Beautiful Baby

Sheryl and I lived across the hall from each other as first-year McGill students who lived in residence at Royal Victoria College. She left McGill after three years and went to law school in Toronto, and we lost touch until a few years ago when the Internet gave us the opportunity to reconnect.

We shared an apartment for a weekend two years ago when we attended a McGill reunion, and I rejoiced with her and her husband when they became grandparents fifteen months ago. Today, I met Sheryl's beautiful daughter and her family at their home, about a twenty-minute walk from my hotel.

The baby is even more delightful in person than I imagined from the dozens of Facebook photos I've seen. She's a spirited little red-headed imp:

Sheryl's Granddaughter

Reunion Highlights

La gang de Temiscaming

 

I felt a little trepidation as we walked into Mon Resto for the reunion dinner. Forty-six years is a long time. Lots of water -- maybe too much? -- under the bridge. I was a little nervous that my few days of "thinking in French" and occasionally listening to Radio-Canada would restore my fluency to an acceptable level.

I soon realized that though years had passed, people were very recognizable. Unique voices, facial expressions, little mannerisms resurfaced and instantly identified the teenagers they were the last time we met. Among the pleasures of the evening:,

• The organization skills and big, outgoing personality of Diane Gingras who hosted the event with Lise Lefebvre Campbell. The Gingras family was well represented, with Richard Gingras and Louise Gingras Robinson. Big treat to see the Gingras matriarch, Madame Laurette Gingras, looking so well and fit.
• Lise Lefebvre Campbell, who took fabulous pictures of all us us.
• Lorraine Théberge, who is even more energetic and expressive than she was forty years ago.
• The contingent from the old nighbourhood above the pipeline, where I lived till I was twelve. Two of the Raymond sisters, Valera and Doreen, now Meunier; Pat Vaillancourt, whose brother Bucky was a grade school classmate; Dixie (Lee) Merleau Mainville; the McGowan twins, Beatrice Paquin and Leatrice McGowan.
• My guitar teacher, Glenn Mathieu, and his wife, Louise Raymond Mathieu, who lived in a lower level apartment when they were newlyweds.
• Edward Hospodar and his lovely Chatham wife, Betty, one of the many connections to New Brunswick in town when I was growing up.
• Grade school classmates Lorraine Violette Cusson, Louise Benoit, Lise Laframboise Raymond, Marcia Belisle, Nicole Heroux Gregoire.
• High school classmates Suzanne Collins-Simpson and Linda O'Rourke.
• Ski club stories with Pierre Racine.
• Thorne catch-up with Bob Simpson, Suzanne Collins' husband. Bob provided news of the Pharands, the Floreys,
• Talking with Suzanne Guindon-Vaillancourt, the daughter of Sylvio Guindon, my high school chemistry teacher. I told Suzanne that I still quote her dad on marriage: "You don't just marry the person; you marry the whole family".
• Brenda Young Rannou and her husband, Bob Rannou, whose voice and demeanor are so much like his dad's.
• Annette and Couch Moreau, whom I didn't really know in Temiscaming but I've followed their FB adventures for several years.
• Everyone I talked with! I enjoyed catching up with you. I'm in awe of the lives you've lived and the people you've become.

Among those we missed were Denise Proulx-Almquist and Kent Almquist, as well as several other expected guests who turned around at Deep River because a fatal accident closed the highway for most of Friday. Tragically, the victim was from Temiscaming and a close relative of one of the attendees. The accident will forever color otherwise very happy memories of a fantastic evening.

Good Friend

Over the last couple of years I've gotten to know some people from my hometown better than I ever knew them when we lived in the same town. Lise Lefebvre is one of them.

Lise is a couple of years younger than I am so our paths didn't cross in school, except incidentally. Turns out, though, that we both love photography and I've enjoyed seeing Lise's beautiful photographs of her family, gardens, unusual shapes and textures, sunsets, waterscapes, full moons and other interesting scenes.

Lise came into the city to pick me up for the Temiscaming reunion and she drove me back to the hotel after it ended at about 10:00 p.m. She is even more delightful in person than she is on Facebook.

Delta Hotel - Ottawa Centre



View from my room. Ottawa River in the distance.

I left our house in St. Paul shortly before 4:30 a.m. Friday morning. Bob dropped me off at the airport, which wasn't at all busy at that time of day. My 6:10 a.m. flight to Ottawa was very light, so I had a row to myself and got to see the sun rise as we flew east to Toronto. I really don't like Pearson airport, but I've got to know it reasonably well and I managed to find my way through customs & immigration and to my gate, with only a few wrong turns. Fortunately I remembered that I had to retrieve my checked bag in Toronto and carry it myself to the conveyor belt for the Ottawa flight.
Taxi downtown was not cheap but well worth the money, as I was a little travel wear when I got out of the airport at about 11:30. The day was sunny and hot when I arrived at Delta City Centre to check in. I had requested an early check-in, but this really was a little early, and sure enough, my room wasn't ready yet.

View from my 25th floor window at the Delta



My comfortable room

Luck was on my side. I was upgraded to a deluxe King on the 25th floor, with a great view. Free breakfast and appetizers in the evening. The great room refreshed me so I went out for a walk in the sunshine. Stopped at Starbucks a couple of blocks away and people-watched as I enjoyed my coffee.

Rencontre des anciens de Témiscaming - Hometown Reunion

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.