for mothers

Lately I've been looking at old photos. I stare into the faces of my grandmothers, my mom and my mother-in-law and think about motherhood. Why we do it. How we deal with it. How it makes us.

Mothers

You are

the you you used to be

the you you could have been

the you you will never be

the you you feared you would become

the you you could still be

You are the person others see and the person you see in your mind's eye

You are the life you live out loud

and

the inner life no one will ever know

You are your childhood

You are your imperfect memories

You are the stories you were told and the stories no one would tell and the stories you tell others

You are the things you think you know and the lessons you never learned

You are the places you've been and the places you go in your mind

You are the art on your walls

You are the flowers in your garden

You are the song in your heart

You are the tears you cry when no one hears

You are the dreams you lived and the dreams that died and the dreams that may still come true

You are your hopes and fears for your children

You are everything your mother taught you 

You are everything you teach your children, whether you mean to or not

You are in every breath they take and every choice they make.

Sometimes... 

you feel that you are nothing to anyone

But always...

you are everything to someone.

Nicola vs Chair: Part Two

Just before we moved I started restoring an old platform rocker. You might have read about it. If not, here's the link.

I did not complete this job before we moved. The chair sat in the garage in the new house for almost another year before I got back to it. Another coat of paint.  Still a little pink bleeding though on one arm. Len installed the high quality seat made by our friends Bruce and Kelly. It fit like a glove and is rock solid. I bought upholstery fabric, didn't like it, sold it and bought something else. I ordered foam, made a cushion and reupholstered the back using a staple gun. Then added the trim. 

When it was all done,  I sat down. And I smiled. It is a comfortable chair.

But I won't say I was 100% satisfied. There were drips on the paint. There's still a pinky undertone. I did not paint the underside which is still rough and reddish brown. I did a pretty amateurish job on the upholstery. But it was serviceable. The biggest problem was that it felt like you were going to topple over backwards when you sat in it.

Our friends Glenn and Sheila came for a visit. We made sure they didn't sit in the chair. But Len did. As we were enjoying our cocktails on the veranda, there was a popping sound followed by a crash as Len went straight over backwards, narrowly avoiding punching a hole through the screen door. Somehow he managed to keep his drink aloft like a pro.

Closer investigation revealed that one of the springs had snapped. Back the chair went to the garage. New springs were ordered. In the meantime, I found almost the identical chair- in a much better state of repair- in Calgary for $90. We could have bought it, but we didn't. Stubbornly, I wanted to fix the chair. I needed to fix the chair. It had become a symbol to me. But a symbol of what?

The springs arrived, costing almost the same as a better version of the chair. And they weren't the same as the old springs.  Len discovered the old screws holding the springs to the chair did not match. And they were painted to the chair. With some mineral spirits and elbow grease, they were removed. After a few missteps, the new springs were attached- two per side, much less bendy than the originals and with six screws per side.  Much better than one loose rusty spring and two mismatched screws.

Looking more closely at the underside of the chair, we could see evidence of previous repairs. Blocks of plywood had been screwed in to hold the bits together. A couple dozen rusty old tacks had held down the two layers of upholstery. A mysterious wire seemed to be holding one leg in place although it seemed unnecessary. We left it where it was.

I continue to ponder what the chair means to me. I know it has something to do with preserving the past in a new place and something to do with creating a home.

In many countries people don't move far from where they were born. Their memories and their history surrounds them. Their sense of place and where they belong is set. For better or worse, their history is inescapable. In Canada though? Most of us have come from somewhere else.  We carry our history and geography inside us-invisible to the world- although the result may bleed through. The stories of our ancestors, their successes and joys, their tragedies and injustices- both endured and inflicted-are known only to them. Our sense of who we are and where we belong is something we make for ourselves. This fact of our existence may be freeing, but it's also sad. 

I imagine when the chair was new. I imagine a family bringing it to a pioneer home in the Peace Country. I think about the first person who sat on it, perhaps smiling as I did. I imagine the woman of the house standing back and admiring her new furniture with a sense of completion, maybe feeling that now, she had arrived.  

