My friends and family cross-country tour

As I said in my previous post it was my intention to write about my trip, but so much time has passed that I feel like it is almost ancient history now. I'm also now uninterested in sifting through all the photos I took to post any here. However, here goes.

I dislike flying however it seemed like the only thing I could do to make this trip happen, so I flew. Halifax to Vancouver (with brief stopover in the Edmonton airport), Vancouver to Castlegar, Kelowna to Grande Prairie (another stopover in the Edmonton airport), Grande Prairie to Toronto (stopping over in the Calgary airport this time), and Toronto to Halifax. There were also ferry trips (from Vancouver to Victoria to Hornby Island and back again, also to the Sunshine Coast), a train trip (Toronto to Barrie), and a couple of long distance bus rides (Nelson to Kelowna and Barrie to Toronto). Every single one of them uneventful and on time, which I consider a great stroke of good fortune.

An airport is an airport is an airport, but one of the most striking things for me was my second stopover in the Edmonton airport (en route to Grande Prairie). It was evening and the lights in this part of the airport were dimmed. In the centre of a large rotunda was a grand piano and a very talented pianist-singer. I don't know her name but she was amazing. It was welcome diversion from the typical waiting-in-an-airport. Kudos to Edmonton International Airport.

In Toronto and Vancouver the mass transit has evolved to a new level of sophistication and with the use of a card that one preloads with money for transit fares (Presto in Toronto and Compass in Vancouver) and Google Maps, you can travel effortlessly and without lengthy wait times at bus stops. I  bought a Compass card (refundable) in Vancouver and used it a lot; it would have been nice if I could have used it again in Toronto but instead one must buy another card for that city. I had some leftover subway tokens from when I lived there so I used them instead, and my stay in Toronto was only a few days so that was enough. Google Maps was amazing, not only does it tell you which bus or buses to take to get to your destination, it also tells you when to leave your home and whether the bus is running late and if so by how much time. So in theory one should never have to wait more than a few minutes at a bus stop.

In those cities everyone is on their cell phone. If they are not wearing earbuds, then their phones are in their hands and they are either busy texting or holding the phone handy in case they might need to text. Once I was trying to get from a bus stop to a museum and someone on the bus suggested I just ask anyone at the bus stop how to get to the museum because everyone knows and can tell me. But when I got to the bus stop and looked around for someone to ask directions from, all I could see were people wearing earbuds and I didn't like to interrupt whatever they were listening to. I finally found someone not wearing earbuds and he pulled his cellphone from his pocket to look up the location of the museum. Then I felt silly, I had my own cellphone and could easily have looked it up myself. I am just not in the habit of relying on my cellphone for direction.

The other places I visited were a little more "primitive", they either lacked cell phone coverage or internet signal or bus systems. The flight to Castlegar was to visit a friend in a small town an hour's drive away. Silverton is an old mining town now mainly home to summer residents only. It is on a lovely lake surrounded by mountains, the mining operations long since abandoned. The highway that runs through it is a favourite of motorcyclists who love its curvy new pavement through a narrow valley. My friend lives on the main street of the town and the traffic is predominantly motorcycles in the daytime and trucks by night. It is a broad street with homes on one side and store fronts on the other side, and walking down the middle of the road is easily done provided one keeps an ear out for motorcycles. My friend had two inflatable kayaks which were light enough that we could carry both of them at once the few blocks down to the lakeside. And the water was warm enough in early September to go swimming every day.

The impetus for the trip was the birth of a grandchild in Alberta; the secondary purpose was to visit friends and family across the country. Over the entire five weeks I stayed at either friends or family places so it was a huge social occasion for me. I enjoyed that very much. I think my timing was such that no one felt particularly burdened by my presence, or I hope so at any rate.

