?’ He says, ‘The Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary.’ So was I. We're both 77 years old and we were in the maternity ward at the same time on (the) same day so we must have seen each other - and 77 years later, I meet him less than a kilometer from my house.”
The strange culmination of events is even more interesting when you consider Hardy’s family didn’t even live in Calgary at the time of his birth.
“He was from Sundre at the time,” Knight explained. “He came in because they didn't have the facilities in Sundre to deal with births.”
Sundre is approximately 120 kms northwest of Calgary, a 1.5- to two-hour drive.
Knight added he is no stranger to these things, especially when it comes to the Holy Cross Hospital. Knight's daughter was born there, the same day the wife of his cousin went to deliver their child there at the same time as well.
“They were very careful to make sure that they didn't get the two Knight babies mixed up,” he said.
Hardy moved to this city 35 years ago while Knight has seniority with 49 years’ residency in St. Albert.
“Last time together, we were wearing diapers. This time, now we’re wearing them on our faces – these masks,” Hardy joked, speculating that there was about a one in ten million chance of such a chance reunion. The two live less than two blocks away as the crow flies, but it’s more like one kilometre if you stick to the streets.
“It’s almost like providence,” Knight said.