Since that first family owned the chair, generations of people have seen something in it worth preserving. With its mismatched screws and bits of plywood and mysterious wire, it has survived many transitions. It is part of the past yet it continues on into the future. Just as we humans move forward, carrying our past with its secrets and joys and broken bits held tenuously together. Knowing what we know, we try to be our best selves wherever we are.

My great-grandparents' farm near Brantford

Our Dawson Creek house

Our Slave Lake house

So here we are in our new home, in a town with dozens of temporary residents in fancy vacation homes. We are making friends in this place where every day is a holiday and who you are in another place and time doesn't count for much. What counts is who you are now and what you're going to do today. 

Winter came. We moved the chair from the veranda to the bedroom where our new grandson would sleep. The house-now fully furnished with bits and pieces cobbled together - is home. 

I am home.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby

 K, I don't know who needs to hear this, but International Women's' Day is a SOCIALIST day. It's not a feel-good celebration of how cool women are. It's about the rights of women and how they have been and continue to be denied for women around the world. Girls that can't go to school. Women who don't get promoted because they put family first. Women who aren't allowed out in public without a man. Women who don't get paid the same as men. Women who afraid to run for office because of misogyny. 

All day today I have seen posts like "Here's my daughter, I am so proud of her." or "Here's my mom, I loved her so much". 

Yeah, ok. 

Cool.

I love my daughters. 

I loved my mom and my grandmothers. 

it's good to celebrate the sisterhood we feel with other women.

But let's think about what this day is supposed to be about. 

International Women's' Day was established by the Socialist Party of America as National Women's' Day in the US in 1909. It expanded to Europe the next year and became International Women's' Day in 1911. The Russians took up the cause in 1913. In those years, it was closely tied to demands for universal suffrage for women as well as demands for equal pay, the right to run for public office, improved working conditions and equal rights for women. 

Women have fought for their rights in Canada and around the world for generations. There have been many gains but the battle is far from done. We can't just sit around being all proud of being female. We need to keep up the fight.

Grandmother Marion, back row on the far left.

Granny Muriel Fryer

In my own family, my maternal grandmother Jane Marion McNaught was accepted into nursing school but instead followed her family to northern Alberta where she taught school and married, then worked in a munitions factory in the UK before she was legally allowed to vote. My paternal grandmother Muriel Frances Fryer came from England to Canada where she became a nurse and matron of a hospital before she could vote. She went on to give birth to seven children and ran a soup kitchen out of her Vancouver home during the Depression. Following the death of her husband, she lied about her age so she could keep nursing. 

My mom was an excellent student who wanted to be an accountant but was told "that's a man's job." Three university degrees later, she was a teacher in small town Alberta. 

Mom getting her Bachelor of Commerce degree.

They were happy and fulfilled women, but who knows who they might have become if barriers to their dreams were not put in their way because of their gender? Who knows what they might have contributed to society?

We have two daughters. One holds a PhD from Cambridge and works for Oxford University. The other is a geophysicist with a Masters degree who lives and works as a scientist in Victoria BC. They are smart, hard working and successful. The opportunities they have had are far better than those of their grandmother and great grandmothers. But I would be lying if I said there have not been hurdles to their success based on the fact they are women. 

I wrote about all of this before. But now I see what seems to be happening with this day, and I'm getting a bit annoyed. Are people just not getting the point?

Who else remembers Virginia Slims? A cigarette marketed to women. Their ads co-opted the women's civil rights movement in the US by equating a woman's right to smoke to the civil rights women had attained through concerted effort and protest. Will International Women's Day go the same way? Just some watered down day celebrating women in a generic feel-good way? If that's all it is, what is the point?

Generations of women have struggled and fought to gain equality with men. In Canada, we have come a long way, much further than places like Afghanistan. But there are still miles to go, brothers and sisters. Miles to go before we reach true equality around the world.

The world is hard. There are barriers everywhere that prevent people from reaching their potential. International Women's Day is one way we can promote the issues facing women by not just celebrating their achievements but also acknowledging the struggles women face around the world.  By joining in the fight for all people. Let's not diminish these very real issues by making it a meaningless Hallmark holiday.

in praise of small

At the time of confederation, just 19% of Canadians lived in "urban" areas. The rest lived on the land or in small towns.  By the time I was born, nearly 60% of Canadians lived in an urban centre. Now 80% of Canadians live in a city and just 13% live in small towns. 