I had good conversations with all of my sons (and grandchildren) and very much enjoyed the company of old friends. I also got to see an aunt, uncle and cousin in Ontario that I rarely see. My uncle Bill has been in a nursing home for over 14 years after an unfortunate stroke when he was 70 that left him physically incapacitated. He had recently had one leg amputated and they were considering amputating the other due to pain. He was on morphine but clearly still in pain. However he was moved almost to tears when five of us, all family relations, arrived at his bedside. He is my Dad's "kid brother", the last of that generation of the family alive.

The grandchild, Coen, was six weeks old when I arrived there. His seven year old older sister is---as one person put it---a real firecracker. Intelligent and sassy, used to being the centre of attention. Coen almost did not survive his birth so his parents are understandably attentive to his every cry or fidget. The family dynamic is somewhat tense due to lack of sleep and adjustments to a new family member.  But it was the first time I interacted with my granddaughter, she does not like to talk on the phone (or Skype) with people she doesn't know. I think we established a bit of a relationship, but four days is not really a long time to do so.

There was a lot more but I'm going to leave it at that. While visiting friends in BC I was nostalgic for the days when I lived there and was being encouraged to move back. I definitely considered it, and who knows it might happen in the future. However coming home to Nova Scotia was very good, despite the sewage emergency. I have to say that I am grateful that I live here. Moving away is the furthest thing from my mind right now. But ask me again in the spring, I may change my tune after a hard winter (some folks are forecasting such already).

Hapi's brother Hiro, in Victoria

A little family history

My Aunt Corrinne (I have no idea if that is the correct spelling, I think maybe not) has a photo album with some photos of my grandparents and her husband and other family members. A lot of photos of her family as well, but I don't know any of them. Anyway, the photos of my grandparents were interesting.

There was a great one of Grandma when she was a young woman, in a swim dress standing in water and grinning like the notorious cat. She looks so gay! Very overdressed by modern standards though.

Another one showed Grandad and Grandma as a young couple, standing on the bow of a small sailboat (he is standing, she's sitting I think). He is tall and skinny with long-ish hair combed back, and this look on his face that reminds me of Isaac.

Whenever people would say Isaac looks like me---which isn't very often---I never quite saw it, to me he looks a lot more like his father than like me. But that photo of Grandad as a young man knocked me out, there's a look about him that is so Isaac. A kind of defiant half-smiling "I dare you" look.

There was another photo of Grandad in a top hat, looking very Churchillian. Every inch the successful businessman. Or successful cellist.

Grandad ran away from home at age 13/14 to join the circus. He went to Chicago where he learned a trade in the printing business and came back to Toronto some years later and immediately picked up a good job thanks to the his Chicago training. Although unschooled, he was smart and inventive. He was also an accomplished cellist, playing with a variety of bands and orchestras, and for Jewish weddings. During the depression he worked several jobs and his family fared quite well during those hard times, thanks to his many skills and likeability. He was even able to buy a small cottage on Balsam Lake, which all of his kids remembered fondly, and my parents met there.

Grandad worked at the same company that first hired him when he returned to Toronto until he retired at 65; he had plans for retirement vacations in Florida, but died suddenly in a drugstore only weeks after he retired. My own father took early retirement because he greatly feared the same early demise; he wanted to get in some retirement time before fate took him out. He managed a good 16 years in retirement, dying at age 76. Those 16 years were spent at Balsam Lake, just down the way from his father's old cottage, and I think they were among the very best years of his life.

Aunt Ruthe died this winter at age 82, so far she is the longest-lived of the family. When Peter and I were visiting Uncle Bill in the nursing home, I joked with him that he needed to live at least 2 more years to beat her record, he is now 80. I think he stands a good chance of doing that.

Bill had a stroke at age 70 that left him partially paralyzed. He cannot live at home because he and his wife cannot manage his care. It is kind of sad that he is mentally still very together, but his body just doesn't get him around as we would all like. He also needs to sleep a lot, he just doesn't have a lot of energy anymore. But he reads voraciously.

