Attics of My Life

Posted on May 27, 2017 by Painter Lady

I took liberties, borrowing this title…Grateful Dead’s title for a tune on their album, American Beauty. My brother was listening to Grateful Dead and Gregg Allman (RIP), when I was listening to Three Dog Night and Gordan Lightfoot.

Over the years, I’ve kept some excessively sentimental journal entries, scattered, some in notebooks and some typed up. I’ve belonged to Brat Newsgroups and followed writing by other children of military fathers. An excellent novel is based on a very similar life experience during the Cold War: Anne-Marie Macdonald’s Where the Crow Flies.

In The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald takes us back to the early 1960’s, a time of optimism infused with the excitement of the space race and overshadowed by the menace of the Cold War–-a world filtered through the imagination of Madeleine McCarthy, a spirited nine-year-old. Unaware that her father, Jack, is caught up in his own web of secrets, she at first welcomes her family’s posting to a sleepy air force base in southern Ontario.

The base, however, is home to some intriguing inhabitants, including the unconventional Froehlich family, and the odd Mr. March, whose power over the children is a secret burden that they carry. Then tragedy strikes, and a local murder intersects with global forces, binding the participants for life. As tension in the McCarthy’s household builds, Jack must decide where his loyalty lies, and Madeleine learns about the ambiguity of human morality–a lesson that will become clear only when the quest for the truth, and the killer, is renewed twenty years later.

As Father’s Day approaches and I’m thinking a lot about Dad and my family, but especially Dad, I’m putting together a bit of a reflection. I am proud of my Dad. I’m also pleased, in looking back, that I lived what I imagine is an unusual life, with very unique experiences. As you dwell a bit on your father, you will think the same. I’ve snapped some photos of bits and pieces and put them in chronological order here. The writing is sappy and poorly executed for the most part, but, I’m glad that I’ve documented some things.

Sherbrooke, Quebec and my parents met and fell in love. My parents knew and loved the Fortier family. We made trips to visit my Gramma and Grampa once we moved away. I remember my Grandmother’s home and her gardens.

My brother, John, was born.

John, Dad and Winston, the dog. This is either Sherbrooke or Falconbridge; I’m not certain.

Falconbridge, Ontario (Sudbury)

And a year later, I was born.

RCAF Falconbridge Circa 50s

RCAF Falconbridge

Ste. Sylvestre, Quebec…50 miles from Quebec City. Brutal winters with banks of snow up to the tops of our windows. The birth of my brother, Stuart. Playing in a creek bed some distance from the house. Back yard clotheslines. Mom, alone, a lot. I watched my mother sew the dress that she is wearing in the photograph below. I remember it.

RCAF Ste. Sylvestre

RCAF Ste. Sylvestre

Ste. Margaret’s, New Brunswick...some miles from Chatham.

I guess we didn’t have a camera to snap photographs in Ste. Margaret’s in New Brunswick. I haven’t any archive for this period, apart from a few bits of ephemera. An old fashioned bell rung outside of the school for my kindergarten and grade one year. I remember my coat hook. I remember faking that I could play the notes on my recorder. I remember secretly loving Holmer Berthiaume. I remember clam digging and clam chowder. I remember neighbourhood fun. And, my brother, Cliff, was born. I broke my collar bone.

A neighbour-photographer asked my parents if he could grab some photos of me. This is one.

Recreation Center

Battle Creek, Michigan

This Blog Post was a tribute to a friend, Laurel Barclay, a friend I never forgot.

North Bay, Ontario…three different postings and some very special years. The dock, Chief Commanda, Expo ’67 and a field trip to Montreal, Winter Carnivals, fishing…

Trout Lake, Cabin stays and learning to play Cribbage, Mr. Carlin and the first inkling that I loved art, hiking through the gully, Gus.

Gus and the Rambler Station Wagon.

My sister, Val, was born.

Tent Caterpillars

Air Shows

My brother, Cliff (Hammer), at one of our annual air shows.

Teen Town

I have reconnected with many of the people in this photograph over the years. Social Media has been a blessing for Military ‘Brats’.

On I went, during our second posting, to Widdifield High School, grade nine. My friends were lunch time friends, including Kathleen and Susan. Debbie Harris took the bus with me to Hornell Heights. We were walking-to-school friends. I have since, lost her. Later in life, I painted Miss Mitchell, the librarian, and the Library Club, using a photograph in the 1969 Pendulum as a reference.

I treasured, most, my time in the art room. I still have some of my sketches from that time. I reconnected with David Carlin some years ago as he had an exhibit in Callandar when I was on one of my Trans Canada migrations.

Great Falls, Montana for Grade 10, 11 and 12. Ramona and I have done well to stay in touch all of these years.

Livin’ it up on Fox Farm Road!

My best friend, CMR, Ramona

The thing about military people is that they DO have attached to them, many group photographs and records. I will spare you this collection, but for the sake of my family members, I have photographed Dad’s collection and accessed several that he did not have from on-line research. If ever you want these, please be in touch.

Dad, you mean the world to me. I’m grateful for your love.

Beyond Remembering

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Painter Lady

Listening to Fleetwood Mac’s When I See You Again, as I type.