With remote work, people are moving back to smaller centres. Some say they are moving due to the affordability of housing and the slower pace of life. The shorter commute and the comfort of community and wanting to give their kids a safe childhood are other reasons. Perhaps the pandemic has made people re-evaluate their priorities.

The recent CBC Contest "Best Small Town BC" has brought back a lot of memories and made me think about small town Canada. What's good? What's bad? And how does it shape you as a person? 

Me and my mom. Trail, BC.

My dad grew up in Vancouver and my mom was from Edmonton. They met in Dawson Creek and lived in Victoria, then Trail where I was born, then back to Dawson Creek where I grew up, and then Tumbler Ridge. They were city people who chose small town life.

Me and my best friends Patti and Vivianne

Your history shapes you and that's something you don't even think about while that shaping is happening.  I know my small town childhood shaped me. If there was an event, we went to it. If there was a club, we joined it. We went to Sunday School. I learned to figure skate and swim and sing and play piano very badly. We volunteered or more accurately, were volunteered by our mom for various projects of her design. If someone needed help, we gave it. We went to the ballet and classical music performances and every eccentric play the drama teacher put on. We dressed up for Bonanza Days. We took drives into the countryside and had picnics in the wilderness. Our house was a madhouse of friends and committee meetings and awkward dinners with strangers. It was the Grand Central Station of my mom's un-ending megaprojects. 

Proud members of the Mile Zero Figuring Skating Club.
Where my mom made the costumes and my dad ran the lights and became a figure skating judge.

In my small town, my classmates lived on farms and apartments and trailer parks and suburban homes. My friends' parents were geologists and engineers and mechanics and secretaries and truck drivers and ranchers and salesmen. That's who I hung out with. That's what I knew. When it was my birthday my mom insisted every girl in my class be invited so no one would feel left out. I didn't know there were places where richer people lived in one neighbourhood and poor people lived in another. I didn't know about classes or status or race.

At the neighbours

Our friends came and went. Mostly they went. Dawson Creek was a stopover for upwardly mobile people, a place to make a name for yourself and then move on. Unless you were teachers, which my parents were. Then you mostly stayed.

In front of our local TV station, CJDC.

I don't remember feeling deprived of anything as a kid. Our house was big and beautiful, or so it seemed. We had friends. We had things to do. It never occurred to us the city might be a place where we could or would live. Cities were places you visited where you ate in restaurants and shopped at a mall and visited the museum and the zoo and the parliament buildings and the planetarium. Those were things you did on vacation, not daily life. I didn't get why you would want to live there.

At the legislature, Edmonton.

But you do need to live in a city to go to university and when it was time to go, I was ready. Ready to try the city. Ready to spread my wings and find out if there were more people like me out in the world.  At university, almost everyone I met was from a small town. Places like Grimshaw and Manning and Fort St. John and Taber. We had our similarities. For one thing, we spoke the common language of "Git 'er done" and "let "er rip". We were first to organize something and the last to leave. We'd talk about where we were from with that mix of pride and shame small town people have. Making jokes that we all understood. We talked about our homes as places we were from, not places we were going back to. You go away to school so you can be your best self and maybe you can't be that person in your hometown.

Easter Sunday. with the family.

Your town is part of you. Just like your family. You know there are shortcomings but it's yours. It's where you're from. It's part of who you are. So when city people said, "Oh my god, you're from a small town? What do you do all day? How can you stand it?"  I laughed along like a racialized person laughs at a racist joke, but it wasn't all that funny. 

My brother and me, junior cheerleaders for the South Peace Penguins.

I never moved back to the town where I grew up. I looked for work in a city and didn't get it. I lived in Sexsmith, got married to a city man who would have preferred city life. But city life never happened. After Sexsmtih we travelled, then lived in Fort Resolution, followed by Viking, followed by Slave Lake- a town very much like Dawson Creek-where we raised our family. When it came time to retire, we moved to an even smaller and very different town that checked the boxes for what we valued and could afford. 

Slave Lake

Over the years I have learned a few things.