The nursing home he is in is a good one, and only a few minutes drive from his home where his wife, my Aunt Corrinne, still lives. She comes by every day, knows all the staff by first name and also many of the other residents. The home is set in a very pleasant rural location, and the atmosphere there is generally relaxed and friendly. There always seem to be plenty of staff bustling in the halls, and residents everywhere, in the large bright dining room, smaller gathering rooms and in the wide hallways. In the summer you see lots of people outdoors as well, the property is maintained in a park-like manner with many trees and benches.

Aunt Corrinne says she told their kids that when the time comes they are to put her in that nursing home, she is very happy with it.

The photos are of a pair of osprey nesting near Aunt Corrinne's home, she took us to see the nest. If you look closely at the fourth photo, the one of the osprey flying away from the nest, you can see it is holding something---probably a fish---in its talons. When a bald eagle carries a fish in its talons, it holds it at right angles to the direction of flight, but an osprey holds it in the same direction, making it more aerodynamic.

MIA

I'm still here, just don't have a lot to say. Been a busy week or two though.

Bought a loom and had a spring cold, no doubt brought on by dog lady pub crawl.


Whirlwind visit east by Western Brother, visited our parents' grave and various still-living relatives.



Acupuncturist highly disapproving of dietary disruptions, gave me a lecture on proper eating habits: no sugar no animal fat and *definitely* no birthday cake.

Probably no alcohol either, although I seem to have blocked that part of the lecture out.

Life goes on.

Back to Bobcageon

I kind of got caught up in and preoccupied by other things so I did not write about my second visit of the year to Barrie and Bobcageon on the last weekend of April. I wanted to see Bill and Ruthe again before I left for the summer in Nova Scotia. I'm afraid I did not take any photos this time of Bill and Ruthe, in fact the only thing I photographed were these easter eggs.

My sister-in-law's sister-in-law is Ukrainian, and she gives Tim and Laurene handpainted easter eggs. They had four of them on their dining table and I thought they were exquisite, so I had to photograph them.

Beautiful, eh? What a talented woman!

Usually Tim calls Corrine, Bill's wife, when we are going to visit Bobcageon and she usually meets us for lunch and goes with us to Bill's nursing home. But she was out of town this time so Tim and I surprised Ruthe and Bill.

When we arrived at Ruthe's, she was busy getting ready to go out for lunch with a friend. She seemed much more energetic this time than the last time we saw her. We had a nice visit with her but after 25 minutes or so it was clear that she was tiring and we didn't want to exhaust her before she went out for lunch with her friend so we said our goodbyes and left.

We dropped by Bill's place briefly to let him know we were there and would come back in the afternoon for a longer visit. Then we went for lunch at a local restaurant called the For The Halibut, and had fish and chips. I think we had cod. We went for a bit of a walk around town afterward, I saw a bufflehead on the river there.

Bill was waiting for us by the front door when we got back to his nursing home. I think we spent almost two hours with him until we had tired him out too. We chatted about a lot of things, about Josh's new job flying in northern Ontario this summer, the state of Tim's car that used to be Bill's and so he still has a proprietary interest in its survival. We talked about Bill's oldest brother Jesse and how smart he was. Jesse was hired by IBM to repair and maintain their computers back in the very early days of big mainframe computers. One of the car companies, I think it might have been General Motors, was especially impressed with Jesse's abilities in keeping computers up and running, so they created an office especially for him at their plant in Oshawa. I asked Bill if he knew anything about Grandad's family but Bill said that he didn't know much about that part of the family, Grandad had pretty much cut off ties with his family after having loaned someone some money and they didn't repay it.

One of the things we had talked to Ruthe about was Grandma's sisters. Apparently Grandma and her sisters all came to Canada together. Her sisters names were Agnes, Ruby and I forget the third one. One of them married an American and moved to the States, but the other two remained in Canada With Grandma ("Betts"). There was also a brother, but he didn't come to Canada, he went to California. Apparently he wasn't too friendly with the sisters, Grandma tried to visit him in California but it was not a pleasant trip.

