About a year ago, I was very tempted by the annual get-together of former residents of my hometown of Temiscaming, Quebec, but I was still working then and would have used up several vacation days for an evening with people I haven't seen for nearly half a century.
I left home on a late September day in 1967. My mother drove me North Bay in the morning fog, where I could take the train from the west to Montreal. She was terrified by the possibility of traffic on an empty Highway 63, and I grieved for her in the silence of our Sunday journey. I did not look forward to college, but I did like the idea of leaving my hometown behind. No more small town chitchat or people knowing what I would order at the Boulevard or pick up at the Dominion Store. I would slip easily into big city life and no one would care what I did, or when I did it.
Time passed, but I didn't begin to appreciate my roots until I married in 1983 and moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota, a big small town on the prairies of the Midwest. The lakes, rivers and forests of Minnesota reminded of the hometown I'd left a decade and a half earlier. Several years ago, Facebook provided the opportunity for an online community, but there's nothing to beat in person connections.
With some trepidation, I signed up for annual Temiscaming reunion, held in the Gatineau area so many former residents now call home.