In a small town, your life plays out on a small and highly visible stage. That is a challenge. Sometimes the character you play fits a stereotype that becomes impossible to shake. The busybody, the small town philosopher, the bully, the funny guy, the nerd, the person who came looking to follow a dream and then gave up. Often the stereotype is wrong as stereotypes are. If you want a different reputation, it's hard to become a new "you". I know a few girls who were thought of as slutty. They had to leave so their reputation didn't become their destiny.  "The rumour mill is deadly," says my cousin. But "I loved knowing everyone."  For me, if I had stayed in Dawson Creek, I would always be the principal's daughter. The goody goody. I wanted to escape that reputation and it took me a few years to acknowledge that's what I am, and what I would have been no matter where I lived. As they say, wherever you go, there you are.

Me and my high school friends at the boat race, Dawson Creek

There aren't many people in small towns. So you end up with friends that might not be like you. Maybe not the nerdy chess club kid from high school. Maybe friends you would never have gotten to know in a bigger place where there are more people like you. That's a good thing. If you are a teacher in a small town, your students are everywhere. They are your servers and mechanics and your police officers. And who sometimes need your help. If your town is transient, many of your friends move away. That happened to me as a kid and again as an adult. It happened to my kids as well. That is not a good thing. It can make you lonely and sad and sometimes you might just feel like its not worth the effort to even make friends.

Our very good friends, the Jorgensons who moved away

One thing about small town life is that when people are "in your business" they can also have your back. When there's an accident or a death or a natural disaster, everyone knows. They know, they empathize and often, they help. Because whatever happened to your neighbour could also happen to you. During and after the Slave Lake fires neighbour helped neighbour. They helped each other get out of town. They helped each other rebuild. They helped other towns who had experienced their own disasters. When you are part of a community, that's what you do. 

Helping hands mural, CJ Schurter School, a mural created after the Slave Lake wildfires

Small towns are not all alike. Some are friendly and welcoming and others are not. We lived in a prairie town for a whole year and only one person even said hello. Where we live now, every single one of our neighbours introduced themself within two hours of our arrival. 

Some small towns are keen to let you try new things and others love the status quo. While in the unfriendly (and may I add, dying) town, we were never encouraged to participate in anything, in our next place I joined the choir, and my husband took up acting and stand up comedy.  In our time there, with other community members, we produced 80 plays, wrote and self published a national bestseller, created a performing arts association, and organized the delivery of over 400 original works of art. Could we have done that in a city? Probably not, but then again maybe we wouldn't have needed to.

The Stage North crew, Slave Lake.

One of my friends says that in a small town you learn to do new things. Because you have to. If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. If there is no live music and you value that, you organize it. If you love the theatre, you may have to build the theatre. If you love to eat good food, you might have to learn to cook - or make friends with people who can cook. If you enjoy soccer, or synchronized swimming or cricket, you have to use your skills to coach, organize and participate. If you want change in politics, you have to get involved. Whether it's lobbying or protesting or starting your own constituency association. You need new skills for those things and when you can make something happen, that's exhilarating. When you don't, it's depressing. And exhausting. 

Small towns are often closer to the wilderness. That is something my husband and I love. It is what made Slave Lake a good fit for us for some time. It's why we chose to live where we do now. Proximity to the wilderness puts you in contact with people of different values. Some love the fishing, hunting and offroading opportunities. But it's also skiing and wild skating and hiking and paddling. That can lead to an uneasy coexistence between factions. But you already know how to coexist. Because you are from a small town where you have had to do that forever.

Columbia Valley views

We do not all have the same feelings towards our small towns. My small town childhood informed my attitudes as much as my parents did. My own children no doubt have different feelings. All three of them live in cities quite happily and I imagine that's where they will stay. One of my cousins lived in a very small town, a small city and now an acreage. He says he made friends wherever he lived and "any place is what you make it."  I suppose that's true. 

Small towns are not for everyone; single people, those with specialized training, those who want to be entertained, those who like large malls or fancy restaurants or who want to easily engage in cultural events or attend professional sporting events. If you are a member of a minority group, you may not find anyone like you. But if you are one of those people thinking about moving to a small town for improved quality of life- if you like to be involved and make a difference, set aside your preconceived notions.Bring your imagination and your energy. Try small town life. You might just find a place to call home.