After Tim and I got back to Barrie, Corrine phoned to say that she had been in Toronto visiting her new grandson, Kimberley's baby. Tim commented on how well Ruthe was looking and Corrine said that Ruthe now wanted to leave the nursing home and get her own apartment again. Or failing that, to buy a scooter so she could scoot into town whenever she felt like it. This from an 82 year old woman who last year was at death's door with congestive heart failure and kidney failure! We think the only reason she is in such good shape now is thanks to the care she is getting at the nursing home, so no one is particularly wanting to encourage her to leave it. And while she seems in good spirits and able to get around, she is still very frail and it is rather hard to picture her on a scooter whizzing into town! But Ruthe always was a fiercely independent woman, I'm sure nursing home life is irksome to her.

Tim took videos at both Ruthe's and Bill's places, but I am not sure how well the sound turned out. Eventually Tim hopes to put together a CD or DVD of the time we have spent with them to share with their families and with ours.

Stories of Ruthe and Bill

I went to Barrie and Bobcageon over the weekend to visit Tim, Lori, Ruthe, Bill and Corrine. I returned home Sunday afternoon, quite exhausted. Since we didn't really do a lot, I think it was as much emotional exhaustion as it was physical.

Ruthe and Bill are my aunt and uncle, the last of my Dad's family. They are both in nursing homes in Bobcageon. Ruthe has kidney failure and has refused dialysis, we thought she would not survive the summer but she's still kicking along. Bill had a stroke a number of years ago and his physical care requires a lot more than his wife Corrine could handle at home. Both of them are otherwise bright and communicative.

I drove up to Barrie on Friday to stay overnight at my brother and sister-in-law Tim and Lori's place, and then on Saturday Tim and I drove to Bobcageon, a couple of hours further away. Although very cold (-25C overnight), the roads were all bare and dry so the driving was good.

We went early to catch Ruthe in the morning while she was still feeling pretty good, she fades in the afternoon. She said this was not one of her better days but still she seemed pretty good. I think we were with her for almost an hour and by the end she was reluctant to let us go but barely able to keep her eyes open. She said she spent a lot of time remembering the old days, especially her very young days at Balsam Lake. She said as she got closer to death her memories were more vivid and alive for her. Tim told her that Mum had said that just before he died, Dad (Ruthe's older brother) had had a conversation with Jess, their oldest but then dead brother. Ruthe reiterated that she did not believe in God or an afterlife, but still, she felt very close now to her parents. Ruthe is a confirmed atheist, no amount of tribulation will sway her conviction.

Ruthe and Bill are in different nursing homes in the same small town. Bill's wife Corrine lives just outside of Bobcageon. Our timing was such that we just had time for a brief visit with Bill before he went to lunch, so we did that and then when Bill went for lunch we also went for lunch with Corrine, at a local restaurant called MacGoo's. We had All-day breakfasts for about $5.00 each. Then we went back to Bill's nursing home for a second visit with him. Bill is in better shape than Ruthe but he also tires after awhile.

Corrine got Bill talking about the old days and about our Dad, she got him to tell a couple of stories and then we asked him questions about his family memories and about some of his own life stories. Our Dad was eleven years older than Bill, who was the youngest in that family. I remember Bill babysitting for Tim and I and mentioned that to Bill, and he said, Yeah, your Mom and Dad were probably out dancing.

Bill remembered Dad riding a horse that was kept in a field near the old Mills place on Long Point, Dad would have made a bridle for the horse and mounted it by leading it to a fence and climbing on from there. Bill would have been just a little kid who looked up to his two older brothers, Ted and Jess. Their Dad was very musical and very handy, Bill remembers Grandad playing the cello, well enough that he played for money and also practiced with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. One time he brought home an accordion, and Jess learned in the space of a weekend how to play it better than Grandad could. Our Dad played fiddle, the three of them often played together, fiddle, accordion and cello.

Jess and Grandad built a kind of mini-railway to put their boat in and out of the water. They got the tracks from an old railway that used to be out on Toronto Island. Grandad made a fiddle out of an old wooden cigar box, a broomstick and some wire. He used his cello bow to play it.