I wrote away to Amazon for Beyond Remembering: The collected poems of Al Purdy before driving east, the morning of my mother’s birth day, July 27. Since then, I’ve been pouring through the poetry and visiting the places that Canada’s poet, Al Purdy, visited and sometimes thought and wrote about. I heard Eurithe’s strong voice over the telephone, positive and supportive and carried to me all the way from Sidney, British Columbia. Al’s wife gave me the generous permission to use bits of Al’s poetry in my paintings, all produced in my studio bedroom, generously offered to me by my loving father his summer.

I’m still working on small panels and told myself they would be completed by September 1 and I will hold myself to that and I will rest for September, taking in the new autumn air and visit my brother and sister in Ottawa before I drive west to Calgary.

If you haven’t had a connection with Al Purdy’s writing, do give yourself that opportunity some time, when it’s right. The summer of 2013 was the right time for me. I had picked up George Bowering’s book about his friend, Al, his writing…and I became suddenly, profoundly connected…not just with Al Purdy’s writing, but also George Bowering’s writing and more than before, Margaret Atwood’s. I was excited by Al’s connection to my all-time favourite author, Margaret Laurence, and went in search of correspondences between the two and poems where he wrote about her…even to the point of the description he gave in one of his poems of his writing space and the images of both Gabrielle Roy and Margaret Laurence that hung there, on his wall.

Yes…I became a fan. George Bowering co-authored a book with Jean Baird, The Heart Does Break: Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning. Drowning in a dark pool of grief for my mother, all of these beautiful circumstances, all surfacing through poetry, writing and literature, gave me a nudge into my personal journey of grief. I have to say that tentatively, visually, my relationship with the folk of the Gorilla House (you know who you are) and then the Rumble House in Calgary, also provided a string to my practice. But, I have to face it, for years, I’ve been broken and not particularly functioning on any level as an artist. I painted in my head and pulled off these two hour blast outs every Wednesday night. I was happy to let go of them at auction on the same night because I was suffering too much to want to hold on.

Somehow, I knew that this summer I had to create a segue into my practice of painting. I had unloaded all of the furniture and other stuff that I had pushed into my studio space, as a physical way of avoiding painting. I finished projects that were created as a way of distracting me from the fear, the incapacitation and the flat out avoidance of canvas or panel or paint.

And so I find myself here, painting the shape of Purdy’s words, in as much as I can over a period of four weeks. I am sitting here crying as I type. Dad isn’t home. Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks…singing to me through the single speaker. And…I feel good to be in the act of painting again. A bit illustrative in nature, I don’t necessarily believe that this is the direction my work is going…but, it is the beginning of the direction and for that, I’m grateful. It makes sense that I should begin in this beautiful, lush, humid, Victorian city of Belleville, on the edge of the Bay of Quinte…not far from Purdy’s resting place and his little A Frame on Roblin Lake. I know that when I get home, I already have a ‘shitload’ of content from a pond that I love, that will give me a subject for my winter’s exploration.

I will add the poems, a bit at a time, to this post…I really need to get back to those small panels I mentioned. After all, it’s the 28th of August.

Mom, I love you. I love you with all of my heart. Something about what I’ve painted this summer is about you…home…Canada…experience that is the very most mundane…things in the day-to-day that all too often go unnoticed. Painting again, with joy…not pain…is home for me.

Thanks to Mary and Pat…two friends back in Calgary, who tentatively asked…and supported my journey of grief as it related to my painting. Thanks to Pricilla. You know why. Thanks to my Dad, who feeds me.

The paintings can be seen, thanks to the generous opportunity given by Lisa Morris and Peter Paylor at Artists and Artisans: Studio and Gallery on Front Street, show beginning on Thursday, September 6, with a bit of a sha-bang on the 11th from 2-4 and with the potential of after hours viewing any time. I hope some of you can see these.

From the poem, May 23, 1980 in the collection, Beyond Remembering…the final stanza.

I have grown old

but these words remain

tell her for me

because it’s very important

tell her for me

there will come one May night

of every year that she’s alive

when the whole world smells of lilacs.

Al Purdy

Oh, Canada!

Posted on June 18, 2011 by Painter Lady

Mom and Dad

There we were, traveling late on the highway, white lines racing hypnotically toward us. My chin leaned on the back seat of the station wagon, a burgundy Rambler, as I lay stretched in hot dog fashion alongside the oldest and youngest, in the back. My parents voices were a hush. Every now and then there was the sound of my father humming a few notes of this or that song, usually melodic at this hour, better to keep everyone calm and quiet.

I have no recollections beyond that and the sound of the windshield wipers in the dark…then sleep.

In the morning, we met another landscape. I don’t remember ever seeing a sky so open or so welcoming. Honestly, there was a huge purple canopy stretched over that sky. There was the threat of rain. At this point, it seemed the miles flew by; there was a wild energy in the air and yet, we remained still and calm. When we saw what rose up off the horizon, it seemed an alien world.

Dad, with voice cracking, said, “Kids, there they are!”

We had no notion of what he might be talking about until we scanned every portion of the landscape stretched out before us. And then I saw them and my eyes opened wider than ever before! I called out, “THE MOUNTAINS!” Mauve, deep violet, edging the entire world, I saw the Rockies for the first time.

My brothers, in unison, called out, “We are close to Grandpa’s! We are almost there!”

I love those same mountains this morning…those set out for me on the horizon! What an awesome thing, to have been born Canadian and to be given the opportunity to love this country…to have been the daughter of a man who would have given everything in defense of this everything that I love!

The Chapel

…a place where MAGIC happens!

Tag Archives: My Father

Attics of My Life

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Beyond Remembering

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Oh, Canada!

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