March 11

How do we measure our lives?

Lives, measured in numbers.

Your bank balance

Your height and weight

The price at the pump

Your phone number

The amount on your paycheque

The number on your tax bill

Your social insurance number

Your pension

And a number 

A number you track as it goes up and up and up 

Until it's too big and you stop paying attention

Because it is so much easier just to pretend 

Lives, made up of people. 

People you know and love

People you have met

"Friends" on Facebook

"Followers" on Twitter

People who "like" your Instagram photos

People who hire you and fire you

People you work with and people you work for

People who lead and people who follow

People who are there when you need them even if you don't know who they are

People you will never meet

Millions upon millions of people

People you chose to help

And those you turned your back on

Lives, made up of time.

Seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years

Moments of clarity

Minutes of indescribable joy 

Hours of contentment

Hours of despair

The day you met the love of your life

The day you met your dog for the first time

The day your child was born

The day your dad died 

The day your town burned to the ground

The day a pandemic was declared

Months of waiting

Waiting for summer

Waiting for Christmas 

Waiting to meet the "one"

Waiting to buy a house

Waiting to sell a house

Waiting to start your career and then waiting for it to end

Waiting for it all to go back to normal. 

Whatever "normal" means.

And years.

So many years

Years of childhood

Years of raising children

Years of figuring it out and you never really do

Years when you did your part,

Day after day, hour after hour, minute after minute

And then

A second

A second when you made a choice

The second you decided not to care.

Charlotte Small

Imagine a young Metis girl with a wiry build. A girl who was shy but also active and alert. She had black eyes and dark hair and glowing, almost copper coloured skin. When she was just six years old, her father abandoned his “country wife” and his three small children in a small village in northern Saskatchewan. It was a common practice back in those days- white men would marry strong, independent women with skills to survive in a rugged land, and then leave them behind as they returned to Europe where they married women who were- in the eyes of some- more “refined”. After she was abandoned, the girl’s mother made ends meet as best she could as a trader and a translator in the fur trade.

The girl learned to read and write at a time when most women were illiterate. She was fluent in Cree, English and French as well as several other indigenous dialects. She could hunt and fish and build a shelter and manage a canoe. She was clever and resourceful with many skills that allowed her to travel not only throughout the wild northern lands, but also amongst the different peoples of Canada.

When the girl was a teenager, she met an older man and they were married-not in a church but in a traditional Cree ceremony in a small northern village. She and her husband traveled over land, through steep mountain passes and burning hot plains, her husband navigating by the stars. They traveled by horseback, fording raging rivers and trudging through deep snow. They traveled by canoe on rivers large and small, portaging as needs be. Her skill with the canoe led to her being called "Woman of the Paddle Song".  They lived in tents and hastily constructed forts. They hunted and fished and were often near starvation until she snared rabbits or caught fish. They were threatened by the Piegan. They traveled 42,000 kilometers in all - from Fort Vermilion to Kalispell- from the Pacific Ocean to the Great Lakes to the St Lawrence. Further than Lewis and Clark. Further than most Canadians.

She acted as liaison for her husband in his work. She was able to speak the languages of the indigenous people they met on their journeys. She was instrumental in establishing good relations between her husband and the people they met. She helped negotiate alliances and find hardy people to help them travel, explore and find enough to eat. Over the course of 12 years, she gave birth to five babies, often traveling with her tiny ones and her newborns. Once her children were nearly crushed by a horse who her husband shot immediately in a fit of rage. Another time her daughter got lost along a river and was found 6 hours later, huddling near a snowbank. Sometimes she and the little ones were left behind at a trading post for months on end.

Her husband called her his "lovely wife" and "the Blood of her people" but rarely mentioned her in his pages and pages of journals. He recognized that her skills gave him an advantage over other explorers and traders. There is no doubt their marriage was one of love and commitment.