Dad signed up in the Army and went off to War in 1939 when he was twenty. He came back about six years later, a very different man. Bill said he was older and kind of stressed. Because of his service in the war Grandad gave Dad the family sailboat. Unfortunately, Bill would have been around 15 at the time and he was becoming an excellent sailor, having won a race or two with that boat. He was not so keen on having Dad take the boat away. Dad was moving north to Fraserdale and of course took the boat with him. Just before he did, Grandad and Jesse had made a keel for the boat and bolted it on, changing it from a centreboard boat to a keelboat. It was a pretty good job that they did, but the boat leaked ever after, probably because of the bolts. Anyway, Dad had to make special arrangements to take the boat to Fraserdale as there were no roads there, they had to build a cradle for it and put it on the train. A few years later Mum and Dad returned from Fraserdale, but he did not bring the boat back with them, apparently because it leaked so much that he didn't see the point. Bill is still kind of annoyed with Dad about that. If you take it away, you should bring it back!

I can see that this would have been very upsetting for Bill, he was a young man who had his boat taken away from him just at what would have been the start of his sailing career. As a teenager and the youngest kid in the family, he had no say in the matter.

Something interesting, Bill said that Dad wanted to learn to sail (he woke Bill up very early one morning to get him to teach Dad to sail) in order to impress our mother, Anne. Bill said Anne was an excellent sailor, always was and still is a better sailor than Dad. Which surprised Tim and me, as kids we remember Dad being the sailor, not Mum. We also have no memories of Dad playing any kind of musical instrument, so it was surprising to hear how musical he was before the War. A lot of things changed with the War.

The other regret Bill had was over Grandad selling the cottage at Long Point. He loved that place. Grandad sold it because he just couldn't keep up with the maintenance.

Grandad ran away from home at age 14 to join the circus. He travelled to Chicago and other places, he learned to play the cello and he learned a trade, something to do with printing. He met Grandma in Montreal just as she was arriving from Edinburgh. They settled in Toronto where Grandad grew up but relations with his family were strained. I guess they never really forgave him for running away. Or maybe he had good reason to run away? Bill didn't have any memories of his grandfather, he didn't know why they didn't see much of the grandparents, he just knows that they didn't. Grandad went to Jesse Ketchum Elementary as a kid. Grandad was a very hard worker who was careful with his money and took care of his family, but one time he co-signed a loan for someone and that person defaulted on the loan so Grandad got stuck with it. He impressed on his kids never to co-sign on a loan for anybody, no matter what.

Bill was pretty handy too, I remember him building a sea flea (a little speedboat) and when I told him about building the kayak last summer, he told us about building a canvas and plywood kayak. His description of it sounded awfully like Mike's baidarka! For a long time he flew airplanes for a living, he still is intensely interested in airplanes. By his bed he had a lot of photos, including one of the Avro Arrow which was on display at a museum recently. I was surprised at the photo, I thought all the Arrows had been destroyed, but Bill said there were models that they tested and sank over Lake Ontario; someone went and pulled them out of the Lake. I would like to find out where that model is now, I would love to see it.

Both nursing homes are big and modern, clean and bright. Being in a small town they are surrounded by trees and nice views. Bill's nursing home has more common spaces for residents to gather in, Ruthe's doesn't have common rooms except for the dining room and instead residents gather in the wider hallways in front of the elevator. Corrine thought that Bill was better off sharing a room, she thought that Ruthe got lonely being in a room by herself. She knew a lot of the residents and we said Hi to several people that she knew there. So in many ways it seemed more sociable than Ruthe's home, but it's hard to say from just a short visit. However I think seeing so many very old people like that makes one very conscious of one's mortality; these are among the nicer places to end up, but still...

It was wrenching to leave them, if they had had the energy I would have loved to stay longer. I know Ruthe's days are numbered, I hope I see her again.