SHE was only a young teenager when Bessie first spotted her husband-to-be.

Her instant reaction was to tell a friend ‘He’s mine’ – and 68-years later, Donald Holden still is!

The couple, who are both in their 80s and live in Windermere Drive, Darwen, have just celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary.

They have two daughters, five grandchildren, and five great grandchildren, who all helped them celebrate with a family party which raised £275 for Help For Heroes.

Both were working when they first set eyes on each other during the war years.

Bessie, 14, was making munitions at Belgrave Mill, Darwen, before becoming a weaver, while Donald, who was a year older, worked at Waterside Paper Mill for 39 years.

Born in Darwen, Donald was just one when he moved to Canada in 1928, with his parents and spent his childhood growing up on the prairies, until the family returned to East Lancashire, because of illness, in 1935.

His grandmother and aunt and uncle were there, too, and, as the family expanded, Donald remembers how his father cloned a model T Ford into a pickup, with planking to transport all 11 of them round the vast lands of Manitoba.

Donald went to school eight miles away, travelling by horse and trap in the summer, and pulled by dogs on a toboggan when the snow lay deep in the winter.

He said: “Dad led the way for the first week on horseback, but after that the dogs knew exactly the way to go and there were stables for them and the horses at school.

“Dad worked as an engineer at first, but had then taken up farming, and Manitoba was such an empty place. There were bears, wolves howled at night, and mum and I were once chased by a hungry Red Indian, who wanted food.”

He added: “I remember my dad taking me to the cinema for the first time on my eighth birthday in Montreal and that it was the first time I had worn shoes. Mum always used to make us moccasins.”

The family returned to Lancaster Drive, in Darwen, and Donald met Bessie seven years later. After a courtship of eight years, they were married at St John’s Church in 1951.

The couple were very keen on motorcycling and Donald recalls: “We used to go everywhere on that bike.

We would go to Blackpool for an ice-cream and not see another vehicle all the way there and back.”