When their travels were over, she and her husband settled in the east where they were married in a church ceremony. She never felt she belonged. The skills that kept her family alive were not recognized. Where once having your feet in both worlds was an asset, now being of mixed blood was a liability. Yet she persevered. Two of her children died and she was heartbroken. She had more children. Two more died. 13 children in all. Initially successful in their business enterprises, some bad decisions led to bankruptcy. Her husband’s years of work- the maps he created and the journal he wrote- went unrecognized and unattributed in their lifetime. She and her husband lost everything and had to live their last years in poverty in a room in their daughter’s house. At night the two of them would walk out into the night and look at the stars, perhaps remembering the life they left behind, perhaps hoping they could chart a different course.

Sculpture in Invermere BC. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncF6vTuJupc

Three months after her husband died, she also passed away. They were married for 58 years.

We know him as one of Canada's foremost adventurers and explorers. Would he have been able to accomplish all he had without her by his side? Without her unique knowledge and skills and her ability to live in both worlds?  Some say their marriage helped define our nation. 

We should know her name. 

Charlotte Small.

Woman of the Paddle Song.

Portrait of Charlotte Small. Artwork by Wandering Jayne Creatives.

https://www.westernhorsereview.com/blogs/small-matters/

Aretha van Herk, Travels with Charlotte, Canadian Geographic Journal

if by freedom

Freedom is much in the news these days. It is chanted on the streets. It is printed on trucks and banners and flags.  It is used as an excuse for all manner of behaviour and as a rallying cry by those on the right and the left and in the centre.  What does it mean, really?  How can we talk to each other about freedom if we don't have a common understanding?

 

Here is what I think about freedom:

 

If when you say freedom you mean

 

you can pursue your own happiness regardless of its impact on others

you can exploit people for your own selfish gain

you can call people niggers and pakis or chong ching ching chang with impunity

you can spit on a person you disagree with

you can carry a gun that is more likely to be used against you than to protect you

you are allowed to shoot anyone who trespasses on your property

you can put your child in harm's way in defense of your principles

you can hold a city hostage if you don't like the law

you can refuse to recognize an elected government

you can cut down every tree, pollute every waterway, and extract every resource to enrich your pocketbook-

if by freedom, that is what you mean

then certainly, I am against freedom.

 

Retrieved from tsln.com

 

But, if when you say freedom you mean

 

you can follow your own path regardless of the colour of your skin

you can choose who you love

you can count on your fellow citizens to make sacrifices for the greater good

you are protected from extreme poverty

you can see society's children educated, hopeful and empowered to create a better future

you can access skilled professionals who keep you healthy

you can rely on the rule of law to ensure equal treatment for all persons

you are protected from those who would do you harm

you can vote in fair elections

you can enjoy the majestic forests, mountains and lakes of our protected spaces- 

if by freedom, that is what you mean

then by all means, I am all for it.

This is what I think about freedom.
This is my stand.
I will not retreat from it.

*In 1952 a lawmaker by the name of Noah AKA "Soggy” Sweat made a speech about prohibition in Mississippi. The speech, referred to as If by Whiskey is a classic example of a relativist fallacy in which the speaker's position is dependent on the listeners point of view.

After listening to this speech, I realized a similar argument could be made on the topic of freedom which is much in the news in Canada today. So, thanks to Mr. Sweat for the format of this piece.

your empty house

The big coffee perk is still on the counter. The Christmas cookie plate covered in crumbs. The Christmas dishes in the dishwasher. Recycling bins overflowing. Unfinished bottles of wine. Stockings in a pile under the couch. A pile of as-yet unopened Christmas cards.

The driveway covered in snow.

Half made beds. 

Candles burned down to stubs.

The calendar says December 2021 but it's not.

The calendar needs to be replaced. Bags need to be unpacked. The floor should be swept. Bedding washed. Boxes flattened. Bottles taken to the depot. Curling shoes and extra boots and pool towels and games and skis and toboggans put back in their places. The fridge checked for the last of the leftovers. The few remaining cookies eaten. The decorations returned to their bins in the basement. Christmas dishes packed up once again. The tree must come down, its lights and ornaments stowed away.

 

But that’s for another day.

 

Today we sit by the fire.

Today we listen to music.

 

Today we watch the birds.

 

Today we sit surrounded by the warmth of of a house so recently vacated it still feels full.

So it's easy to imagine that big coffee perk will be filled in the morning and emptied by noon. The cookie plate will be restocked and the cookies consumed. The seven sets of unique dishes will be set around the table once again. Meals will be eaten. Wine will be drunk. Canasta will be played. The house will ring with laughter. And those half made beds are just waiting for someone to crawl into them at the end of the night.

Today we pretend.

You | Me

I don’t remember learning to play Canasta, although I am pretty sure I wasn’t born knowing. It is kind of a constant in our family and I don’t remember a time when we didn't play.

My grandmother and the girls seated at the table where we played Canasta at the family farm.

Canasta is a cross between bridge and rummy. It was developed in the late 1940s by an architect and a lawyer in Uruguay as an easy and time-efficient alternative to bridge. It became a craze in Latin America and then came to North America where it was all the rage for awhile. My grandmother took a course on how to play in the 1950s in Edmonton. She taught it to her husband and her three sisters. And so it went.

When we were kids in the 1960s visiting our grandparents in Beaverlodge, the aunts - or the “girls” as my grandfather called them, even though they were in their 70s and hated being called the “girls” or the “aunts” because "we're individuals"- would come over and we would play. My one brother would team up with Granddad, both of them with the same strategy of going out early just to catch others with cards in their hands. I doubt it won them any games. For them it was less about themselves winning and more about us losing. My younger brother played with my grandmother, both quiet and crafty. They won a lot. I often played with my mom, for whom the cards were secondary to the chatter around the table. Canasta is a game you can play without concentrating too hard, although it’s hard to win if you aren't paying attention. Which, as my husband kindly points out, is why I never win since I am not paying attention at all. (I think he's overstating it BTW.)

Hart is winning, Tumbler Ridge.

In later years in Tumbler Ridge my sister learned a version called “Hand and Foot” where you have a second hand of cards -known as your “foot” - that you can only access when you have played down your hand. You need a lot of cards to play “Hand and Foot” and my parents had a chocolate box full of cards for that purpose. Hand and foot became the game of choice and it’s the version we play when we get together wherever we are.

Everyone has some kind of idiosyncrasy when it comes to this game.  Elizabeth never picks up the deck. My dad and my husband always pick up the deck and if you sit on one side of them, you will inevitably throw away something they will pick up and if you sit on the other side, you’ll be getting nothing but black threes all night. Cause for some cursing for sure. My brother is still quiet and crafty. It's important to know your partner's quirks because your cards need to merge advantageously with theirs in order for your team to win. Dave and Geordie, take note.

Kerry ponders a move.

My cousin Kerry and I keep up the chit chat now, which is hard not to do because when you have a dozen people or more all playing, it takes a long time before your turn comes around. Sometimes there can be silliness, like the time the kids decided it would fun to play in crazy hats and speak with accents. Or they brought a dog to the table. My dad found that annoying. He played like he was in it to win it and didn’t appreciate the distractions. Although he would occasionally add his own distractions with some choice terms or an engineering song.

When we weren’t there, my parents often played with just the two of them, keeping score night after night. The records still remain in that Pot of Gold chocolate box. My mom complained bitterly that Dad always won, but did he? When they died, our eldest asked for that box. Inside, decks and decks of cards mingled together, many worn and dirty. And page after page of Canasta scores in my dad’s handwriting, columns neatly labelled “You” and “Me”, detailing every game the two of them played, year after year. Somewhere in those records is a tally of all their scores, completed by my dad. In all those years and years of games, the point total was so close. She must have won at least half the time.

Dad's scoresheets.

When my mom’s dementia set in, she told us she couldn’t play. She didn’t know the rules. But then someone volunteered to play with her, maybe my cousin or my sister. In no time she had her hand organized. She could play. She remembered the rules even when she didn’t know what day or year it was or the names of her grandchildren sitting at the table. I guess when you do something so repeatedly, the rules get ingrained in you. Maybe that’s why Mom still knew the rules when so much else had fallen away.

My sister is unimpressed with her hand 

Today's game doesn't much resemble the one my grandmother learned so long ago. It's a game so you should care about winning or losing but nobody really cares if it's "you" or "me" that ends up with the higher score. Our game spans decades and generations, modified by time, geography and family dynamics. And while the rules may have changed, the essence remains.  Sitting around a table late at night surrounded by family, in a room filled with laughter. And maybe a little cursing.